Byproduct
Published in 2023 by Raven Tale Publishing
FBI Special Agent Lee Diggs is no stranger to unorthodox violent crimes. His latest case has him on the trail of a female serial killer who is removing victims’ organs and eluding detection as she murders her way southward from New Jersey to Maryland.On a tip from a trusted informant, Diggs investigates Planetary Solutions International (PSI), a space tourism company in Arlington, Va. There, astronaut Izzy Taranto is recuperating after surviving a deadly mission through a micro-blackhole from which her six crewmates never returned. As the organ harvesting deaths continue, leaving only cryptic clues in their wake, Diggs suspects that something intelligent and sneaky has followed Izzy back through the black hole portal. Something evil.
Uberwespen: The Colony
Deforestation, pollution, overpopulation… a world out of balance.
In stinging response, Mother Nature unleashes giant parasitoid wasps that paralyze and lay eggs in living human hosts, with the hatching grubs eating their way from the inside out, or worse, taking over the victims’ brains…
Now the wasps and their human zombies are targeting the power center of the world, Washington, D.C, and it’s up to entomologist Beth Halfers and a small team of specialists to figure out a way to stop the proliferating wasps before they replace us as the new shepherds of Earth.
Uberwespen: Wasp Invasion
Published in 2022 by Raven Tale Publishing
Something terrible is hatching …
Earth unleashes giant parasitoid wasps, a holistic natural response to deforestation and destructive human expansion across the globe. The wasps are potent enough to immobilize humans and bury them alive with their hungry hatching eggs, like smaller wasps do to pest species such as caterpillars, cockroaches, and spiders.
Teamed with an FBI agent, parasitologist, and a teen hacker, Dr. Beth Halfers, a California entomologist, must stop the wasps’ spread. But it’s not easy, because the invasive wasp larvae can also take over human nervous systems and brains from the inside out, making it difficult for Beth to trust anyone.
Uberwespen: Wasp Invasion… and you thought murder hornets were bad.
Buy it on Amazon.
Space Games
Published in 2013 by Kristell Ink
The cameras are on and the gloves are off in this battle of the sexes in space.
With the future of NASA in serious doubt, former U.S. astronaut Buzz Aldrin told Discover magazine's Kathy Svitil during a 2006 interview how he foresaw a future 'landscape' in which private citizens could buy lottery tickets for a chance to win a trip into space.
“You could also have contests, television game shows,” Aldrin said.
Great man, bad idea.
Say hello to Robin and Joe—contestants in 2034’s “Space Games,” a new, high-stakes reality TV show set aboard next-generation space station, ISS 2. On slate: an alluring battle of the sexes, where the winner takes home a multimillion-dollar jackpot and a chance at stardom, while the loser faces the ultimate in public humiliation. Only former NASA astronaut, Vince Davis, acting as the station’s commander and the games’ sole referee, can separate sexy spitfire and martial artist, Robin Miller, from her brutal opponent, “Big Joe” O’Donnell, as the pair compete inside the cramped zero-g environs. Overcome by the physical and psychological strains of ‘space,’ the two contestants quickly abandon the show’s sanctioned events to engage in a lawless game of kill-or-be-killed as millions watch helplessly from Earth. With the station orbiting 220 miles above Earth, rescue by shuttle two days away, and Vince dangling by a tether outside, the reality show rapidly degenerates into a deadly, live spectacle.
Vespa
Published in 2007 by Active Bladder
The victims are all the same. Snatched from their homes and then buried alive, only to be found days later, dead, and completely stripped of their organs and flesh. The police and media suspect a serial killer; but the feds know otherwise and call on Tom Goodman, an expert in the biological control of invasive species. Because something far more terrible than a human hand or rogue bear is at work in this small town besieged by death, and Goodman must figure out a way to exterminate the invader before it exterminates him and everyone around him. But to defeat the creature, Goodman must better understand it ... and get inside its head before it gets inside of his.
"In Vespa, Dean Lombardo has created a highly charged entertaining thriller similar to novels written by Crichton at his best. A cross between Preston and Child's The Relic and the X-files season II episode Firewalker, Lombardo's Vespa is crisp, fast paced and engaging. He seamlessly introduces just the right amount of science and entomology into the novel providing a plausible explanation for el monstruo ... This is a really good book. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. What a spectacular debut novel. I anxiously await Lombardo's next book."
Todd A Fonseca, author of The Time Cavern