Years after his wife dies in a mafia hit gone wrong, Garrison Gage finally pieces together a life for himself in the Oregon coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs. Some days the cranky private investigator with the bum knee and the caustic wit could even call himself content. Maybe even happy. But marrying again? Never. Yet not long after quirky Rita Rodriguez enters the scene, Gage can't imagine life without her. Unfortunately, when dark secrets violently emerge—involving first loves, tragic loss, and, strangest of all, a Spanish galleon that sunk in 1642 loaded with treasure—their relationship enters turbulent waters. Worse, the same deadly undertow that drags Gage into the darkness also threatens everyone around him. His friends. His enemies. Even the town itself . . .

Gage hates birthdays. So when his daughter throws him a surprise party on the coldest night the Oregon coastal town of Barnacle Bluffs has seen in years, Gage finds himself in an equally frosty mood. And when a police cruiser stops him as he trudges along Highway 101, minding his own business, he can't imagine the night could get any worse. Oh, but it does. For the cranky private investigator with the bum knee, it can always get worse. When the cops collar one of the people closest to Gage for murder, the desperate hours ahead become a frantic push to right a presumed injustice. Add in a daughter's secret life, a bad boy Hollywood star, and a troubled new police chief with something to prove, and the night doesn't just get worse. It forces a quickly unraveling Gage to choose between cold, uncomfortable truths—about himself, about someone he loves—and shallow but comforting deceptions.

Everybody dies. Nobody leaves ... Award-winning author Scott William Carter returns with his tenth novel, a spellbinding tale of a man who bridges both sides of the great divide.****After narrowly surviving a near-fatal shooting, Portland detective Myron Vale wakes with a bullet still lodged in his brain, a headache to end all headaches, and a terrible side effect that radically transforms his world for the worse: He sees ghosts. Lots of them.By some estimates, a hundred billion people have lived and died before anyone alive today was even born. For Myron, they're all still here. That's not even his biggest problem. No matter how hard he tries, he can't tell the living from the dead.Despite this, Myron manages to piece together something of a life as a private investigator specializing in helping people on both sides of the great divide—until a stunning blonde beauty walks into his office needing help finding her husband. Myron wants no part of...

A week before Christmas, John and Laura Ray storm into Myron's office, desperate to find their missing daughter. Money? They don't have any. Clues? They have few. Plagued by mounting bills and a skull-crushing migraine, Portland's only ghost detective wants nothing more than to show them the door.   But defying his conscience always proves tougher to Myron Vale than saying no, and he soon finds himself embroiled in one of the strangest cases of his career. The more he learns about this unique little girl and all of her extraordinary abilities, the more he feels a kinship to her. Who took Olivia Ray? And why?     The answers propel him toward a tantalizing solution to all of his problems — and a violent clash with a powerful personality, one who can cause irreparable harm to not just Myron, but everyone he loves.***The MYRON VALE INVESTIGATIONS (in chronological order):The Haunted Breadbox (short story...

While bullies are beating up Charlie, his ex--bestfriend Jake pulls up in a bright red '67 Mustang--the principal's car--and tells him to get in. It's a choice between a broken nose and the risk of a lifetime, and Charlie, a self-described straight-A student and grade-A geek, decides to take a chance. Now the two teens are on a mission to find Charlie's absent father and avoid arrest for car theft. An eventful journey puts Charlie in the middle of a court case 1,000 miles from home. And in the courtroom, he will have to make the ultimate choice of his life.

Racism never got off the bus . . . On a rainy night in Houston, in a ratty apartment as dark as his dreams, retired bus driver Frank Granger wakes in a cold sweat convinced a stranger with a gun lurks at the foot of his bed.And he's right.In this riveting tale of suspense and revenge, Carter offers a vivid look back at one of the darkest times in our nation's history.BONUS STORY: Road Gamble"Whipping around sharp bends, tires squealing on wet asphalt . . . " From the very first line, this suspenseful short story about a man's dangerous encounter with a mysterious man on a motorcycle on a rainy mountain highway grabs the reader by the throat and doesn't let go. Originally appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, June 2007.Praise for Other Works by Scott William Carter:"...touching and impressive...Carter's writing is on target." – Publishers Weekly"...compelling...good choice for reluctant readers..." – School Library...

Harriet Abel never shows up for her appointment. Irritating as hell? Sure. It's hard enough to work as a private investigator without potential clients standing you up.Of course, it's difficult to show up when you're dead.A revered community figure in the Oregon coast town of Barnacle Bluffs, the teacher extraordinaire never gets a chance to explain why she wants to hire Garrison Gage before her body turns up in a sandy grave. Seldom deterred by the lack of a client, Gage barrels forward intent on discovering the woman's killer. Unfortunately, the professional curmudgeon stirs up a lot more trouble than he expects, putting innocent people in imminent danger.In the past, Gage always triumphed over whatever dark forces stood in his way, but this time he may have gone too far — and he won't be the only one paying the price.

Gage might go mad. With most of inland Oregon enduring a record-setting heatwave, the hordes descend on Barnacle Bluffs seeking cooler ocean air, and it's all the curmudgeonly private investigator can do to keep from shooting somebody. What's the harm in one fewer tourist, anyway? Yet when a desperate young woman shows up claiming her depressed husband has gone missing, Gage will need all of his wits to find the man before something terrible happens. His complicated feelings for the beautiful but headstrong police chief, with dark secrets of her own, only make solving the case more challenging ... especially when those secrets eventually bring Gage face to face with one of the most savage foes ever to cross his path.

In these six provocative tales, Scott William Carter takes the reader on a journey to places where love and loss intersect: a grieving tattoo artist makes a cross-country trip with a pregnant woman on the run from her disturbed husband . . . a mysterious artist finds a woman washed up on the beach and feels compelled to paint her . . . a young man who made a disastrous choice in wife is forced to crash weddings with his ghostly bride so she can remain on Earth . . .Reading these and three other stories, you will be intrigued, moved, and troubled as Carter's clear and engaging prose takes you on a guided tour of the darker corners of the human psyche. But as he writes in his introduction, "There's hope in there, too. There has to be. Otherwise, why write at all?""The title story is a stunner." – Fright.com"Scott William Carter makes it look easy." — Chizine.com"A WEB OF BLACK WIDOWS is as powerful a package as dynamite." –...

Equal parts riveting and stirring, Carter takes a staple of campfires and rainy nights – the ghost story – into surprising new territory in this collection. No gore or gratuitous splatter here – these tales are meant to raise the hairs on the back of the neck and leave the reader feeling quietly discomfited hours after reading.On a dark night in the Virginia woods, a boy encounters a former slave protecting the Confederate sword of Robert E. Lee in the spellbinding "The Sword of Surrender." In "All My Invisible Friends," a grieving child psychologist who's lost his way finds meaning again with an assist from an invisible friend. An old amusement park called "The Enchanted Grove" helps the parents of children who died tragically find closure – but maybe not for everyone. In "The Easel," a man on an evening walk buys an old drawing easel at a garage sale and soon discovers it has a secret power. And finally, a recently divorced reporter randomly...

When they arrived at the planetarium, the clerk was affixing a sign to the glass window: No shows today. Equipment malfunction ... A powerful tale about a special father and son trip that will haunt you long after the story's conclusion. SCOTT WILLIAM CARTER's first novel, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys, was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a touching and impressive debut.

Dragons, glass boys, and multiplying cats . . . From award-winning writer Scott William Carter comes a collection of four spellbinding fantasy tales geared toward younger readers -- and the young at heart.THE DRAGON OF THE DOLOMITESEveryone knows dragons are the vainest of all creatures. And if you're the last dragon? You're the vainest of them all.THE HUMAN ADDICT: A DRAGON'S TALEDragons didn't need to eat but once every full moon, so gluttony was considered the worst of their crimes. The fascinating tale of one dragon's struggle with a rather unusual addiction.SHATTERBOYA short, powerful tale about a woman who finds a glass boy in a recycling transfer station — and how the few days with him change both of their livesTHE PROBLEM WITH POLLYHow many cats is too many? One? Ten? A thousand? When Nathan Randall awakes one morning to find a strange tortoise shell cat sitting on his dresser, he's soon struggling with the most unusual problem of his life.SCOTT WILLIAM CARTER’s first novel, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys, was hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “touching and impressive debut” and won the prestigious Oregon Book Award. Since then, he has published nine novels and over fifty short stories, his fiction spanning a wide variety of genres and styles. His most recent book, Wooden Bones, chronicles the untold story of Pinocchio and was singled out for praise by the Junior Library Guild. He lives in Oregon with his wife and children.Read More

Nearly a year has passed since Garrison Gage became the reluctant guardian of a troubled teenage girl, but neither fatherhood nor the the intervening months has improved his mood. His right knee is still mostly worthless. He still prefers to drink his bourbon alone. And even with a certain blonde bombshell a persistent part of his life, he still can't be bothered to buy a cell phone. Or any phone, for that matter. Why? Then somebody might call him.But grumpy as Gage can be, he still finds that life on the Oregon Coast has settled into a comfortable if not happy routine — until the man who murdered his wife shows up in town.That's just for starters. A desperate plea from an old flame — his first love, in fact — soon entangles Gage in a high profile case involving a famous and brazenly outspoken lecturer on evolution and atheism, a crazy fundamentalist cult that uses all means necessary to silence its critics, and a brutal local murder of a far...