Louis B. Jones

Radiance

A Novel

Mark Perdue has so many problems that when he starts feeling chest pains on the tarmac at LAX, it dawns on him that a heart attack might be an efficient way out. Once an eminent physicist, he hasn't published or had a new idea in a decade. The younger professors at UC Berkeley pity him, and he's taken to using the back staircases to avoid their looks. At home, his wife has been inconsolable since the recent late–term abortion of their afflicted fetus. And he can't deny it any longer—he is decidedly losing his mental faculties to chronic Lyme disease.

Now Mark is visiting Los Angeles with his ambitious daughter, Carlotta, so she can attend a "Celebrity Fantasy Vacation," in which she is promised three days and two nights of the rock star lifestyle. On stage, Carlotta sings her way to a new self–confidence, giving Mark a glimmer of joy in her sense of victory. But then she disappears with her newly acquired paraplegic boyfriend to take an excursion to the Hollywood sign and gets them all arrested, Mark included. Mark now faces a night in jail—and maybe a hint of what he really needs to be happy.

Innocence

A Novel

A beautifully written book set in Marin County, Innocence is a philosophical novel that follows John Gegenuber, a former Episcopal priest who has given up his parish and vocation to become a real estate agent. After having corrective surgery for a cleft palate, John has been invited to go on a romantic weekend trip to a secluded country estate with Thalia, a young woman who has undergone the same cosmetic surgery.



Their transformational weekend together is tested in the sudden and premature labor of a young pregnant woman who lives at the estate. Stranded with only common sense to guide them, faith and instinct become paramount for the mother and her newborn.