Jonathan Dee

"An unnamed male narrator has hit the road. Rid of any possible identifiers, his possessions amount to $168,548 in cash stashed in an envelope under his car seat. Vigilantly avoiding security cameras, he drives until he hits a city where his past is unlikely to track him down, and finds a room to rent from a less-than-stable landlady whose need for money outweighs her desire to ask questions. He seems to have escaped his former self. But can he? Having...

"Mark Firth is a home builder in Howland, Massachusetts in the early 2000s who, after being swindled by a finanical advisor, feels opportunity passing him by. In the paranoid days after 9/11, a New York money manager, Philip Hadi, moves his family to Howland and hires Mark to turn his his house into a "secure location." When Howland's first selectman passes away suddenly, Hadi runs for office, and begins subtly transforming the town in his image....

"There is an opinion that a Feng Shui garden must necessarily be an oriental garden but this is not so. The calm Zen gardens of Japan embody a practice similar to Feng Shui but that are intended to encourage a meditative state using calm water features, shade, and patterns in gravel and stones. Often they are totally devoid of plant life. In Feng Shui terms a space like this would be described as Yin, whereas in the West our gardens, often bursting...