The Daily Novel

DAILY NOVEL features current novels, serialized, with a new chapter published every weekday. As each book concludes, we will begin another. Here are the titles of our current books and a look at the authors who wrote them:

PASSION IN PERIL by Deb McClatchey. What do Chloe Banyon and her three close friends do when their neighborhood is being terrorized by a serial killer?All the victims are particularly voluptuous young women who seem to frequent their favorite hangout, The Cellar. Chloe and her best friend, Monica Eason, are makeup artists in a prestigious department store.Cha Cha DuBois is a beautiful, exotic ‘large’ model who fears her biological clock is ticking away. Redheaded Steffi Frost is a zany actress looking for love. Could one of them be next? Chloe’s boyfriend, Harry Moretti of the San Francisco Police Department, thinks that may be so! He’s doing all he can to find the killer before he strikes again. The more Chloe falls in love with Harry, the more she realizes just how precious life is! Join them in their close encounters with the demented Wallace Carrick. Will the killing stop in time? Read the novel here.

THE BODY IN THE CLOVERLEAF, by J.D. Yeiser. It was predictable that amateur detectives Harlan and Gloria Stone would engage in a parlor game about murder, especially with the close group of friends who were involved in their last major case. The game:  Where would you dump a body? They each placed a clear plastic box in a different chosen spot. In the box, a note with an 800 number. But a year later, when someone does find one of the boxes, they also find a body in the same location, inside a cloverleaf, Harlan’s choice in the game. Explorations of other cloverleafs begin to turn up bodies, clearly the work of a serial killer. Harlan and Gloria find themselves in a race to stop the cloverleaf killer, someone who apparently agreed with Harlan that a cloverleaf is a good place to dump a body. But who is the killer? And can they find him before he kills again? Read the novel here.

ARCHIVED NOVELS

The following novels have completed their serialization at The Daily Novel but are still available for your reading enjoyment.

THE BODY IN THE BARREL by JD Yeiser. Harlan and Gloria Stone have played amateur sleuths for years. Using resources available at home, they try to beat the officials to a solution and they have, so far, always beaten them. Now on one of their frequent RV excursions, they stumble across a new mystery, a body in a whiskey barrel, a barrel that sat in a warehouse for more than twenty years. Gloria, applying her well-developed sleuthing skills, identifies the victim the same day she is discovered in the barrel. From that point, Gloria and Harlan continue to uncover information well ahead of the officials. They come to the attention of the authorities and of the sinister characters who are still around more than twenty years after the deed. Cooperating with the one group and avoiding the other group, they push the mystery to a complete resolution. Read the novel here.

UNDER THE SURFACE by Lori Paige. Sheriff’s Deputy Leslie Shaw thinks she has the easiest job on the coast: patrolling the sleepy beachside town of Craggy Cove, Maine, for tipsy tourists and rowdy students from the nearby community college. She’s also just moved in with one of the professors and his teenaged daughter, who’s none too thrilled with the new living arrangement. Soon, though, her domestic problems pale in comparison to the case she’s forced to investigate. Beachgoers are being savagely attacked, a fisherman is pulled from his boat in the middle of the harbor, and strange figures are seen wandering the beach at dawn. The only clues point to the newly established Institute for Oceanographic Research and its unusual director, the renowned scientist Gerard LaBrecque. Are LaBrecque and his colleagues studying more than tides and temperatures? And why do the wounds on those attacked resemble the marks left by sea monsters in the old books Leslie finds in the local library? When Tim’s daughter vanishes under mysterious circumstances, Leslie must risk everything to uncover the truth and save the lives of everyone in her community. Read the novel here.

RADIO WAVES TO LOVE by Deb McClatchey. As far as Frannie Chandler is concerned, her Amateur radio is going to be used for only emergencies, but her brother, Randy, insists she can use it to catch a man.  Frannie thinks he might be right when she hears the sexy voice of Pete Lake come across the waves. Frannie and Pete finally meet in an emergency situation, and the sparks fly.  But the action doesn’t stop there!  Poor Frannie is the victim of an obsessed fan of chubby women who picks her out as his future mate!  Will Pete once again have to rescue the love of his life? Or perhaps Frannie’s ex-boyfriend, Dave, will re-enter her life as a changed man and bump his competition out of the way?  Join Frannie in her eager adventures on the air waves to love. Read the novel here.

LONG HORIZON by Sue Monkress. Long Horizon, set in the 1900s Oklahoma oil patch, revisits an exciting time for those entrepreneurs bold enough to gamble for their fortunes!  It chronicles the dream of intelligent, headstrong Jessica McCarey, who entices her family into the oil business. During the forty-year period the story spans, McCarey Oil flourishes, while Jessie’s personal life careens.  But just when her family believes no one will capture her spirited heart, enter Jake Trenton — a daredevil flier from the east who fans the flames even higher!  When she loses her ally and business partner, older brother Ben, Jessie’s position at McCarey Oil is at stake. Now she must summon all her talent and loving family to confront the prejudices of the time. Read the novel here.

FIXIN’ THINGS by Peggy Bell. Peggy Bell’s acute eye for detail takes us on a historical journey into the life of a family devastated by the Battle of Gettysburg. In this, Bell’s second book, we find a novel embellished with characters to love and those we love to hate. From the opening pages we suffer along as Bell’s heroine, Megan, is forced to grow up before her time. With both parents gone and a lustful brother-in-law seeking her out at every meeting, her coming of age, enjoyable for most girls, becomes a heart-wrenching obstacle. Fixin’ Things carries its fair share of characters, but we’re never to the point where we begin to wish for a map. Sam, the black man taken in by Megan’s mother when they were young, the eccentric aunts who live in the rented house…all wonderfully engaging and delightful to meet. As in many novels written about this period, the battle begins to surround the family lands, but few have the colorful cast of characters given in this compelling community. Although this is a novel, Bell’s layers of harsh life, hate, bigotry, and newfound love come incredibly close to a work of non-fiction. Fixin’ Things gives readers a shocking yet enjoyable glimpse into a Gettysburg life. Read the novel here.

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN by Cynthia MacGregor. In real life—and in the novel Home Again, Home Again—when an abducted child is found, the story isn’t over. In fact, it’s barely begun. Even adults who are abducted have been known to identify with their kidnappers. Picture, then, a four-year-old child, already in a comfortable relationship with his abductor (a household employee who wants him for her own child), who, when taken, is told that his parents have died and that his abductor is all that stands between him and “the orphan place.” Give him four years of living with her, and he’s going to get very attached to her. Small wonder that, when he is finally returned to his parents, he doesn’t remember them, feels he’s just been taken from his rightful mom (the kidnapper), and is very resentful. To that mix add a younger brother, born during an unprotected moment between the grieving parents, who has his own problems—just what is his problem whenever he hears a siren, and what is behind his frequent runs to the bathroom to pee, which the doctors have ruled psychological?—and the parents themselves, estranged as a result of the tensions arising from the kidnapping. Home Again, Home Again is a gripping emotional drama in which finding the missing child is far from the end of the story. Read the novel here.

IN A HEARTBEAT by Lori Paige.  New York reporter Alix McKenzie never expected to find herself back in the small Vermont town she had left behind years before. She also never expected to find herself working on her uncle’s small-town newspaper alongside her childhood nemesis, Devlin Reed, who is no longer the gangly teenager she sparred with over a decade ago. Now he’s a grown man who interests her very much…and he seems to return her interest. But their newfound truce is threatened when they uncover a dangerous conspiracy, and old secrets resurface. Though trust doesn’t come easily to either one of them, they must learn to believe in each other or lose everything…maybe even their lives. Read the novel here.

MURDER OF AN AMERICAN NAZI by Tim Fleming. At the end of World War II the CIA, through a program called Operation Paperclip, evacuates Nazi scientists, doctors, and spies to the US, where they are provided with safe haven and jobs in our defense, aerospace, and intelligence spheres. One of the ex-Nazis, Walter Dornberger, turns up shot to death in southern Illinois in 1980. Don Hayes, the detective who investigates the murder, uncovers the truth of who Dornberger really was…Though historical fiction, the book is a fast-paced conspiracy thriller for those who want to know more about the real history of post-WWII America. Read the novel here.

THE ELEPHANT JUMPERS by DJ Kinney

Burned out and bored by her life in corporate America, June Morgan searches for romance and excitement, eventually discovering “Elephant Jumping.” This little-known hobby–or habit–thrives on spontaneous, whirlwind travel without a destination or purpose. June quickly trades the humdrum of Cleveland for full-time Jumping, but as the miles add up and the money runs low, the life of the Elephant Jumpers takes a dangerous turn. After a botched robbery in Amsterdam, June and the Elephants travel east, from Holland to Paris, to Istanbul, India, Thailand, and Tokyo. As she runs from the law, she surrenders the last tenuous connections to her old life and finds herself alone one morning on a beach in Goa, stripped of everything, without a destination or a place on Earth to call home. Read the novel here.

SHATTERED TRUST by Deb McClatchey

Shanna Blaine was holding out for that perfect man, exciting and gallant, who would love her madly. When she met Alex Jordan, she thought her dreams had finally come true. However, Shanna chose to overlook that all important intuitive voice. She pretended everything was just fine. But it wasn’t. And when the truth about Alex was unexpectedly revealed, the pain was unbelievable!  She had been such a fool to fall in love so hastily! Shanna swore never to give in to passion again. It was too painful. Unable to trust herself to pick the right man, Shanna decided to remain alone. But she was too much of a hopeful romantic to go without love! Then along came Rob Elias, local veterinarian. It was love at first sight when he laid eyes on lovely Shanna. But could he convince her to trust him and open her heart once again? And then Alex re-entered her life with a dramatic flair, bordering on insanity, to try to win her back. Could she escape him? Would Rob come to her rescue before it was too late? Read the novel here.

TO TRUCKEE’S TRAIL by Celia Hayes

In the year of  1844,  a party of fifty men, women and children set out for California.  They walked two thousand miles, across trackless plain and desert, fording rivers and climbing mountains. They found a new trail through the wilderness, hoisted their wagons up a sheer cliff, were caught by the winter snows, and faced starvation, with  nothing to rely on but their own courage and trust in each other. These are their stories; the doctor-diarist and party co-leader, the old mountain man who guided them, the feisty woman with her brood of children who means to rejoin her husband in California, the taciturn wagon master… all inexorably drawn to Truckee’s Trail! Read the novel here.

A SOCIETY OF GOOD MEN by Richard MacPhie

Nuclear terrorism comes to life when seven American cities simultaneously go up in atomic mushroom clouds. Terrorists promise there are more nukes to come, causing the majority of urban populations to flee the cities. Martial law is immediately declared, yet American society slowly degrades into a culture of death, violence, and disease. A small percentage of citizens of Minneapolis, Minnesota remain. Defiantly staying behind and trying to forge life in a city void of most of its population, they learn to deal with an entirely new way of life. They struggle to survive as disease, violence, and the post-nuclear world take their toll on their ranks. You can read it here.

POLISHED SHOES by Deb McClatchey

Young Amy Tyler was shattered by the terrible tragedy that changed her life forever. Now widowed, how is she supposed to raise her young son on her own? The first thing to do is find a job. Amy finds herself employed at Green Gables, the local ‘nuthouse’, as it is jokingly called in their small North Carolina community. The job is quite a new experience for a naive young woman coming from such a sheltered life. The old mansion is filled with the elderly and mental patients. A new boss eventually arrives on the scene. Jackson Sinclair is handsome and well-dressed. The sparks fly between Jackson and Amy, but they keep their feelings concealed. Jack Sinclair is fighting his own set of demons with an unbalanced wife. Being a southern gentleman, Jackson feels he cannot declare his love for Amy until his divorce is final. However, they become very close friends. A kidnapping crisis involving Amy’s son, Joshua, brings out the true feelings between them. Can Jack be the one Amy can count on to make her life complete once again? Will he be her hero? Read the novel here.

TRIAL AND ERROR by Yago Novo

Joshua Newman is a fantastic lawyer; young, handsome, single, and living in one of the most exciting cities in North America: Miami Beach, Florida.  His life, albeit short, has been a series of ups and downs: birth in a beautiful Soviet city, exile in frigid Siberia, pit stop in Israel, settled down in the U.S. of A.  That’s why he is so worried, because he is in the upswing, having the time of his life and he knows that calamity lurks in every corner.  Sure enough, out of the blue comes a nasty prosecutor, filing trumped-up charges against him that could land him in prison for a long time, and destroy his livelihood in the process.  Fortunately for him, one of the best defense attorneys in the area has accepted to represent him.  Will this legal eagle be able to decipher what has motivated this witch hunt?  Will Joshua beat the rap?  The answer will be uncovered by trial and error. Read this novel here.

THE YEAR GOD FORGOT US by Dennis Nau

The Year God Forgot Us is set in North Dakota in 1936 amidst the height of the Great Depression. The dust bowl ravaged the Midwest. Scam artists preyed upon the desperate. Hatred and prejudice grew, even though the crops would not. Everyone was looking for someone else to blame for his or her misery. Johnny Ogdahl is at the center of a group of townspeople determined to stamp out evil, save the American way of life, and put money into their pockets at the same time. Johnny pours coffee at his restaurant and dreams of romance and success as his small town stumbles and the world creeps closer to another war. You can read it here.

LIFE HAPPENS by Danny Moon

Danny Moon, author of numerous short stories and poems, is a life-long Texas resident and father of one son. Retired from the transportation industry, Danny enjoys reading, gardening, and happy endings. Click here to read!

UNTIL THE DAWN by Alec Clayton

Like the protagonist of his novel Until the Dawn, painter and writer Alec Clayton grew up in Mississippi and was active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and in New York in the 1970s he was immersed in the SoHo art scene. He now lives in Olympia, Washington, where he writes art and theater columns for newspapers in nearby Seattle and Tacoma. You can learn more about Alec at his web site. His novels include Until the Dawn, Imprudent Zeal, The Wives of Marty Winters, and an upcoming novel, The Backside of Nowhere. Click here to read!

THE CHILDLESS LAND by Vic Bobb

Vic Bobb’s 30 years of freelancing have taken him to an odd variety of periodical places, from confessions in such magazines as True Romance and Secrets to technical articles about computer security and salmon runs, from articles about archaeology and The Beverly Hillbillies and ritzy dog snacks to award-winning short stories, from human interest stories about bullriders and appellate court judges to ghost-written podiatric-advice columns and articles about bobblehead dolls honoring professional poker stars. Although he has lived in eastern Washington for most of his life, The Childless Land was written during a decade spent in downstate Illinois. Click here to read!

WHAT CHILD IS THIS? by Cynthia MacGregor

Author of 54 conventionally published books (and a number of ghostwritten works), Cynthia MacGregor makes her living as a freelance writer/editor and also writes for a hobby. Her avocational writing includes all the plays put on by the Palm Springs (FL) Players community theatre troupe since the group’s inception several years ago. Her other hobbies include cooking, which led her to write several cookbooks, one of which is among her 54 published books.

Cynthia has taught adult classes in writing, public speaking, and (not surprisingly) cooking. Her past has also included stints as a newspaper publisher and as a theatre reviewer in New York. At one time she produced and hosted a Public Access Cable TV show called New York: The Living Scene, but she gave up New York for the warmer climate of South Florida in 1984 and hasn’t looked back. The self-described “happiest person you’ll ever meet,” Cynthia says, “There’s no one in the world I’d want to trade lives with.”  Cynthia has a professional website and she also co-owns the DailyNovel site. Click here to read!