The second place winner of The Poetry Box Annual Chapbook Prize, 2021.

A story of three siblings, a spouse and a surname, Of the Forest threads together poems that hint of danger while also celebrating love . . . and the sumptuous pleasures of language itself.

“I fell in love with this narrative, and I am so invested by the last poem that I swoon with admiration and adoration for the eloquence of the collection.” –Rebecca Smolen, author of Excoriation

My Great Grandaunt Beatrice disappeared in 1919 shortly after marrying a man she met on a train. The scandal of murder was a smudge on the respectfulness of the family, so it became a family secret. This is the story of an American Bluebeard whose crimes at e turn of the twentieth century involved more than fifty women. The story reveals the plight of his victims and the fate of the fiend that cruelly annihilated them. More information is available at my website www.alenereaugh.com

An elfin recluse, a handsome feline archaeologist, a stolen artifact, and one very special cat…

Five years ago, cat shelter volunteer Lynley Cannon discovered a gym bag in a warehouse. Inside the bag were a kitten, a cat toy, and ten thousand dollars. Then shots began to fly. Now, half a decade later, Lynley is thrown back with the very people from whom she’d been running.

Something’s amiss in Oregon’s backcountry. A teacher spots a scruffy stranger loitering near the Forest Lake grade school, and there’s a young boy missing in a neighboring county. Then eight-year-old Cody Benson, on an outing with his grandfather in the Big Bat Wilderness area, vanishes. Ken Blake, the deputy sheriff coordinating the search for Cody, thinks he wandered off and froze to death.

Bloody Paws is crime thriller wrapped around the tragedy of homelessness in Portland, Oregon. The protagonist is Jim Briggs, a veterinarian with a mobile dog care service and a pet crematory, who cares for the dogs of the homeless for free. While Briggs wants to help find permanent shelter for the homeless, a dark inner voice suggests euthanizing them would be simpler. Police get involved when six homeless go missing without a trace. Is Briggs the culprit or it is someone else?