JONAS JOHNSON sERIES

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The Red Book Of Ralston - Life is like an ocean. Things wash out of a man’s life only for the tide to bring them from the depths in a different form.

The Mechanical Folk, cyborg allies from Jonas’s past, call on him for help. The last time he answered it cost him everything he held dear; but he will not refuse help to those who need it. A troubled young man among their community has vanished. Assuming the youth may have dropped out of school to experience life away from his clannish family and community, Jonas’s investigation soon draws him into a web of secrets and endless deception.

In his personal life, things and people from the past resurface; one that seems a bane that turns out to be a boon, and the other, a boon that turns out to be a bane. However, there is one thing from the past that may hold an answer to the case and Jonas realizes that he already has it in his possession - the secret, enigmatic journal of the young druggist and alchemist, Ralston Manning.

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My latest book and series. This is science fiction/noir. This story was inspired by old time radio shows such as Pat Novak For Hire, Jeff Regan Investigator, Box 13, Suspense, Dragnet, Whitehall 1212, Chesterton Radio (where I found Whitehall 1212), cyber punk stories, Michael Connolly’s Harry Bosch series, M. W. Craven’s Washington Poe series and G. M. Malliet’s Max Tudor series and also The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael by Ellis Peters. A tall order, I know.

Humanity is expanding past the boundaries of the solar system. New sources of water, minerals, and commodities are enriching many, yet the price paid for this progress are the united, oppressive juggernauts of government and corporate power of the Mother Planet. Society is stratified into two types of people: The Enhanced - and everyone else. Most people are trapped in a pattern determined for them from birth. There are few freeborns and these are viewed with deep suspicion, if their unassigned status is known. Jonas is one of these free-borns. An unassigned legal status makes for a perilous life on the edge. Powerful forces in society have found ingenious ways to keep people pacified and distracted with mindless entertainment while mining human bodies as aggressively as they mine the solar system. Behind the glittering spires of vast cities and the facade of technological progress, society is decaying. and in this decay, Jonas, a lost and disaffected young man, slowly begins to find his purpose. Which puts him in direct conflict with the dark forces trying to shape humanity.