Fred G. Leebron

BIBLIOGRAPHY

OUT WEST

Benjamin West lost a good job and spent six months in prison - he got caught with a teenage girl and a bag of pot - and now he's driving west, cross-country, to start a new life, working as a night desk clerk at a residential hotel in San Francisco's seedy Tenderloin. On arrival, he meets Amber Keenan, who has abandoned L.A. and her malignant ex-boyfriend, Dean, to work as an adult education teacher for VISTA. But what starts as a casual relationship grows quickly complicated when the pasts they'd both like to forget overtake the present. Two people wind up dead. And Ben and Amber find they suddenly have a whole lot more in common than they did just a few days ago. Out West is the story of two perfectly normal, intelligent, attractive, educated people who somehow become killers. It's a dark, slyly humorous story about crossing the line - from stasis to motion, from passing acquaintances to passionate lovers, from innocence to something like guilt.

SIX FIGURES (review)

A disturbing novel of domestic unease, part thriller and part psychological drama, from a young American writer of exceptional talent. Warner Lutz isn't sure how he got where he is, but he's not especially happy to be there: mid-thirties, married, two kids, dead-end job in fund-raising, small house, old Honda. He and his wife, Megan, have just moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, a town that is booming with new money-but the Lutzes aren't part of the new affluence. Megan's job might be in jeopardy, and one of their children seems to be slipping badly in school. Things go from bad to worse when Megan is brutally attacked, and Warner emerges as the prime suspect.

IN THE MIDDLE OF ALL THIS

Martin Kreutzel and his seriously ill sister, Elizabeth, are as close as grown siblings can be - they share a steadfast bond. However, she lives on the outskirts of London, and he lives far away in a small Pennsylvania town where he and his wife teach at the local college and are raising their two kids in a neighborhood that's safe but uninspiring. Gradually Elizabeth's cancer worsens, and Martin, who hates the thought of life without her, finds it hard to focus on his daily routine at work and at home. When Elizabeth's husband, Richard, disappears and one of Martin's students hangs herself, Martin struggles between helping his sister and being a good husband, father, and professor. After he travels to London to join his sister, the situation sprawls into something far more complex and mysterious than Martin ever could have expected.