The Coinfinder
A Novel
An action-thriller that ranges from the labyrinthine streets of Old Jerusalem to an underwater discovery in the Mediterranean. The journey takes the hero, Peter Gaines, a freelance journalist trying to put his career back in order, on a path of discovery that centers around the cryptic Book of Revelation and the Latter Days. Along the way, he is joined by Leah, a beautiful young woman from a church in Orlando. Her pastor hired Pete to track down coins from the Second Temple, and neither the pastor nor Leah’s father know she’s joined the hunt. Pete finds that he and Leah are not the only group looking for the coins, and the other entities want them far more than they do. In the end, Pete’s world is turned upside down, and he is left with a message to deliver to the entire Christian world.
Update November 2022: I have written 70,000 words of the novel, which is about 80% complete!
Update February 2024: The first draft of The Coinfinder is complete! In the revision process now.
Spice
A Novel of the Sea
At the dawn of the 17th century, the people of London are dying from the plague at alarming rates and Jane’s mother, an herb collector and healer, dies when she contracts the disease herself. Jane never forgets the divine smell of the cloves tucked inside the tending physician’s mask—the smell of the spices she believes could have saved her mother. Without her mother or any benefactor, the boyish young woman is thrown into a life of despair along the wharves where sailors prowl. At her point of utmost desperation, Jane determines to disguise herself as a boy and enlist with the newly formed East India Company on a journey to the Spice Islands. Maintaining her disguise, Jane develops into a healer as she strives to understand the diseases that wrack the lives of so many around her. Across a journey of peril, desperation, wonders and revelation, Jane clings to the promise of the islands for which the whole world is clamoring.