P. M. (Mike) Nugent writes books and stories he likes to read, books about old and hidden mysteries that explode into our everyday lives, stories about who we are or will be. Mike is a member of Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado, and splits his time between Connecticut and on the Jersey Shore. He has worked odd jobs as lawyer, lobbyist, litigator and business executive, and author. Available on Amazon are the following books: THE COMMITTEE was first published in 1999 and was recently professionally edited and republished. It still is sold by third party resellers who apparently cannot unload copies over 20 years later. THE COMMITTEE starts with the brutal execution of a witness testifying before a Senate committee looking into the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The murder leads Senate investigator Mac McAdams on a treacherous search down the dark corridors of America's past. The missing 18 pages from the diary of John Wilkes Booth provide shocking clues as McAdams uncovers a murderous 200-year old conspiracy. THE COMMITTEE was a Writers & Readers Magazine's Authorlink! Featured Thriller for two straight months. ----- THE EDGE OF THE SAND, first published in 2013, and MONEY LIKE SAND, recently published in January, 2020, are the first two in the Jersey Shore Noir Original series with shoreline reporter Bernie Ruane and his sketchy friends, family and hangers-on in Belmar, New Jersey, on the Atlantic Ocean. In THE EDGE, an ode to Bruce Springsteen's New Jersey, Bernie returns to his hometown from a 10 year quest to keep a job and a paycheck. He quickly gets a free-lance assignment to cover the midnight killing of a local young librarian in the parking lot of a run-down yacht club. The bloody, shocking crime drags Bernie Ruane into what will soon be called the Jersey Shore Murders - unsolved killings of other young local women over the 10 years Bernie's been gone. Brutal murders of women going places. Women of promise and power who had it all. In solving the Murders, Bernie looks for home, and family, some place that is his. ... At the edge of the sand ... MONEY LIKE SAND tells the story about a secret gift of deep gratitude to Native American allies by George Washington in the last days of his Administration, a gift that threatens to upend today's social and economic order. It's based on fact and folklore, and speculation. It is a story of greed and what it does. In MONEY, the last words of a dying art gallery owner send Bernie on a quest to find an unknown painting worth “millions.” His search, in the maw of oncoming Hurricane Sandy, pits him against an ancient clan of Native Americans said to have disappeared over two hundred years ago, the New Jersey mob, and the US Government. He discovers the painting is worth much more than money. It holds clues to a secret arrangement consummated in America’s earliest days. MONEY made it to the semifinalist round in the 2015 James Jones First Novel Fellowship contest, meaning it was selected in the top 30 of over 675 submissions. UP NEXT!!! The third Jersey Shore Noir Original starring shoreline reporter Bernie Ruane and his sketchy family and friends is in the works. It's called A CASTLE OF SAND. It will be available in 2021. In it, Bernie must expose the killers of John F. Kennedy, before they kill him. It's a story about hope and dreams. ----- OWNED ... AND OTHER LITTLE STORIES, will contain short stories as they come. I got a bunch of tales, just need to pause writing novels. So far, it contains OWNED - about a future where you pay to use words - and THE LAST WORD (published in Kaani Literary Magazine, Issue 2 (November, 2018)) - about two old men, lifelong friends, as they yack over a three-day Irish wake. ----- Author's note: The COMMITTEE, MONEY LIKE SAND and, soon, A CASTLE OF SAND each weave together historical fact, fiction, folklore and speculation in what I hope will be entertaining stories that could easily be true. But they are not real, they are fiction. Repeat. They are not real, they just maybe feel that way.