Mark E. Shaver
Author
M S MYSTERIES
Dakota's Daring Adventures
The Second Verdict is the story of four men whose paths would never have crossed were it not for an illness they all shared. When one of them becomes the victim of a crime and the criminal goes unpunished, the other three decide to take matters into their own hands and deliver a punishment that they deem appropriate for the crime. Their actions do not go unnoticed and soon their lives are being manipulated by someone who threatens to expose them if they do not cooperate and exact similar retribution on those he instructs them to. The completion of one final assignment promises a release of further obligation, but the cost quickly becomes far greater than anyone anticipated.
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After The Fact is the compelling story of a man whose dissatisfaction with his career, and impatience for the prosperity that should have been his long ago, provoked him to challenge his own fate; a fate that had kept him down his entire life. Ever since he left flight school and went to work for the airline, Denton Kaylan considered fate to be something he could not change, and quietly endured the mediocrity that gripped him while those around him prospered.
But as the years passed, his seemingly stagnant career path became harder and harder to accept. His misery and frustration led him to a dangerous decision, but one he was willing to chance. With an idea conceived, and all the details worked out, he put a plan into action that he was convinced would change his life. The one thing he didn’t take into account was the one thing he never expected to be part of this equation; fate.
At the very point in Denton’s life that he decided to engineer his way to better times, fate decided to hand them to him. But fate did not merge with his actions; it collided with them, bringing about an outcome that no one expected. Like the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for…
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A Critical Loss Of Balance
Cliff Elliott thought he had endured the worst thing a parent could endure when his nine year old daughter was kidnapped, but he was wrong. The circumstances that led to her return were far worse than anything he could have imagined. Now Cliff, a man who rarely uttered a cross word, a man whose temperament and nature were as gentle as any man’s could be, had his life thrown irreparably out of balance.
Left with no other choice, Cliff set out not for revenge, but for justice; a justice he hoped would restore the balance that was now absent from his life. His pursuit of this balance thrust him deep into a world that he had never experienced before; a world to which he was indeed a stranger. The price to be paid to regain his balance though was much higher than he ever imagined it would be. In fact, Cliff almost paid the ultimate price as he was forced into the world of those who took his daughter.
So take a walk in another man’s shoes and try to imagine what you would do if you were faced with, ‘A Critical Loss of Balance’.
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THE ABSENCE OF KNOWING
Knowledge is power. It’s pursuit is sometimes an obsession.
We place great value on the things we believe, those truths we consider to be undeniable. Many we believe because they are true. Others we consider to be true simply because we believe them.
We place a value on the things we don’t know as well. But is that value based solely in their knowledge, or does any value lie in the fact that we don’t know them? After all, it’s been said, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you”.
These five short stories all deal with the relentless pursuit of an answer.
The Hillman Tree examines a secret kept by a wife from her husband and the lengths he went to learn it.
Reason With The Devil follows a father’s frantic search for his missing fourteen year old daughter on a journey beyond anything he could have imagined.
The Journey Into Existence chronicles the average life of a man who dreams of so much more and, by a twist of fate, realizes that dream. There are strings attached though, that leave him asking the question, why.
A Numbers Game dispels the myth of the mild mannered accountant when a father is forced to settle a score that the law could not.
An Unsafe Distance is the story of a man whose sleep is invaded every night by someone asking him a question he is unwilling to answer.
So, ask yourself, how far would you be willing to go to find the answer?
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THE THIRD HALF
Jacob Severinson's life had hit rock bottom. After a heated divorce that cost him half of the business he'd built with his own two hands, he and his wife, Abbey, went their separate ways. The only redeeming value for him rested in the fact that he knew he'd never see her again. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
It took Jake a few months to work through all of the depression and dysfunction that comes with something as life-changing as a divorce. Today, however, armed with a new-found passion for living, Jake began rebuilding his life. He bought a new car and moved into a new town-home. But most importantly, he invested his share of the proceeds from the sale of his business. That's when he met Arthur Jensen (The Second Verdict). Arthur worked for the brokerage firm that he chose to invest with, though unbeknownst to Jacob, he was a man with a past. Just when it seemed all of the pieces of Jacob's shattered life finally seemed to be mending themselves, his ex-wife, Abbey, called, begging him for help. Jacob was raised to be kind and considerate, so when Abbey told him her life was in danger, he knew he had only one choice. That choice would change his life forever.
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DAKOTA'S DARING ADVENTURES
Dakota and Jacob are best friends who share a thirst for adventure. In their quest for adventure, they sometimes make choices that seem like a good idea at the time, but turn out not to be. These choices always land them in the middle of more adventure than they bargained for. But, in the end, better choices are made, and the day has a happy ending, leaving Dakota and Jacob ready to plan their next daring adventure.
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THE PRICE OF INDULGENCE
The Price of Indulgence provides a glimpse into the lives of five people for whom the supernatural was merely a fictitious notion typically found on the pages of a cheap novel. None of them ever considered the possibility that there are things which lie just beyond our psychological reach, things which sometimes bleed silently into our reality. Although it's been said that ignorance is bliss, for these five people, that bliss came at a price: The Price of Indulgence.