The Love & Murder trilogy, in reading order

What does a romance-thriller look like in the Pandemic era? Welcome to a very possible near future where crime, murder, and love seem familiar but are reshaped by the dark presence of the ongoing Pandemic.

It is this dystopian 2020s. Alby O’Brien is hiding in southern New Jersey to avoid the wrath of terrorists who are after him. Believing he is safely hidden in his cave-like garage apartment, he supports himself on under-the-table fix-it work while wrestling with nightmares of what happened in Iraq. But his minimal existence is about to end with very dire consequences.

Within the first twenty-four hours of this one-week, fast-paced thriller, he is involved in a major robbery, meets a woman named Ginger with a mysterious past, and crosses paths with a psychotically polite killer called Jagger. Something very valuable has been taken from a mob-run bank and now everyone is after Alby. Despite his life being on the line, all he can think about is the alluring and volatile Ginger. As it all comes to a head, Alby knows his choices are few and his fate could go either way.

This novel is based on a true story. Told to the author by his father, it is the true story of a mob bank getting ripped off and the ensuing violent consequences.

Nothing Can Stop Love and Murder is a romantic thriller about trust under pressure. The novel explores grief, survival, political manipulation, climate anxiety, and the terrifying power of wealth and technology. Yet beneath the suspense and danger is a deeply human love story about two damaged people who have survived a mob hitman, Jihadists, secessionists and climate destruction, trying to hold onto each other while the world around them spirals toward chaos.

In the third volume of this romantic thriller Love and Murder series, Ginger and Alby desperately try to keep their relationship alive while being pulled into a world collapsing in fear, corruption, and death. Set in Sedona, the novel follows the two as they become entangled in a deadly conspiracy anchored in climate politics and masterminded by mysterious and powerful outsiders determined to control the future.

After a disastrous climate event that shattered Sedona, Ginger, owner of a dance studio and a survivor of past traumas, had reinvented herself as a passionate city council member dedicated to developing climate-safe housing for Sedona’s residents. Ginger is intelligent and fiercely independent, with an easy charm and an often-sarcastic temper. With a that Western deep distrust of the Federal government, once government funding steps in, public opinion of her goals begins to shift, at great cost to her dance school attendance and her patience with the relationship that she and Alby had been building.

Alby, her loyal but also troubled partner, is emotionally haunted. He possesses an unusual sensitivity to danger, an inner warning system that he cannot fully explain but has learned not to ignore. Ginger both fears and hates it and urges him to purge himself of it. Alby knows better, as Vance, a good friend who is wrapped in mystery, begins to teach him about his ability to predict the near future.

As Ginger’s young students are pulled out of her classes under negative parental responses to her political presence, violence appears elsewhere, beginning with the suspicious death of Old Joe, their wealthy, father-figure friend who gave them their beloved home, the Saloon. Though authorities label Old Joe’s death a heart attack, Alby’s intuitive voice immediately identifies it as murder. And the deaths don’t stop there.

Given the murder threats surrounding Ginger’s climate initiative, an FBI agent, Castor, arrives to protect her. When another climate chaos event occurs, it is used to cover a terrorist attempt on Ginger’s life. At the moment of greatest threat, she mistakes Castor for a long-ago lover, beginning a journey into her past that is a corrosive shock to Alby and their relationship.

Among the characters disrupting their lives are LALA, a manipulative celebrity influencer with her own agenda, Billy, her enthusiastic, seemingly naïve husband who runs the climate construction company at the core of the story, and DB, a picture-perfect, reclusive billionaire whose reach extends into politics, surveillance, and murder.

As the couple becomes the target of intimidation, betrayal, and escalating attacks, friends become suspects and allies disappear. Every revelation pushes Ginger and Alby deeper into a maze that threatens to make their flee for their lives -- but Ginger is determined that is not going to happen.