Lost Key begins with Corporal Harry Parker dropped into Cuba to fight Castro with the ill-fated counter-revolutionaries, then takes a much more experienced and retired Army Colonel Harry Parker from his Washington DIA office to revisit the seamy side of Tampa's Ybor City, drawn into the middle of a drugs-for-arms transaction. Not just guns, this time the stakes are higher - his family is in jeopardy, a nuclear weapon stolen by fanatical terrorists, the beginning of a wild ride across today...

“Taylor delivers a revenge tragedy that reads like a dime novel by Sophocles, at once epic and compact. It’s violent, operatic pulp. Badass and bloody good.”—Jedidiah Ayres, author of Peckerwood“If Jim Thompson wrote about Boston’s mean old days, then you’d have an inkling of the sheer quality of writing and gut-clenching darkness that J. M. Taylor provides in Night of the Furies. An outstanding debut.”—Todd Robinson, author of The Big Bounce...

Black Cat Weekly continues to present a mix of original, modern, and classic science fiction, fantasy, and mystery fiction. #71 includes 6 short stories, 3 novels, and a solve-it-yourself mystery.Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure:“Friday, February 30th,” by Mark Thielman [Michael Bracken Presents short story]“X Marks the Spot” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]“Secrets in the Snow” by J. M. Taylor [Barb Goffman Presents short st...

FEBRUARY 2022: Intelligence reports prompt a call to Matt Ross, ex-U. S. Army nuclear expert and sniper, to deal with the nuclear threat not only to the Ukrainian military and civilians, but also to the International Atomic Energy team at Chernobyl and his new friends in the Ukrainian drone-flying, tank-busting Aerorozvidka outfit. Along the way Ross picks up Ulf, a brindle Dutch Shepherd bomb detection dog, and finds himself in the middle of the Russian invasion trying to remember how to ...

Starr Wyman is hedged in on all sides: caring for her war-broken brother, tormented by her crooked father, still in mourning for the disappearance of her mother. Her father, the Bible-quoting "Wint" Wyman, dismisses her herbalist work as witchcraft, but when a body drops and her brother is responsible, Wint calls on Starr to make the corpse disappear.Enter the mysterious Jase Patton, hunting an ivory artifact owned by Wint Wyman. Starr agrees to help Jase recover the piece, in exch...

On loan from the 101st Airborne G2 Office, Lieutenant Alex Pfister and his Jedburgh OSS team are betrayed before they can parachute into Holland. Joined by Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division, Pfister and his new team's mission is to liberate prisoners held in a concentration camp, steal back a Flying Fortress and destroy a German V-2 mobile launch battery. Then survive.Lieutenant Alex Pfister was born in Nazi Germany German Jew, but escaped as child. Now a college profe...

A century-old secret, stinking up the house...A father's grief, rebuilt in miniature...A sister's jealousy and its weird manifestation...A hitman's attempt to find a new life goes up in flames...All of them and more are CEMETERY PLOTS.You'll dig these tales from the sinister mind of J. M. Taylor

Are you proud of where you come from,Are you proud of what you’ve done?Do you linger alone, living in your past,Or are you proud of how far you’ve come?(“Proud,” p. 123)For some of us, life is not easy, right from the jump. What seems so natural and easy to others can become hard—hard as ice, stifling as quicksand—when our own minds seem to plague us. Perhaps it’s because of something we haven’t been able to process—some trauma, heartbreak, grief. Or pe...

November 1944: The Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division fought their way across France and assaulted the Germans in Holland, securing the highway all the way up to "The Island." After the bloody battles of Operation MARKET-GARDEN, the troopers finally are given a break - R&R in France, a time to slip off to see loved ones or simply get drunk and have a good time, as airborne troopers are wont to do.Slowly, the wounded from Normandy and Holland trickle back to duty at Mou...