Showing results by author "J.E. Gessler" in All Categories

“Arrow Song” In 1968, the newly-opened Kamer/Jackson Institute represented a creative and innovative approach to psychiatric medicine, combining the talents of Robert Kamer and Samuel Jackson, two physicians who dreamed of challenging conventional therapy by offering new approaches to the treatment of the mentally and physically handicapped of all ages and incomes. For Dr. Kamer, the K/J I had an additional and all-consuming purpose: providing a school where his brother, Toby, would thrive. Matters are taken out of Rob and Sam’s hands, however, as Toby’s development is guided in a ...

The Believer: New Beginnings Book 1 Dr. Robert Kamer, the world renown psychiatrist and financier, had a secret very few of his colleagues could even guess, and he was willing to go to extreme measures to keep it that way. He was a boy genius from a wealthy family. With a gift for languages and a photographic memory, he graduated college and medical school well before his contemporaries even finished high school. Rob's one love was his younger brother, Toby. Born with a learning disability, it was Toby's condition that motivated the young genius to pursue a career in psychiatry. Rob's ...

The expression "holy revenge" might seem a misnomer, as it is often believed that vengeance belongs to the Lord. When a race of people were cruelly and habitually enslaved, however, freedom meant more than emancipation: it offered the opportunity to redress wrongs in a more earthly court. The man called "Red" arrived in Hellhole with an aura of trouble surrounding him. Immediately sensing his presence meant bloodshed, Marshal Kiley ordered him out of town but not before allowing him to have his wounds treated by the doctor, Fiz Ward. Even more intuitive than the lawman, Dr. Ward is quick to...

When Captain Robert Andrew, recently retired from forty years active service in the army, walks into the law office of Hugh Kerr and Associate, Ellen Kerr has grave misgivings about him. His legal quest is simple enough: is he legally responsible for his father if the elder Andrew could no longer care for himself? Offered his legal options, Robert states his belief his father, Ian Andrew, is in need of professional care. He asks Hugh to substantiate his opinion and after interviewing Ian, the Kerrs are reluctantly forced to agree. After obtaining a power of attorney for Robert, who promptly...

Hugh Kerr Mystery Series The Conundrum of Shooting Fish in a Barrel Book XIV This adventure begins with Ellen's best friend's request for help. Judy’s phone call alters the couple’s plans for the weekend. Instead of relaxing and preparing for the expected arrival of their first child, Hugh, and the very pregnant Ellen Kerr rush to northern Los Angeles County where a major Western movie location is situated. The excitement of being on an actual production set is seriously hampered by the unexpected and tragic death of one of the picture’s headliners. Lieutenant Hank Wade is already at ...

They said the boy was haunted and the townspeople of Lawrence, Kansas, wanted nothing to do with widower Seth Ward or his two children. In 1857, superstitions run high.Left alone to raise Patricia and Peter, Seth has been isolated from his neighbors since the death of his wife from a lingering, malignant disease. Nearly at his wits end, a young woman appears in response to an advertisement for help.Barbara Nelander dared brave the terror of a dead woman's ghost and the haunting of her son because she was not like other women. Born in Nova Scotia, "Nelander," as she was called, had served as...

The Conundrum of the Loveless Marriage This sixth book in the Hugh Kerr Mystery series, takes a dark turn to touch on some very sensitive topics, especially for the newlyweds. Hugh and Ellen are trying to start fresh following their recent marriage and several highly emotional personal and professional events. The first day back in the office they are confronted with an unscheduled client asking very real questions about her rights as a married woman with respect to boundaries of the marriage bed. The law with respect to marital relations falls strongly in the man's favor, and Hugh could ...

The theme of this novel focuses on the tragic, near fatal shooting of police lieutenant Hank Wade which was developed in the previous book, “The Conundrum of the Jettisoned Jury.” Interestingly, when attorney Hugh Kerr accepts a completely unrelated case, a severe conflict develops within the Kerr Gang. The strain of the unresolved shooting of their adopted father and his slow, complicated recovery, combined with the uncertainty over the “jettisoned jury” create tensions which finally threaten to fracture the close relationships established between Hugh, Jack Merrick and the Wades. ...

It couldn’t be true, could it? Surely, not in a sane, work-a-day world could a man billing himself as the “Mystic Seer predict the outcome of the stock market. Trends; ups and downs; which companies to buy and which to sell. And yet, over the course of nine years, Jason Holloway, d/b/a the Mystic Seer had done just that. My name is Kimbo: A. Kimbo, to be specific. People often shorten my first name to Andy. I’m a crime reporter for the Carry All News Service (CANS). At the present, my small corner of it is based in London. I got the crummy assignment to investigate how this phony ...

Racehorses, a miracle cream and murder are inextricably involved as Hugh Kerr is asked to defend the scientist who created a formula capable of healing previously incurable wounds on animals as varied as dogs and thoroughbreds. Although it would appear unlikely that anyone would dispute the value of such a cream, the actual ownership of the formula, its eventual, if any, commercial value, and the wider applications of its use create various factions who find that greed leads to murder as the only solution to the problem. When a prominent thoroughbred breeder who has witnessed the “miracle...

“carRying Battlescars” The tall, gaunt man stood at the door and for a moment, Rose Theodore did not recognize him. Then, with a cry of joy tempered by shock she welcomed home her long-lost wayfarer, Rudy Blake. Civil War had done much to Rudy. Gone was the cocksure reprobate, the captain who had dared run the Federal blockade, the businessman who owned Southern railroads and numerous profit-generating enterprises. In his place was a broken man who had gone for a soldier: a man who served his country but not the Cause; an artillerist who had imbibed too many defeats and seen too much ...

A knock came on the door in the dead of night. On the verge of Civil War, such a summons meant trouble and danger. To ignore it offered momentary reprieve for the Ward family: it also meant shirking duty. Such was not in their make-up, for the Wards, otherwise known as the landlocked "Kansas Pirates," had taken the buccaneer's oath to protect one another, and, by association, the oppressed, against tyranny and injustice.Their help was urgently needed to guide runaway slaves from "Bleeding Kansas" across the river to safer ground. Barbara Nelander-Ward, former first mate aboard the Bottom ...

In the sequel to Target’d, this novel follows the crew of the crippled star cruiser Target six months after the initial disaster which had killed the majority of the 200 crewmembers aboard, leaving the survivors with only limited power and ineffectual defense mechanisms. With only minimal ability to grow plants in a makeshift hydroponics unit, their food supply consists of nothing more than nutritional tablets discovered aboard in an undelivered supply consignment for colonists on a distant planet. Originally determining these tablets would last the few remaining survivors for decades, ...

Back in London, Kimbo is stuck doing midnight duty at the CANS office when he receives a peculiar call. Someone is asking for the time. Annoyed at the seeming inanity of the question he is about to hang up when the man explains all electronic devices throughout the city have failed. Suspecting no more than a mundane power outage, Kimbo nevertheless decides to investigate. Immediately confirming the caller’s story, he finds cars stalled at intersections and the city darkened by a total lack of electric lighting. Intrigued, he traces the extent of the power outage, discovering it covered an...

The explosion came close to killing him, and as Rudy Blake lay on the ground feeling the rest of his life ebb away, he comprehended one of two things would happen. Either he would find Rose Theodore’s lifeless body and join her spirit in the afterworld, or the gods would spare her – and consequently him – because they were not yet done manipulating their favorite plaything. Proving one side stronger, or perhaps simply more willful than the other, it is Rose who saves Rudy. Realizing he has been badly burned and perhaps suffered broken bones from plummeting down the stairs in the ...

What is a dream but a fight against the odds? A struggle to rise above the ordinary and express a creativity that encapsulates the soul. When love is shared, that emotion becomes a dual consciousness. As a small child, Seth Ward had seen a valley filled with wild strawberry plants and imagined that one day he would own that land and cultivate those plants. Growing to adulthood and facing the harsh reality of raising two small children in Bloody Kansas of the 1850's, however, life was reduced to dreary survival and dreams were tucked away into the recesses of yesteryear.When love and ...

Daring. Resourceful. Devil-may-care. Moody. Superstitious. Gambler. Confederate blockade-runner. Captain Rudy Blake was many things to many people, but there was one descriptive word upon which they all agreed. Reprobate. Captain Blake not only reveled in the nickname, he had the audacity to name his ship after himself. The Reprobate. Not a smoke-belching steamer but a swift, sleek four-masted schooner capable of outrunning the Federal gunboats and slipping behind those dangerous, ponderous vessels to deliver what the wealthy citizens of Charleston most sought: luxuries. A man who swore ...

It was not the maiden voyage of the intergalactic prototype space vessel, merely a sixty-day test flight. The ship did not even have a name; she was merely called ONE, a designation without dignity. The skeleton crew participating her last “assignment” – that which would precede the actual mission – were derisively referred to as “crash dummies,” meaning they would be expected to step aside when the actual captain and crew assumed their rightful positions for the multi-year mission. Nothing was expected to go wrong. When the unexpected happened – when the ship lost the ability...

The Conundrum of the Decapitated Detective Hugh Kerr Mystery Series Book I The corpse in the morgue had been beheaded, the hands severed and the bottoms of the feet scorched, making identification next to impossible. The man's identity hinges on personal belongings found near the body, and the formality of having his two best friends view the remains and agree with the name on the driving license. Failure to do so would consign the mangled body to a nameless grave; begrudging a positive I.D. would be admitting the detective was really dead. Neither option is acceptable. Not to Hugh Kerr, ...

Hugh Kerr, famous Los Angles defense attorney, his new wife and longtime personal assistant Ellen, their "adopted" parents, Lt. Hank Wade and his wife Mary, Hugh's best friend and private investigator, Jack Merrick, along with the LA District Attorney, B.B. Bond all belong to the exclusive "Hugh Kerr Gang". Good times or bad, the gang members all support each other. The Conundrum of the Executed Defendant pushes the boundaries of both good times and bad. The Gang has some fun designing a fixed raffle, so one of their own will be the predetermined winner of a much-needed home improvement ...