Böcker av William Charland

In a small university in the American Southwest, a young college religion professor is eager to escape an abortive career in the ministry and a hair-raising affair with a parishioner. Hired into a department that he discovers is about to be shut down, he’s thrust into the role of academic dean by a president who promptly disappears. As Connor Ransom sorts through the complex affairs of an Hispanic/Anglo college, he discovers that a nationwide education reform movement seems bent on assessing it to death. Connor is aided by a jive-talking history professor and a svelte, Latina journalism professor with an inscrutable past and an insatiable spirit. But when his own past turns up in the national movement, along with an old love, he finds that he must put his job on the line, and then his life, to stand up for his school. Connor must unmask the forces at work in Ocotillo U if he is to save it. Includes Readers Guide.

It''s 1995 and Denver is humming. Telecommunications is hot, as inventors and investors chase the Next Big Thing that could put their frontier city on the map. Hawk Kidree watches the scene with a skeptical eye. A mixed-race Nanticoke Indian, he''s an outsider by nature who has drifted into a career in public relations. His lone client is Wally Arneson, an engineer with the huge regional phone company Telwest. Wally spends his days tinkering with the video phone, a product that isn''t ready to market.One night, Hawk has a vision and his makeshift world begins to crumble: he watches the bright, neon sign of Telwest flicker out as the skyline of Denver is plunged into darkness. Before long, he finds himself caught in a mysterious complex of corporate forces intent on marketing the video phone-as a device for a society of civic leaders too busy to attend meetings, or a tool for the up-and-coming industry of video phone sex. Soundings is the story of a culture out of control, and of one man''s journey through the darkness of Denver to find the spirits that are driving it. In the end, Hawk must confront his own dark side, and learn the true identity of a woman he is afraid to love, if he''s to save the people he cares about.