The Book of Dreams

Murder mysteries come in many forms—as do dreams. Detective Shane Manning has a troubling history when it comes to his dreams because many of them are nightmares that often seem to come true. Maybe not exactly and completely true, but the dream images are close enough to reality to give him a serious case of the jitters. This was especially true when he was younger and lived with Meredith, Damian, and Kristina. The dream he had back then was something that would haunt him for years and years. And now, fifteen years later, he's investigating the murder of twenty-three-year-old Sandy Baird. It appears to be a fairly simple case: A college professor, Avery Hawthorne, begins an affair with Sandy, and a month after she threatens to tell Avery's wife about the affair, she is found strangled to death in a rural area. However, as Shane and his partner, the beautiful Stella Hart, begin to investigate the case, evidence is uncovered that implicates two other suspects. Strangely, besides having excellent motives for murdering Sandy, these two suspects seem to know things about the murder that only the murderer would know. And those dreams! Shane dreams that he is seduced by Stella, and roughly simultaneous with his dream, his wife begins, in real life, to suspect him of having an affair with Stella. Lauren Manning has always been the jealous type, but this time, it's way over the top…trying to run them down in a parking lot…throwing an empty glass bottle at them…the purchase of the Smith and Wesson 38. And those dreams! Like the one where Lauren discovers them in a bar—the same bar that Stella and Shane had been in the day before—and shoots them to death with a Smith and Wesson 38. Dreams are a kind of unknown reality—they seem so real, sometimes more real than actual life. Where do they come from? What do they portend? Who can see through the veil of secrecy that shrouds dreams? Who is to say what's real and what's an illusion? Welcome to The Book of Dreams. But beware: The dreaming world is not for the faint of heart nor does it conform to standard solutions, trite explanations, or the so-called logic of this world. Dreams exist in another dimension entirely, and by the time you reach the conclusion of The Book of Dreams, you will see that this murder mystery, just like some dreams, can be the gateway to a different understanding of reality.