The Strange Files Series

January 05, 2024

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The Strange Files Series

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Phoenix newspaper columnist Alexander Strange enjoys his job writing about news of the weird, but his own life becomes bizarre when shots riddle his uncle’s Scottsdale, Arizona home. Who would want Superior Court Judge Leonard D. Strano dead? And why? Strange has twenty-four hours to find the answers or he’ll have a death on his hands. Maybe his own. To solve the mystery, he must cobble together an unlikely alliance of newspaper and television reporters, a sketchy bailiff, and a retired madam–all the while dodging the intrusive eyes of a pair of dubious FBI agents, packs of wild dogs, a freeway shooter, and an uncontrolled forest fire. And how in the world did he end up in those high heels?

When a New Orleans psychic warns weird-news reporter Alexander Strange that his days are numbered, he figures he’s got nothing to lose. So he agrees to help a friend in Florida tormented by a stalker texting her in verse. But as the mad rhymester directs them on a scavenger hunt to a series of haunted tourist traps, and when the pieces of the puzzle begin to take form, Alex realizes that what began as an oddball adventure might end in tragedy. Why is his friend being so secretive about the stalker’s mysterious hold over her? What does he want? And that French Quarter soothsayer—who is she, really? The only way to find out is to play the game to the end. To get there, Alex must first explore the land of the Hollow Earth, sample the metallic waters of the Fountain of Youth, and evade the ominous Everglades Skunk Ape. But he will not find the answers he seeks until he finally descends to Hell’s gateway—the Devil’s Millhopper.

Weird news reporter Alexander Strange is munching grouper balls and sipping a Cuba Libre when a naked body floats up to the dock at Stan’s Idle Hour in Goodland, Florida. It’s already been a hell of a day—earlier, somebody tried to poison his fried okra. The face of the corpse has been devoured by sea creatures, but Alexander knows who she is, and from the ligature marks on her neck, it appears she’s been strangled. Or hanged. Alexander fears he’s being framed when police find a bloodstained noose under his dry-docked fishing trawler where he lives with his dog Fred and Mona the mannequin. He needs help, and it arrives in the form of a urinal-screen-salesman-turned-detective and a gorgeous public defender who wants more than to find the victim’s killer: She want’s Alexander to forego his “catch-and-release” love life–and ditch Mona. When an inmate in the county jail is found hanged by a rope identical to the one found under Alexander’s trawler, the stakes get higher. The trio must discover who is behind all this mayhem before they, too, find themselves on the end of a rope.

Alexander Strange lives and works aboard a fishing trawler in Naples, Florida. His laid-back lifestyle is disrupted when a feisty author of conspiracy books insists he investigate the death of her brother in Key West. The cops think it was an accident, a scuba diving death caused by nitrogen narcosis. She believes he was murdered, and the motivation behind his killing is far more noxious. When she tells Alexander her brother’s last words to her were, “I found a mermaid,” it’s a story too good to resist. But when the bullets start flying and the sharks start circling, he realizes he’s gotten into something literally over his head.

Alexander Strange, America’s only full-time weird-news reporter, is hunting the elusive Florida vigilante known as Mister Manners. Mister Manners has been on a rampage, gluing grocery carts to car roofs, hiding pythons in tourists’ beds, and now the cops believe he dumped a load of horse manure on a naked mob bagman. He’s become a social media phenomenon, a kind of modern-day Robin Hood, striking out against stupidity and rudeness. Who is this guy? Alexander Strange is determined to answer that question and to score the first interview with him. But first he must dodge a hired gun, a crazed narc, the Queen of Murder and Mayhem, and, of things, a deadly toad — all during a raging pandemic. And Mister Manners, himself, could be tricky to deal with — he’s a trained killer, after all.

This is Alexander Strange’s wildest adventure yet. Set in the ten days before Christmas it’s got a talking mannequin, a guardian angel who fears for her life, dinosaurs, a missing baby Jesus snatched from a nativity scene at a megachurch and golf resort, naked snake charmers, mad scientists, and a smidgen of time travel. Oh, and Elvis seems to be missing and the future in-laws are turning into a real nightmare.

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