Bøker utgitt av Jo Ann Lordahl

Felecia LeBlanc, in the summerhouse behind The Shadows, watched the Louisiana Bayou Teche flow by, carrying her memories and anticipations. The summerhouse was supposed to be haunted. As a child she'd heard that, but how or why she never knew. The swollen red water and the summerhouse held many associations. On these steps, she and Etienne had decided to marry when they were older. And right out there Blaze Devalcourt came down the bayou paddling that log pirogue he'd hollowed out himself. Those years ago when she and Etienne told Blaze their marriage plans he'd laughed. Then, shaking the coal-black hair out of his eyes he invited them for an engagement boat ride. Delighted, she and Etienne had scrambled into his small unsteady log canoe. Sure enough, in the exact center of the bayou, the crude boat overturned. Felecia, coming up furious as a cat, yelling and hitting about wildly, knew Blaze tipped over his pirogue on purpose. But Etienne only laughed lazily - laughter, which to her further fury joined Blaze's hooting and hollering. She'd hated them both. Even now those memories were razor-fresh.What was Blaze like now? So long since she'd heard of him. It was a long return journey she'd made from Nova Scotia, Canada, to this summerhouse in New Iberia, Louisiana. Long, in more than pure physical distance. This was a crossroads in her life. No requirement now to stay in Nova Scotia. She was free to face the past, to make a new future. A child when she left Louisiana, she was a woman now returning to her old home area and her childhood love, Etienne. Or rather, trying to return. Where was he?

Tonia Tyson has experienced her share of tragedy, may be more than most. She is first chair in the local Canadian orchestra and has been promoted to Assistant Concert Master for the extra money to help her and her niece pay for their growing living expenses. Star, all of five years old, is Tonia's main motivation for training and practicing hours everyday for a chance to win the elite prize from the prestigious Tchaikovsky International contest being held in Gainesville, Florida.Tonia fighting her growing attraction to the orchestra conductor, Standley Kenneth Eagleton. Tall, dark-haired and handsome but he is already married to a women who very unstable. Eagleton also attracts his share of groupies. Star, befriends a neighborhood man, names Greg, also a musician and a teacher at the local private school, who seems to be interesting in Tonia too.To get to the contest in Gainesville, Tonia is worried about her old Datsun making the trip, wants to see if she can find a long-lost grandmother who is supposed to be located in White Springs, Florida. The very place her best friend from college has invited Tonia and Star to visit before the contest. Between her attraction to Eagleton, Greg's attraction to her and all the other events in her life a hurricane coming the same week as the contest is really of little consequence to her ruminations. What will happen next? Will she win? Which man will win her heart?

I have always been interested in pyramids. Inevitably in school I'd write assigned history papers on Egyptians and their strange triangular pyramids. Pages were lined, wrinkled and spotted in our old encyclopedia about Mayans, pyramids and Egyptians. Many drops of food and drink fell on their pages because I was too intent on my ancient intriguing civilizations to pay proper attention to mundane matters of juicy hot dogs and wobbly glasses of milk.So, of course, I leaped at the chance to go to Egypt. How could I refuse when Ken asked me? Aunt Andrea begged me? There was no way I could say no. And Ken knew it.I wonder if cold, false-hearted Ken knows about my talisman stone from Egypt? Would he care if he knew?My stone is before me now, my own private jewel. An objective observer would see only a pale yellow stone shaped roughly in the form of a miniature pyramid. But I know better. This tiny sliver of rock is my key to instant memory.In its depths I see, shimmering from my tears, cameo scenes of emotional events from my past.I relive the dreaming magic of a full moon night when love was sweeter than spring and filled my world. Through welling tears I see a ghastly betrayal of love: unforgivable, dreadful. I see a shaken, running, frightened woman seeking a new life and finding dark mysteries in Mayaland on the Yucatan Peninsula. In my dreams snakes writhe unendingly over Mayan temples. I see Juan, my dark mysterious Mayan. I see an inscrutable red tiger, the uncanny jaguar god of ancient Mayans.In my mind, in those secret inner places where truth always shines, I'll admit the trip to Egypt was the start of this current nightmare. My red tiger was growling into life on the remote Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. But I was blissfully, eagerly going to Egypt seeking their pyramids and completely unaware of that other pyramid waiting for me. Waiting and holding cold black horror and my red tiger.If only I'd said, no, that innocent sun-shiny day which now seems so long ago in experience. If only I'd said, no to Ken, and no to Egypt, perhaps these circles of fate wouldn't have started. But how could I, when I'd dreamed so long of seeing, withmy very own eyes, the mysterious Sphinx and Giza Pyramids?

Jo Ann Lordahl takes the saga of oil-in-the-ground to gasoline-in-our-cars and makes it fascinating. Set in Jay, Florida, the scene of the largest oil strike in the continental United States, Devil Oil Diary is the story of the now-gorgeous Mary Celia Diamond, "an ugly female child growing up in a painfully small, religious, southern town." Where, to lend an extra complication, Mary Celia has a beautiful step-mother: "a charming, spoiled selfish empty-headed southern belle who plays her role to the hilt." Her father dies when she's twelve and before he can carry out plans to have her 'ugly' nose fixed. The transformed Mary Celia, now engaged to kind and gentle Stephen, returns alone to her beloved childhood home to gather a few final treasures. Immediately she's shocked with meeting Vance: I met a man named Vance last night. Oil trash as they call them around here with a new foreign sophistication. Mary Celia wants to learn about oil - those oil leases are questionable. A 'lean and mean,' Vance volunteers to teach her. From a helicopter ride to a working oil rig deep in the Gulf, to learning what a "bore" is, or how oil pipes can sneak around to a competitor's land, we are intrigued. Things in Jay have changed and staying alone in her childhood home is not safe. Mary Celia is locked alone in the creepy storm cellar. Doors slam when nobody but her is home. A dead bloody chicken is left on her front door and Claudine, her only nurse-ally growing up, keeps warning her former charge to be careful. Stephen arrives in Florida. Adventures and clashes follow until an unexpected happy ending.

What a tangle Jay and Frazier and I have created. In my mind I see us writhing, frozen in some crazy Greek marble statue that's so real I could reach out and touch it. Twisted and contorted and intertwined it exists as a solid square lump with bits and pieces of each of us, fashioned clear and recognizable as they dart outward. It's there in my mind as true as any actual memory. I suspect it will remain with me until I die, like that first glimpse of Live Oak shining white and pure through the moss-shrouded oaks. Frazier's face is hard straight lines, all-haunting eyes and aesthetic hollow cheeks. Jay's superbly muscled right arm and shoulder has his fist threateningly clenched. There's my slim back with a narrow waist and my head pointing straight ahead turned towards neither of the men.

Sylvia Holbrook has lived on the family's Canadian farm with her Grandfather, as well as her Aunt and Uncle all of her life. Now that the grandfather has passed away she inherited the farm but cannot keep it. Her Aunt and Uncle want to retire to travel Sylvia does not have the money to hire help. Besides her mother and father need the money from the sale of the farm to modernize their inn at Niagara-on-the-Lake. Sylvia does not want to go live at the Inn. Her fiancee' does not want to help her with the farm either. He has his eye on a city career as an Accountant. To top off her growing list of problems there was an Indian burial ground found in the middle of the family peach orchard. That has caused a great controversy over the find and the province has called for a big-time archaeologist to come and verify the find. Instead of a crusty old guy, the archaeologist turns out to be a handsome, green-eyed, arrogant fellow who has purchased her farm and wants her to run it for him. Sparks fly as well as conflicts between Sylvia and the archaeologist, her boring financee who seems to enjoy her sisters company more than her own. For the first time Sylvia's own dreams may finally be within reach.