Charles Dickinson

Readers of all persuasions will welcome the quiet metaphysics of A Shortcut in Time. With its precise cadences and poetic observations, Charles Dickinson’s novel is like a wondrous old pendulum clock you acquired from an antiques dealer after discovering to your delight that it still kept perfect time.

Josh Winkler returns in the sequel to the time-travel classic, A Shortcut in Time. Available on Kindle and Nook.

Widows Ina and Helene, sisters from Chicago, set off on a drive to Los Angeles. There's one problem: Only Helene can drive, and she's blind. Beer-swigging Ina acts as her eyes. On back roads in the dead of night, they travel across an America they never knew.

Robert Cigar has moved into the home of his biology teacher, Ben Ladysmith. That Ben has been missing for two years is just one of the mysteries enriching this brilliant novel. Robert annoys, infuriates, and loves Ben's family—and helps them find a way through their grief.

Shy and compassionate moneylender Harry Waltz is the richest man in Marathon, Michigan, and at sixty-one, has dedicated his life to bringing "honor and gentlemanliness" to loan-sharking. His wife died twenty years ago, he lost one son in Vietnam, helped put the other in prison, and his twin daughters have grown up and moved away. He lives alone in a large house surrounded by repossessed automobiles, and expects his life to continue at the quiet pace he is accustomed to.

But when he falls in love with forty-two-year-old lawyer Mary Hale, everything changes. She gets his son out of prison, and he moves back home, along with the twin daughters, one of whom is pregnant by her out-of work husband, and the other who is enamored with the same man. To complicate his life even further, his clients have stopped paying their debts, and now it seems that he is losing any sense of the stability he had come to rely on.

In each of the ten stories, Charles Dickinson masterfully reveals the extraordinary in the ordinary. These stories delight readers by uncovering hidden humor in mundane situations, eloquence in simple gestures, and the quirky, telling moments that elevate day-to-day life.

On Halloween morning, Chicago news editor Danny Fain witnesses what may, or may not, be a crime. From the window of his commuter train, he thinks he sees a tiny, sheet-clad figure struck down by a car. It is a story that could save a newsman's career- shocking, heartbreaking, anger-inducing- and Fain is the only one in town who has it.