Hungry Ghosts

The Hungry Ghosts is the second book in the Broken Toys Series, and it picks up shortly after the point where the Broken Toys left off.

An extrasolar spacecraft, which called itself Navigator, devoid of organic life, crashed in the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan, specifically in the area now known as the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, on November 4, 1932. It had been pursued by an enemy craft intent on its capture. Though it had the capacity to defend itself effectively, the confrontation occurred within Earth’s atmosphere, and employing defensive weapons would have, for all intents and purposes, destroyed all life on the planet. It chose to eject the weapons system separately, then disintegrate itself, and waited in that place on the Roof of the World for its resurrection. And along came Frank Brandt.

The Hungry Ghosts is a Mainland Chinese criminal organization that traffics fentanyl through Mexican drug cartels that ends up in the United States and elsewhere. Though they started out as partners with the Chinese Communist Party, they’ve stretched beyond Chinese control, and it has created a problem in the Workers’ Paradise.

Vice President Laurel Vega-Mendoza has been elected to the US Presidency, and she is advised by Frank Brandt, who is no longer wholly human. He’s also been hard at work designing a few advanced weapons with his new capacity.

Claire Hoffman, a disabled veteran, is no longer disabled, and her mother wouldn’t recognize her with the new host living within her. She has changed her name and works as a US Senate Investigator focused on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

As the newly minted president directs her most potent weapons toward eliminating Hungry Ghosts, the plot takes unpredictable twists.

The problem that many have with the arrival of an interstellar species is that it’s not wholly predictable because it’s not the least bit human. Can broken people be counted on to save things? They are usually willing to risk everything because they have nothing to lose…