My Novels

These are the three books I currently have in print. They are all family-friendly adventures written for readers eight to twelve years old, but I hope are enjoyable to everyone. They make lovely birthday and holiday gifts for the young readers in your life.

Bread for the Pharaoh

Bread for the Pharaoh Cover

San, the son of a baker, and Aja, the daughter of the high priest of Ra, definitely come from opposite sides of the Sphinx. But when it comes to Sheskhaf, a priest who has recently joined the temple's ranks, San and Aja are on the same side in finding him thoroughly detestable. Drawn together by Sheskhaf's thoughtless cruelty, San and Aja discover both friendship and intrigue.

Why has Sheskhaf come to the temple? What secret disaster has befallen the half-constructed Sphinx, the grand monument to the beloved Pharaoh Khafre? And can someone in their very midst truly be plotting to kill a god?

When San and Aja discover the answers, they must also decide what two powerless children can do. With Pharaoh Khafre's inspection of the Sphinx rapidly approaching, time is running out. Fighting against the most powerful forces in the kingdom and against rigid class lines that forbid their friendship, can they stop the most unthinkable of all blasphemies in ancient Egypt?

They must, for if they fail they will lose everything they hold dear. Perhaps even their lives.


Pebblehoof

Pebblehoof Cover

Ten-year-old Maria Browning, the American-born daughter of German immigrants, never asked to be dragged from her friends in Chicago to the tallgrass prairie of the Nebraska Territory. Yet in the spring of 1863 that is exactly where she finds herself--working hard to eke out a life with her family on the 160 acres Uncle Sam has promised them, should they last the requisite five years.

She isn't alone for long. A wild prairie horse becomes her unexpected friend in the sea of grass surrounding the family's Platte River homestead. But a young girl, riding alone through the wilds without so much as a saddle? Her parents surely wouldn't approve, if they knew.

What neither Maria nor her parents know is that corrupt railroad boss Silas Seymour has a greedy eye of his own on the Brownings' idyllic stretch of riverfront. Soon the family is beset by a dirty-tricks campaign to drive them and their neighbors off the land they've worked so hard to make their own.

Amid several near calamities, Maria discovers she and Pebblehoof hold the key to upsetting Seymour's nefarious plans--if only she can find a way to defy the most powerful man in the territory.


Blackpelt

Blackpelt Cover

Cam grew up listening to her father tell the ancient myths of the Great Lodge, a fabled land in the far north where all beavers can be safe. But that was before the fur trapper came to her family's pond, before she attacked the trapper, before she fled for her life and befriended an unlikely pair of traveling companions.

With her new friends, Cam must journey through the cold north woods, through unexpected dangers and hidden places, to find the real truth behind her father's old tales and discover how much she will risk to save her friends.

"This action-packed struggle between a young blackpelt and her mortal enemy, the trapper, will keep young readers riveted while reinforcing the importance of family, no matter what species you are."--Anne Crawford