Kickoff
It is mid 1998, the intensive analysis, updating, and testing of every line of code well underway to prepare for Y2K, except for one area. They are lagging, partly due to the distraction of the new and comprehensive software package acquired to replace an entrenched, disparate set of legacy applications.
Implemented successfully in time the new software, already paid for, will obviate that Y2K work. A big if to those arguing the limited resources should focus on the existing systems. However, that's no certainty either. They're old, few understand them. A decision on how to proceed will be based on the kickoff.
That session goes well, but then the consultant hired to lead the project is found dead, possibly murdered. The fallout shakes up the department, exposes fraud, deceit, betrayal, and personal conflicts beyond office politics, rendering each option fateful.
Kickoff is the first novel in the Critical Path series.
family Values
In 2048, NewTor (formerly Toronto) is the capital of the young country of Ontario. It has reached Stage Four of family Values, a progressive and dynamically algorithmic form of urban governance. family Values has spread beyond the capital with outlying cities at varying stages striving to achieve Stage Four. Not all Ontarians embrace its ideological ideals. Many migrate to neighbouring Nova Canada or Quebec; others north to disparate communities that, while growing rapidly, are too fragmented to pose a threat to family Values and its fortified partnerships with the United States and Indigenous peoples.
This is all new to reclusive sexagenarian Ken and eighteen-year-old Otto, who Ken found as a toddler at his doorstep and raised off-the-grid. As guardian, Ken feels obligated to suspend his idyllic hermitic life and re-enter a world he'd spurned to guide Otto to NewTor and fulfill the boy's wish to determine his parentage. While practical experience and instinct are ideal for the wilderness portion, they are of little use in the realm of an urban family Values world still evolving, especially after discovering their complex familial connection to its founders.
The Condo
Newly retired Raymond Tibbett volunteers his IT career experience to resolve his condo board's floundering efforts to replace the WiFi provider. Only to realize the source of the struggle is the inept directors and their reliance on an indolent property manager with no qualms about leading the board astray.
Complicating matters is Kayla Slaske, a younger woman he befriends whose grandmother owns a unit two floors below. The friendship grows to be something special for Raymond, but is tested by the discovery of a divisive, distressing link in their pasts, dating to the Second World War.
The Condo follows one owner's experience as he penetrates the inner sanctum of a condo board. This propels him down a path challenging him to reconcile today's stark bureaucracies with those of his legacies, before he can achieve his humble desire to enjoy retirement in his condo.
The Journal Keepers
The frayed lives of an American man, and a young woman from Ukraine, each impacted separately and painfully by the 9/11 attacks, converge in 2002, and again fifteen years later, by the discovery of their personal journals.
The inexplicable abandonment of these private stories poses a mystery to the finder, Ionia, a Canadian vacationing in Greece, who is hoping to overcome a deeply emotional loss of her own. A journal keeper herself, Ionia is hesitant to invade the privacy of Russell and Mishenka, but is unable to resist upon realizing a man often referenced in their entries is the man she just met.
As Ionia delves into words written years earlier, they touch her in an eerily poignant way, echoing old wounds. It prompts her to behave erratically as she integrates these strangers' stories into her own life, both past and present.
Thylacine
A devastating fire in remote Tasmania precipitates the extinction of the Kiltepper family dynasty. Only a slim hope exists for Andy, the last male survivor, in an affair that ended badly twelve years earlier. The woman, Deborah Pollard, left for Canada scorned and intent on aborting the child. Did she go through with it? Andy persuades Deborah's estranged sister, Ruth, to find out.
In Canada, Deborah indeed has a son, Christopher, and her claim he's not the same child is unconvincing. What is clear is Deborah's life is in turmoil. Her son is unable to stick with a school and she can't keep jobs. When her common law spouse finds himself in legal troubles, Deborah becomes receptive to Ruth's invitation for an extended visit to Australia.
Until the discovery of Andy's involvement, which Deborah sees as a betrayal. But Christopher, charmed by Andy’s niece and captivated by the tragic story of the Tasmanian tiger, prevents her from bolting. Her son's unexpected blossoming, as well as the reawakening of her dormant love for her native land, leaves Deborah facing tough choices once Andy's underlying motives emerge. Not to mention, her own.
The Dancer's Spell
On March 13, 1905, Mata Hari launches her famous career to great acclaim, although her origins remain a mystery. Except to Wim Brink, a Dutchman who is appalled by her performance, but more horrified to discover she is the same girl he adored as a youth in Leeuwarden.
To his dismay, the charms that bewitched him fifteen years before captivate Europe. Everyone seems obsessed with Mata Hari, particularly the people closest to him. To Wim, Mata Hari becomes the symbol of Europe’s moral decline. He wants nothing to do with her. Taking advantage of the ambiguity of her background, he decides not to let on she is the girl he knew.
But his efforts to conceal this connection inadvertently create friction with his wife and in-laws, and begin to isolate him from society. Matters escalate in Paris where an encounter with Mata Hari reveals for Wim a solution to his inner conflict, albeit at great cost to him and his family.
Upbound
At seven, Karl Stevenson is too young to grasp death. When his parents tell him Uncle Douglas passed away last night in their house, he doubts them and believes his beloved uncle will return to keep a promise. Months later, something his babysitter says not only affirms his faith but also spawns a theory: what if his newborn brother, Samuel, is his uncle, reincarnated?
Karl launches a quest to prove this. Only he finds his mother's resistance to discussing his uncle a formidable barrier. Adolescent distractions also present obstacles in his struggle to reconcile the odd events of the past with the present.
Yet like an upbound ship navigating the Welland Canal from one lock to another, Karl is resolute in going after the truth. Even if it tarnishes the heroic image of his uncle. Or upends his life and the lives of those close to him, once his probing clashes with Helen Stevenson's determination to contain family secrets.
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