Bücher veröffentlicht von Steve Bartholomew

This is a collection of trunk tales. A trunk tale is a story which I dug out of my trunk. I wrote it years ago, it didn't get published, so I filed it away in my trunk and forgot about it. Recently I began winnowing my papers and found several that I think are not too bad. The first story, "Cheops," I first published as a stand alone short. It's now included. Cheops is an angry elephant, and you can't blame him. The other stories are a varied mix, from love to horror. I hope you will read them and decide they are not too bad.Steve

When Geraldine Halloran arrives at the Central Pacific end of track in the winter of 1866, she's resolved not to be terrified. After all, she has a right to be there. She was hired on as regular telegraph operator, though they thought they were hiring a man. She's the only other woman at Tunnel 6, except for Mrs. Strobridge, the superintendent's wife. Tunnel 6 was said by some to be impossible. Nothing like it had ever been done. It was to be a railroad tunnel linking California with Nevada, over 1700 feet long and 6000 feet altitude, dug through solid granite using black powder, nitroglycerin, and more than 5000 Chinese laborers.Geraldine was to discover many things to terrify. There were explosions, landslides and blizzards. However there were some compensations. She got to run her own telegraph key, without being required to wear corsets. And then there was that nice, funny looking boy, Stetson Applegate, whom she might, perhaps, fall in love with. And then a third woman showed up, a strange lady named Georgette Dupriest. Though she claimed to be writing a book, no one could quite understand why she was at a railroad camp. Georgette did seem quite taken by that nice gentleman, Mr. Asa Turner. Geraldine begins to have second thoughts when it gradually becomes clear that someone is trying to sabotage the railroad. And also trying to kill the man she loves.If you read this book, secrets may be revealed.

Liam O'Malley was just looking for an honest job. The California Gold Rush wasn't paying off for him, and he was tired of living in tents. In San Francisco he did find employment, but he wasn't sure how honest. He found himself assistant to a Daguerreotype photographer who specialized in photographing ghosts and departed spirits. Of course the pictures were all fake. Liam became sure of that when he learned to make the pictures himself. He didn't know he was about to get involved with Prince Susslov, self-appointed Witch Hunter. Or with Delia, daughter of an escaped slave and the most fascinating woman he'd ever met.

Year 1901 Martino DiPaolo is hired as a Pinkerton bodyguard for Rounsevelle Wildman. Wildman, U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong, wants to reach Washington D.C. in time for President McKinley's inaugural. DiPaolo and Wildman sail on the S.S. Rio de Janeiro for San Francisco. But there have been threats against both Wildman and the president. As the threats become more real, DiPaolo doubts his own ability to protect the Consul. He has failed before and may fail again. He doesn't like this ship. DiPaolo doesn't know she is sailing toward disaster.Meanwhile, an assassin is on the loose.

When Black Bart left prison he figured he'd had enough of crime and Wells Fargo. After all, he'd got time off for good behavior, and only had to do time for robbing one stage coach out of the twenty-eight he held up. Bart thought he would try his hand at mining once again, and maybe settle down later by running a pharmacy. He also had plans for the woman he loved, Magdalena Ramos. Those were his plans. What he didn't figure on was the man who had put him in San Quentin to begin with, Detective James Hume. Nor did he plan on meeting his old nemesis, Jason Sutliffe who had started Bart on his life of crime.A month after leaving prison, Bart was determined to vanish from the Earth and from history. The official records say he did. This book is a tale of where he might have gone, and what he might have done. It is not history. It is a story. Read it yourself and see.

San Francisco, 1880: Driver, after a year at sea, returns to the city, only to be shot down and nearly killed. The main suspect? A mysterious Russian known only as The Scratch. It's up to Driver's wife Genevieve to hunt him down, since the cops seem without clues. With Driver still recovering from wounds, things can only get worse when Robert, the ex cabin boy, is abducted. Where is The Scratch, and what of the shadowy mastermind known only as Mr. Smith?

Ira Beard hunted Joaquin, the mountain bandit. In the Civil War he chased Confederate rebels. Now he's settled down with a family and business, hoping for some peace and quiet. He has seen San Francisco through riots, fires, earthquake and war. It's time for a change. Then a banker sends him on a mission to inspect a new silver mine down in the Mojave, where not many men will go. The job sounds like a nice break from routine. What Ira doesn't expect is a Paiute curse, swindlers, double dealers and murder. The problem comes down to how to get out alive. Later, he won't even talk to his son about it. This is Ira Beard book 3.

Ira Beard came west to escape war.War has found him. He'd hunted for JoaquinMurietta, the bandit. Now he's supposed totrack down Confederate rebels stealingCalifornia gold. He's become desperatebecause his wife Octavia found them first.Read the tale for yourself, and wonder.

Joaquin Murietta, the most notorious bandit in gold rush California. Rangers hunt him in hope of reward. Friends protect him as romantic hero. Ira Beard, bounty hunter from New York, decides to pursue Joaquin. He brings only two men in his posse, but meets a Spanish lady who will save his life three times. Who will get to Joaquin first, and whose head is that in a bottle?

I must admit that of my published novels, Gold, a tale of the California gold rush, is in many ways my favorite story. This is in part because of personal, sentimental reasons. I greatly enjoyed researching it, discovering how much literature I could find on the subject of sidewheel steam ships, and the sea route to California. Gold was an Eppie awards finalist for 2009. Imagine you're living on a small, isolated planet where you have to work twelve or sixteen hours a day just to earn enough money to stay alive, and where it's freezing cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. You're sharing rooms with maybe several other people you barely know; the future seems to offer only more of the same. Suddenly you're given a chance. You can travel to a far distant world, if you can come up with about two hundred dollars for the ticket. This new planet is warm all the time, uncrowded, with limitless opportunity. And you can become fabulously rich by just picking up gold off the ground. Why, even the servants there are rich. Oh, there's a couple of drawbacks: You will have to travel in a ship using radically new and untested technology. You will be crowded in with a thousand other passengers and crew, but out of contact with the rest of humanity for weeks at a time. During the passage you will be eating mainly dried meat and beans, no fresh fruit or veggies. Oh, and one other thing: the ship might possibly explode at any moment. That was the situation emigrants to California found themselves in when they shipped aboard a steam ship from the east coast. Thousands more traveled that way than came by wagon train. Gold is the story of a few of these emigrants, and how their lives were changed by the journey.