Books with author Charles Fray

As the townsfolk sleep, something creeps into the neighborhood. Hidden in shadows, its presence is as old as time itself, its intent not born of goodness. Nick, a teenager who fancies himself a detective, wakes to find his carved masterpiece missing. Now a mystery is afoot, and Nick has his first assignment, to find out who or what is snatching up the town’s pumpkins and why. Unfortunately, as with all great detectives, obstacles stand in Nick’s way—the neighborhood bully and his cronies, and the strange old lady and her dog who share the run-down house at the end of Nick’s block. As Nick investigates, an urban legend unravels . . . . The Legend of The Pumpkin Thief. Nick fears the legend as he embarks on the most dangerous adventure of his young life. Collecting clues, getting ever closer to the true nature of evil, he learns that curiosity comes with a high price.

Eighteen-year-old white-boy suburbanite Jay Charles receives a crash course on culture in the New Jersey jail system that high school didn't prepare him for. Jay's fast money and notoriety land him in the hands of the police, opening up to him a world that starkly contrasts the difference between the urban and suburban, the good and the bad, and the black and the white. With no way out Jay has to quickly figure out who to associate with and how to survive and defend himself in a world so different than the affluent suburbs he hailed from. Drawing from his trials and tribulations, unique interactions, and a near-death experience, Jay's stripping of the soul testament helps explain the reasons we treat each other the way we do, the misconceptions of the urban youth, and why he believes the suburbs display an emptiness of spirit that supports conformity, control, and a fear of reality, a fear that pillars the unspoken race war still going on today.

Published for the first time in flipback - the new, portable, stylish format that's taken Europe by storm. A soldier wounded in the Civil War, Inman turns his back on the carnage of the battlefield and begins the treacherous journey home to Cold Mountain, and to Ada, the woman he loved before the war began. As Inman attempts to make his way across the mountains, through the devastated landscape of a soon-to-be-defeated South, Ada struggles to make a living from the land her once-wealthy father left when he died. Neither knows if the other is still alive.