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	Child's Lost Life by Linda Marie Forester Set in Ohio in 1948, this novel tells the story of Conner McFadden, a twelve-year-old boy who spends over two years of his childhood struggling to put his family back together. Haunted by the day his younger brother and sister are taken by Child Protective Services, his life is turned upside down in an instant. When a chain of heart-wrenching events take place, which brings more pain to Conner and his family, he finds the strength and courage to fight back while discovering it will not be easy. Betrayed by those who said they came to help, Conner realizes the ultimate meaning of family and how promises he made to his little brother need to be fulfilled. He makes a decision to do whatever he can to bring his family together as one. First, his mother, who no longer remembers him, needs to get better so she can come home. He will need everyone to help bring her back to the world she left behind because of her illness. Second, his father will need to find a new home for the family. Third, a lawyer is enlisted to help fight Child Services in hopes of finding the two younger children, who they have not seen or talked to in over two years. Finally, it takes Conner’s strong will to get new found friends involved in the journey of his childhood struggles, heartache, and unconditional love for his family. Child’s Lost Life is a story of a boy who is filled with love and loyalty for family and who, if he had to, would give a life time of childhoods to bring his family home together again.
	Murder at Cuyamaca Beach by Sue McGinty In 2004, Loreli Sereno has everything—looks, wealth, a great job as a real estate broker in a booming market, easy access to addictive substances. Then Loreli, supposedly clean and sober, dies in a kayaking accident with drugs in her system. "Murder," claims the Sereno family, major players in the emerging California Central Coast wine industry. Five years later people have abandoned premium wines for two buck knockoffs. Creative financing forces the nouveau poor from their Mac-mansions, sometimes into homeless shelters. Everyone's credit cards are maxed-out, even Los Lobos residents, Bella and Mike Kowalski's. Bella, a former nun, now a dirt-digging obituary editor, gets an urgent call from Magda Sereno regarding her sister's murder. Magda suspects Loreli's former fiancé, a maverick rancher who takes in the homeless on an ad hoc basis. Then Magda, a surfer, is brutally murdered on New Year’s Day at Cuyamaca Beach's annual Polar Bear dip. MURDER AT CUYAMACA BEACH leads readers through the dark underbelly of California's scenic Central Coast, where the homeless gather under bridges while the wealthy slumber beneath satin sheets, and where a crowded, sunny beach offers no guarantee of safety.
	Carny: A Novel in Stories by James Hitt In 1949, Warbling Brothers Road Show and Circus travels the back roads of Southern California, playing towns from Lompoc to Palm Springs. As it breaks winter camp and heads south from Richmond, THE BOSS hires Sojourn Parker, just released from San Quentin, to work with the gazonie, those potheads or winos or ex-cons who were the part of every such circus / carnival, big or small. But when Parker begins to take advantage of the other gazonie, the Boss deals with him in the carny way, having the ex-con tossed off the train while moving at full speed. Later when Parker reappears, he complains that he was only fleecing the gazonie. “Yeah,” the Boss answers, “but they’re our gazonie.” In this the Boss sets up a reoccurring theme. The carney is family, and family takes care of its own. Each narrator possesses a different voice. The Boss, who opens and closes the book, is a hardboiled realist who is not above murder to protect his people; Becky, the ticket taker, is a lonely widow and a sucker for a man on the make; The musclehead who wrestles all comers discovers that helping a man is not always the best option; Dali the Hunchback wishes he were more like Benji, the Wolf Boy; and, Bobby falls in love with the hoochie koochie dancer only to realize the deception of romantic illusion. These and many others are the people who populate Carney. The novel opens with the show heading south for the season and ends with the show heading back north for winter quarters. At the beginning the Boss protects his gazonie from an ex-con, and in the final story, he seeks revenge for Lily, a bareback rider raped by a county sheriff. Days after Warbling Brothers has left the area, the Boss returns to settle the score. One dark night he slips into the sheriff’s house and slits his throat. As the sheriff lies dying, the Boss draws up a chair beside the bed and tells the crooked lawman: “I want you to listen carefully so you can understand. When you did what you did to that girl, it was like you did it to my sister--or my daughter. We’re carny, and carny are family, and family is the most important thing in the world.”
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