California Immigrant

Desperate to find an experienced blaster, the owners of the South Pacific Coast Railroad turn to the Chinese for help. Chen, veteran transcontinental railroad blaster at the Donner Summit tunnel, agrees to return to his old job, with conditions. During the arduous four-year nightmare to drill and blast four tunnels through the Santa Cruz Mountains, he faces racial discrimination, unsafe working conditions and other unimagined dangers. The author spent long hours sorting through recently uploaded online newspapers from the era, which provide new insights to the construction of the tunnels. ...

West Hollywood is Karina’s home, a place where a Russian werewolf can hide in plain sight. Unfortunately, it’s also the place where the werewolf hunters seek their prey. When Karina’s best friend, also a shape-shifter, is murdered, she teams up with Jack Hardy, a homicide detective, to work the case with him. While the case twists and turns, Karina can’t help but notice Jack is falling in love with her. But she can’t tell him her secret. Or can she? While she considers the consequences of such a love match, the murder takes an unexpected turn. And Karina soon learn Jack has a ...

Karina gets her second paying case as a private investigator when Viktor Glazkov asks her to find his missing sister, Jenika. The latter came to Los Angeles as a Russian mail-order bride and then disappeared. Unfortunately, the jilted fiance is a rich man, and Karina doesn’t trust him, not one bit. Karina also assists her boyfriend, Jack, who works as a special investigator, on a murder case that begins with her translation of a handwritten document. Meanwhile, Ivan, the leader of the werewolf pack, is trying to get his werewolves ready to fight Karina’s diabolical uncle, Dmitri ...

Across the miles of Spain, through the flowers of Hawaii and into the state of California, a little girl followed her family and found a life unimagined and a man to share it with. Hawaii! It was 1911. They left everything they knew — sometimes even everyone they loved — to start a new life in a faraway land called Hawaii and later in America. Their immigration story is epic, filled with tragedy, triumph, adversity and love. Loss and promise. Studying Spanish history and the massive immigration resources helped paint a rich portrait of the people who came here and the the lives they ...

On the ship from Ireland, Eliza O’Connor loses her mother and husband to cholera. After training under the local physician, she longs to become a doctor, but few schools accept women. Now the doctor has passed away, and she works at her father's boarding house. When a handsome physician arrives, beaten and stripped of his jacket and boots, she believes he's another gold-crazy miner heading for the hills where her brother has ventured. At his mother's desperate request, Dr. Levi Dumont travels from Boston to find his younger brother and bring him home. After Levi is robbed, his trustworthy...

Werewolf detective Karina opens her private investigation office and gets her first case. Vanya Rykov, the retired Alpha from her old pack, is arrested for the shooting death of a werewolf hunter, a man who has longtime connections to her own family. Now, it’s up to Karina to prove his innocence, but Vanya’s not talking. As she begins to investigate the murder, Jack Hardy, her boyfriend and a new werewolf who is rising into his full Alpha powers, gets a job that pits them against each other professionally. Jack’s job as a special investigator for the D.A.’s office means that it is ...

Before the rails bound a nation, before love defied all barriers, there was a foundation laid in quiet longing and impossible dreams. Xiulan, the daughter of Chinese immigrants serving the Hastings family, has grown up in the shadow of wealth and privilege, her every day intertwined with the grandeur of the estate. But within her heart lies a secret: an unspoken affection for Robert Hastings, the heir who left for the Civil War when she was just a girl. Now, as the household eagerly anticipates his return, Xiulan’s quiet admiration blossoms into something deeper—something dangerous. ...