Selected for the USCG Commandant's 2018 Reading List Never to Return is the harrowing tale of the torpedoing and sinking of a Coast Guard ship and the loss of 171 Coast Guardsmen off the coast of Iceland during WWII. The USS Leopold was a U.S. Coast Guard destroyer escort in a convoy of merchant ships carrying war materiel to England, on the lookout for the deadly U-boat wolf packs lurking in the North Atlantic. The Leopold was largely unarmored, lightly armed, and no match for the U-255's torpedoes. Never to Return is the story of gunner Sparky Nersasian and his shipmates' struggles to survive the Leopold's sinking.

A Novel of the Civil War at Sea

This final volume in the Raphael Semmes trilogy of Civil War naval thrillers, "Seahawk Burning," follows the real-life adventures of Confederate Captain Raphael Semmes and his ship, the C.S.S. Alabama, on the final legs of their reign of terror on the high seas. The novel chronicles Semmes's rise to mythic stature as he becomes Lincoln's public enemy number one, seizing and burning scores of Yankee ships in the Caribbean Sea, the south Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the South China Sea before heading to France for sanctuary...all the while dodging scores of federal Navy ships pursuing him.

Enemy vessels, spy games, mutinies, storms, and loneliness stock Semmes's cruise during 1863-64. Meanwhile, back in the Lincoln White House, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles tries to marshal his warships to catch Semmes and simultaneously protect his president from spies and assassins, one of whom is Semmes's mistress.

In addition to the main characters, the cast of "Seahawk Burning" includes historical figures from the governments and navies of the North and South as well as the Black Moses Harriet Tubman, John Wilkes Booth, and his fellow conspirators.

All of the threads in this saga come together in a final showdown off Cherbourg, France, when Semmes decides to take the Alabama into battle against the U.S.S. Kearsarge, captained by his old friend John A. Winslow. It is one of the greatest naval battles in history.

Young Cape Cod public defender and commercial fisherman Michael Decastro ventures to Saigon with his father, a Vietnam War vet, to come to the aid of his long-lost client and love-interest Tuki Aparecio.

The half-Vietnamese, half-African American diva is in a fight of her life with a mysterious dragon lady from Indochina's underworld. At stake is an antique ruby in Tuki's possession...and the mortal souls of everyone Decastro loves.

Ghosts that the Decastros and Tuki carry with them from Cape Cod and Southeast Asia will have their day.

Dangerous Shallows tells the story of a quest to solve maritime cold-cases. The odyssey takes the reader along for a moment-by-moment look at the events surrounding the loss of more than twenty different ships, and includes the stories of discovering their wrecks and learning about the final hours of each of these ships.

When Michael Decastro gets an email from Tuki, the lady of ten thousand mysteries, he doesn't hesitate a moment. He heads to Bangkok to find. . . what? He doesn't know. To face what dangers? He hasn't imagined. All he knows is that she's beckoned, and he can't resist her call.

And now, face-to-face with Tuki and a ruby so beautiful it has its own name, Michael must make a choice: move forward, protect Tuki and see that she's safe, or run back to his father's fishing boat, hiding from the ills of the world beneath a watchcap and a raincoat.

Foolhardy, compassionate Michael hardly has to think. . .

This is the follow-up to the LAMBDA-award nominated Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues.

Luang kho ngu hao. Now I put my hand in the cobra's throat.

Tuki Aparecio did not kill her lover. She did not burn down the Painted Lady--at least, not with fire. Tuki lit up the stage nightly, with her hair in braids and her glorious costumes; glittering, smoldering, singing her heart out for an audience who loved her. She brought the house down with her performances. But she's innocent of murder, innocent of arson.

How can Michael DeCastro possibly hope to defend this beautiful drag queen, who brings with her a whole pack of nasty little secrets, straight from Bangkok's notorious tenderloin district? She speaks in aphorisms, the wisdom of the Buddha combined with the lyrics of Whitney Houston. She is fascinating. And Michael can't let her go to jail.

Winter in a New England prep school brings term papers, wet snow, and the suicide of a young black student. Except Liberty Baker's friends are convinced she couldn't have taken her own life, and Liberty's faculty advisor, Awasha Patterson, believes them. She is desperate to believe any theory that Liberty's death was suspicious--Awasha turned the girl away the night of her death. If Liberty had been suicidal, Awasha had missed the signs.

But how to prove it? No one in the school wants to think that it could have been a racially-motivated crime; vague whispers of school-sanctioned secret societies are quickly stopped by the headmaster. Awasha can't let it rest, her guilt is consuming. So she seeks out help from a man she knows understands guilt--a man so sensitive, so compassionate to others, that it ruined his career as a defense attorney with one fateful case. Awasha finds Michael DeCastro on his father's fishing boat, and Michael knows from the moment he sees her that he's about to be haunted by another injustice. And he knows he'll give everything of himself until the spirits of the dead lie in peace.