Serials

Emma reflects on her strange lack of personal origins ...

Emma, awaiting the arrival of Uncle Harry's favorite werewolf, muses about diaries, and her own past.

A time of turmoil, a time of intrigue; the Czar is corrupt, and the winds of change are moving. Was Ivan a Karamazov any longer, or had he become an instrument of Fate? Valery Asimov, his only friend, follows Ivan on this post-Dostoyevskian trail across a strange continent ...

Fransau and his skull collection have the kitchen crew between a rock and a hard place -- but they do have their kitchen ace in the hole ...

Were the salt mines of Detroit a clean, safe workplace, or did they harbor something that could eat a man's soul?

Emma brings Uncle Harry up to speed on her research into the salt mines of Detroit, but still hesitates to explain why she's so drawn to them ...

Diego and Andre and Shakespeare are crazier than Henry the half-bug, and Simpson was crazier than them; Maria was crazier than Simpson with dynamite -- but who's crazier than all of them combined?

Deep beneath the Michigan landscape, the salt mines remain cool and clean ... but Emma worries about teleporting into them -- the maps are none too accurate ...

Emma does some research into mines, but it's not gold or silver she's hunting ...

Nevertheless, in these tough economic times, aren't we all trying to get ... ahead?

The memory of her trip to Indonesia hasn't faded ... because there's a link there to the latest mischief Emma has stirred up ...

At last, a bit of normality, and maybe even a drive to the airport unaccompanied by an evil meat puppet ...

Emma has her plane reservation ready, her traveling case in hand, and she's eager to get back to what she thinks of as normal. Something else may have other ideas ...

Is it true? Are two heads better than one?

A note from Uncle Harry is a welcome promise of escape, but from what, Emma still doesn't know -- and doesn't want to find out!

How many policemen do you have to eat before you stop thinking it's a good solution?

Great way to escape a chatty old lady -- or is it?

Emma's trip to Indonesia has been a bit on the weird side, with blood-smeared temple walls and a healer-woman muttering spells ... but it's about to get stranger still ...

Conclusion. Valery has obtained what passes for Lenin's writ, but it's not worth much in Russia, 1918, but it will enable him to take Katerina Ivanovna with him to America ... or so he believes.

The inscriptions on the walls are too obvious to mistake the meaning of the darkened areas around the altar in the disused temple. This is not a good place for Emma -- but then, where is?

Where can Andre's hat be, and how can he prepare food for the ravenous Clarissa without a proper chef's hat?

"...Russia's stolid core, retreating to its greatest strength, the great nyet that withstood Napoleon, was burned and yet lived, was frozen and yet lived, saying nyet to everything, enduring the unendurable with that one fierce word ... nyet, nyet, nyet ..."

Trudging through the rainforest, Emma comes upon a seemingly abandoned structure -- that is far more than rocks and moss...

Surely there is some normalcy left in the world -- surely Valery can at least get Katerina Ivanovna a little meal at the inn to fill her empty stomach ...

In recounting their lost years together, Valery and Katerina Ivanovna lose track of time, remembering the struggle and the grief, the events that changed them forever...

Something sinister is going on in the kitchen, and it's not a faulty bag of flour ...

Recognized somehow by the local healer-woman, Emma realizes that pretending to be human is more of a pain than she thought it would be.

"Russia was caught with its pants down; its fleet was trapped like Antony and Cleopatra's fleet at Actium..."

Emma has nothing to fear from cameramen, but a local healer-woman is another story entirely.

"...he would dream extinction by water and waken to think about dreaming that and fall asleep and dream it again. He was in love with sailing and hated sailing..."