Molly And Mr Maloney

Three short stories about a little girl who has adventures with her friend, Mr. Maloney, and his talking pet raccoon.

Using an emerald ring, handed down from aunt to niece the story follows a matrilineal line of an Australian family, from their escape from the Russian pogroms in the mid 1800s to modern day Queensland. While primarily a work of fiction, the more bizarre occurrences are based on real events that happened in the authors family. The author read an anecdote in the Readers Digest many years ago: A man was watching his wife bake a leg of ham & she chopped off the hock before putting in the pan. He asked her why she did that & she explained it was done that way, she didnt know why but her mother had always done it that way. He went to his mother-in-law and asked why? She explained she did not know, but her mother had always done it that way. He then visited his grandmother in law at the retirement home & asked her why she always cut off the hock before baking. The old lady replied, its the only way it would fit in the pan. The emerald also does not fit in the pan.

At her home in the bush, Miss Molly has many special friends. As before, Miss Molly comes to the rescue, but this time an unexpected danger threatens them all.

In 1792, the village of Hadley Green executed a man for stealing the Countess of Ashwood’s historic jewels. Fifteen years later, questions still linger. Was it a crime of greed—or of passion? When Declan O’Connor, Earl of Donnelly, arrives at Hadley Green to meet with Lily Boudine, the new countess of Ashwood, he knows instantly that the lovely woman who welcomes him is not who she pretends to be. In an attempt to avoid an unwanted marriage, Keira Hannigan has assumed her cousin’s identity and is staying at the estate while Lily is abroad. When Declan threatens to expose her, Keira convinces him to guard her secret, then enlists him in her investigation of the missing jewels, for she now believes an innocent man was hanged. Unable to deny the beautiful, exasperating Keira—or their simmering passion—Declan reluctantly agrees. But neither is prepared for the dangerous stranger who threatens to reveal Keira’s lies . . . and Declan knows he must protect Keira at all costs, for she is the woman who now owns his heart.

In the seamy atmosphere of Miami Beach's Collins Avenue, Mila Katz, a streaky card shark and confidante of mobsters, lives by the wits with which she has survived the Holocaust. Second Hand Smoke is the story of Mila's sons, Issac and Duncan, the one secretly abandoned in Poland, and the other, American-born, raised as an avenging Nazi hunter, poisoned with rage. Told in bursts of fractured realism and dark comedy, Second Hand Smoke is a postmodern mystery of great lyrical power, deep insight, and emotional resonance.