Tapped to help out with a conference on board the ferry Queen of Scandinavia, Dawna falls into an undercover Homeland Security operation and finds only she can avert disaster at sea. The whole story is available in the September 2010 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, on sale June 22, 2010.
Inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder, I'm working on a longer story told from the viewpoint of 11-year-old Lydia, suddenly uprooted from her childhood home in Oregon and moved 10,000 miles east to her father's native land. This chapter appeared in GOOD WORKS, an anthology by expatriate women living in Denmark, published October 2009 by Bandit Queen Press, http://banditqueenpress.com. It will also be published in the next edition of PIECE OF CAKE, a textbook for Danish 8th graders learning English, by Joan Boesen, et al, under the title "Lydia Meets the Danes."
Why--and how--is an unknown hacker cyber-stalking an obscure software engineer working in the Bay Area? Not a typical problem to face FBI Special Agent Dawna Shepherd who usually goes in for low-tech crime-solving, except that the woman whose life and livelihood are on the line is her little sister Bettijean. The whole story is available in the July/August 2009 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, on sale May 1, 2009.
Having discovered that former college cheerleaders and athletes make up big pharma's hottest sales force, Dawna Shepherd poses as a wannabe medical equipment rep in order to track down the company culprit who's gulling staff into using illegal marketing techniques--with highly profitable and near fatal results. The whole story is available in the September 2007 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, on sale August 1.
Dawna Shepherd has to contend with Mongolian bureaucrats and mysterious bad guys in her struggle to keep a female athlete fit to play in a championship basketball game in Ulan Bataar. She needs help--but where will she find it on the Trans-Mongolian Railway? Read the whole story in the March 2006 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE.
Dawna Shepherd teams up with a trucker to nail a rogue DOT safety inspector who's been extorting money from drivers hauling hazardous materials through New Jersey. The third member of their team contributes precious little to the effort! Read the whole story in the June 2004 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE.
Casey Collins, heroine of 12 DRUMMERS DRUMMING and NIGHT ON FIRE, made her publishing debut in the Foreign Service Journal in August, 1997. This background story is set in Cold War Poland, a decade before the novels takes place. Casey’s humdrum assignment as Budget Officer in the Warsaw Embassy grows much less boring when her language instructor, Stefan Krajewski, turns out to be a Communist spy.
In NIGHT ON FIRE, Casey was ably assisted by Dawna Shepherd, a former college basketball star turned FBI Agent. Dawna made her first solo appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine November, 2000 issue. The story takes place in present-day Budapest on the eve of a new training session at the FBI’s International Law Enforcement Academy.
After Budapest, Dawna Shepherd finds herself in Warsaw, bodyguarding a key witness in the trial of a Polish mobster. "Polonaise" appeared in the September 2001 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE
A couple of years after their first encounter, Casey Collins again crosses paths with FBI Agent Dawna Shepherd. Dawna's still teaching at Quantico East, the International Law Enforcement Academy in Budapest when Casey joins her with a real blast in mind.
Dawna Shepherd laughed when her fellow FBI agents on the Human Trafficking Task Force asked her to help them run a sting operation out of Bucuresti. Dawna's gutsy but not stupid. How's she supposed to pass herself off in Romania as a potential sex slave? But then again, how can she allow baby-faced cadet Stela Dragomir to face Vlad and the other bad guys all alone? “Hokey Pokey Bucuresti” appeared in the March 2002 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE.
FBI Agent Dawna Shepherd is back in her native Texas when her vacation is interrupted by a bounty hunter--one dead set on arresting an old family friend. Read the full story in the October 2002 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE.
March Madness strikes Texas hard--even harder when the Big Dance is set for San Antonio. With the Final Four happening on her own turf, FBI Agent Dawna Shepherd naturally schedule her leave so she could be there. So she's ready to help out when a former teammate turned coach asks Dawna to investigate a possible betting scandal involving a key woman player. Read the whole story in the February 2003 issue of ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE.