Short Stories/Novellas

The party on Haight-Ashbury Street in San Francisco ended two years before and now only a handful of people remain to clean up the mess. One of them, the receptionist at the Free Clinic, studies medicine with the hope of becoming a doctor, but everyone—from her professors to the staff at San Francisco General—tell her she can’t because of her gender. She’s not sure she can because of the choices a doctor must make on the front lines. Choices brought to the clinic that night in the form of a crazy, drug-addicted woman and a street kid named Klepto. Choices that mean the difference between life and death. “Nelscott recalls the era with vivid accuracy.” —St. Petersburg Times “Somebody needs to say that Kris Nelscott is engaged in an ongoing fictional study of a thorny era in American political and racial history. If that’s not enough to get ‘serious’ critics and readers to pay attention to her, it’s their loss.” —Charles Taylor Salon.com Kris Nelscott is an open pen name used by USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The first Smokey Dalton novel, A Dangerous Road, won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery and was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; the second, Smoke-Filled Rooms, was a PNBA Book Award finalist; and the third, Thin Walls, was one of the Chicago Tribune’s best mysteries of the year. Kirkus chose Days of Rage as one of the top ten mysteries of the year and it was also nominated for a Shamus award for The Best Private Eye Hardcover Novel of the Year. Entertainment Weekly says her equals are Walter Mosley and Raymond Chandler. Booklist calls the Smokey Dalton books “a high-class crime series” and Salon says “Kris Nelscott can lay claim to the strongest series of detective novels now being written by an American author.” For more information about Kris Nelscott, or author Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s other works, please go to KrisNelscott.com or KristineKathrynRusch.com.

When a disturbing postcard arrives at his Atlanta office, Emerson knows he must report it to the NAACP. The postcard, sent by the mysterious Lurleen from Abbotts Creek, Arkansas, depicts yet another lynching. Emerson agrees to travel to Abbotts Creek to investigate, but he knows doing so poses great risk. Emerson only passes as white, and this Lurleen knows his face. Emerson knows one day his luck will run out. And when he arrives in Abbotts Creek, he soon discovers that day might have come at last. “Nelscott is good at conveying the edgy caution that blacks once brought to their movements among white society.” —Houston Chronicle

UC Berkeley, January, 1969—In the midst of turbulent student protests on campus, a cherished building suddenly bursts into flames. Pammy Griffin, an alum who owns a women’s gym nearby, heads over to check out the fire and walks straight into a troubling mystery. Who wants Berkeley to burn? Hippies? Protesters? Or someone with an even darker motive? But as Pammy investigates, she finds herself, and her gym, embroiled in a troubling turn of events. To catch the arsonist, she and members of her gym must confront some of society’s most brutal, and most hidden, violence using whatever weapons they can. “Nelscott recalls the era with vivid accuracy.” —St. Petersburg Times

Berkeley, May, 1969—When former Army nurse Captain June “Eagle” Eagleton returned from Vietnam, she thought she left the war zone behind. But when the familiar sound of a helicopter wakes Eagle from sleep, she realizes she has awoken in a very different kind of war zone: one filled with tear gas, and kids, and the National Guard. As Eagle fights her way to help her friend Pammy at A Gym of Her Own, she finds herself in the middle of a very difficult situation—one where saving lives might prove harder than she thought possible. “Nelscott recalls the era with vivid accuracy.” —St. Petersburg Times

Years ago, Lurleen helped the NAACP investigate lynchings. She stopped when she met her husband, but never forgot the work…or the caution it required. After his death, Lurleen finds herself struggling to find purpose. She travels to New York without a plan. But what she finds there might help her face her past—and finally chart her future. A powerful story about justice, courage, and facing one’s true self. “‘Still Life 1931’ by Kris Nelscott (Kristine Kathryn Rusch), based on Hotel Room (1931) [a painting by Edward Hopper], was perhaps the best story in the collection [ In Sunlight or in Shadow, edited by Lawrence Block], telling the story of Lurleen, a white volunteer/informant for the NAACP at the beginning of the Great Depression.” —New York Journal of Books