GOLD, a summer story: an erotic, suspenseful odyssey

> from the novel's inside flap: 

Mark and Susan’s marriage is on the rocks. Their east Charlotte home is entering foreclosure. The kitchen is being wallpapered with unpaid bills. 

When Mark finds a pair of record-setting gold nuggets while wandering around a deceased friend’s house, an erotically charged, suspense-laced, thought-filled gambit begins, twisting through the Carolina Beach tourist season.

Success slips through Mark’s hands like grains of sand. Gold fever takes its toll in the steamy coastal heat. Who – or what – was chasing him? … and why? 

Susan, a Cherokee Native American, has had it; she can’t continue in this sordid sexual saga. She exits stage bereft. 

Subsequent chances for discovery are blown until David from Raleigh arrives to pick up a new trunk door at an auto salvage yard in Wilmington. A second odyssey soon begins in which no one can be trusted. Suspicion reigns. The scheming and deception soon reach a fatal nadir. 

A young Haitian lady, an aspiring novelist, takes notes and gives up her heart, mind and body along the sensual way. An easy future awaits. All is going swimmingly; the surf is calm. Then a tragic rogue wave strikes yet again. Why? 

The Filipina TV reporter knows more than any of them think. Will she go to the cops? Will she cut a deal? Will she turn a blind eye? Will she look for the primal source? Will she throw the hungry dog a bodacious bone? But most importantly, will she survive the golden curse? 

[e-published in 2013 [9-i edition (July 2018)]; 82K words; 48 chapters; Kindle-friendly formatting]