The story opens with the murder of a young boy--a murder for whom no one will be held accountable. He was, after all, stealing a ride beneath the train along with his older brother, Matthew. Arriving in Portland, Oregon, Matthew is in the wrong place at the wrong time when two more murders occur. And so, the victim becomes the accused. Enter Sage Adair. Sage is the proprietor of an elegant restaurant that caters to Portland's "best" citizens. He is rich, educated and elegant with friends in all the right places. And, he is a secret operative in the labor movement. Stoner’s characterizations and personalities are original and believable; each one is carefully crafted to step out of the pages and into your imagination, where they run down Old Town's dark alleys, ride the rails with hobos, haunt Portland's infamous brothels and opium dens, or risk it all in the hell-bent-for-leather timber camps. Stoner takes us on a tour of life and death, love, hypocrisy, injustice and reparation in early 20th Century Portland. The story is a broad canvas painted with a fine brush with the richness of The Canterbury Tales, but without the boring poetry. A spicy mix of historical fact, character, plot and circumstance. Timber Beasts will keep you up late turning the next page– a great read. Timber Beasts is the gold medal winner of the International Next Generation Indie Book Awards, from the Independent Book Publishing Group. Another book in the series was selected runner-up for the same award. " Timber Beasts relives the NW timber country corruption at turn of century, while providing hope in that dingy setting by creating an imaginary secret counter-force personified in the dashing hero, Sage Adair. Far more than a mere action-figure, this principal character displays convincing dimension and depth. This is a unique, genre-crossing novel. It combines rousing adventure with accurate back-to-the-past details all of it served up with an overlay of timeless social ethic." --Jim Strassmaier, Oral Historian, Oregon Historical Society, ret. "We are not taught that our middle class came from the heroic lives and deaths of ordinary workers. Most authors ignore that historical fact. Stoner's Sage Adair mystery gives us back our history in a hard-to-put-down deeply satisfying and entertaining adventure." --Ross K. Rieder, President Pacific NW Labor History Association "Stoner knowingly evokes early 20th century Portland through a detective story of murder, skillfully developed against a gripping (and true) background of class war and the Oregon Timber Fraud Ring." --Michael Munk, author, the Portland Red Guide: Sites and Stories from Our Radical Past "Stoner has created a fast-paced western tale of murder, corruption and its exposure by an engaging hero. All strata of society come to life from the rich to day laborers." --Joel Rosenblit, Union Lawyer and Labor Educator "A delightful and entertaining mystery that is fast-paced, realistic and serves as a lesson that money and power corrupted men a century ago as it does today. I found myself eager to read the next page, the next chapter." --Jason Reynolds, Executive Director, Consumer Justice Alliance Susan Stoner, writing as S.L. Stoner, is a native Oregonian who works full time as a labor union lawyer. Like that of her series hero, Sage Adair, her life has tended toward the adventurous. She has worked in skid road bars, Las Vegas casinos, free clinics and as a prisoners' advocate, psychology center videographer and federal judge's intern. Besides living in Portland, Oregon, Susan has also lived in a forest lean-to, a Sikh home in Singapore, alongside an alligator-infested Louisiana bayou, inside a sweltering Las Vegas tent, in a camper atop a 65 International pick-up truck as well as in a variety of more traditional abodes. She was a participant in Portland's original neighborhood movement and has since been involved in citizen activism, most recently by filing and winning a lawsuit to preserve Portland' s soon-to-be destroyed historical open reservoirs (one of those win the battle, lose the war experiences). She lives with her husband and dogs in Southeast Portland when they are not traveling or hanging out in the great Cascade forests. One of her passions is historical research, particularly that involving original source material. The third book in the Sage Adair series, Dry Rot , will be released in June 2013. The fourth book, Black Drop , awaits final editing and a fifth, Dead Line , is well on its way. All are based on true events in Pacific Northwest history. Used Book in Good Condition