The Omega Diner: Ledgerman, #1

By Niz Thomas

First in the series!

Ledgerman tucks into a hearty breakfast at a New Jersey diner when his smartwatch buzzes. It only ever buzzes for one reason. To deliver him three pieces of information.

A name. A time. A picture.

With these three pieces of information, a countdown begins. A countdown with mortal stakes and a mysterious origin – one that even Ledgerman himself does not understand.

For when the clock strikes the appointed time, Ledgerman must decide whether the person named and pictured lives or dies. Whether he will save them, or kill them.

A suspense series that tackles questions of fate, violence, and the invisible calculus of the universe, join Ledgerman as he races the clock, the unknown, and the nagging internal doubt about the righteousness of his actions – all while delivering brutal justice to those who deserve it.

Or so he hopes.

A series character like no other, witness Ledgerman puzzle through the clues, confront the good, the bad, and everything in between, and deliver justice as only he can – all with the narrative precision of a fine timepiece.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Throughplace Publishing
• Release date: Feb 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224711420

Book preview

Neon lights spelling out The Omega Diner (title), introducing series hero Ledgerman

THE OMEGA DINER

LEDGERMAN

BOOK 1

NIZ THOMAS

Throughplace Publishing

COPYRIGHT

The Omega Diner

Made in the USA

Published by Throughplace Publishing

throughplace.com

Text copyright © 2023 by Michael Nisivoccia

All rights reserved.

Cover and Layout copyright © 2023 by Throughplace Publishing

Cover design by Michael Nisivoccia / Throughplace Publishing

Cover art copyright © savi88 / floor perspective / Depositphotos

Cover art copyright © pwollinga/ man walking / Depositphotos

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

COPYRIGHT

Family Tree

Made in the USA

Published by Throughplace Publishing

throughplace.com

Text excerpt copyright © 2023 by Michael Nisivoccia

All rights reserved.

Cover and Layout copyright © 2023 by Throughplace Publishing

Cover design by Michael Nisivoccia / Throughplace Publishing

Cover art copyright © Robert Adrian Hillman / Shutterstock

This text excerpt is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

CONTENTS

Also By Niz Thomas

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Family Tree

Chapter 1

Also By Niz Thomas

About the Author

THE OMEGA DINER

ONE

Ledgerman takes a long pull from his diner coffee, the scalding liquid and heavy, bitter aromas waking him up like a sparring match against Mike Tyson. He didn’t much believe in heaven, but if he did, this would be his idea of it:

A nice table (nice as you could get anyway) at the Omega Diner—your typical New Jersey greasy spoon.

Big windows displaying an icy thoroughfare of hard-pack snow, rock salt, concrete, and passing cars going too fast on a road that wasn’t quite a highway but not a municipal street, either.

A mouth-watering aroma of strong coffee, sumptuous, creamy eggs, and the silky sweet hint of pancakes and syrup. But mostly, enough bacon to keep cardiologists in business for the rest of eternity.

In front of him, paper placemats with Omega Diner written right in the middle—the symbol for omega in place of the letter O—so it reads Ωmega Diner. Not that clever or original, but it shows some effort at differentiation. It contains advertisements for everyone from the local newspaper delivery to a video rental store to a shady lawyer to help you when you fell down on an icy sidewalk and weren’t already trying to con somebody (else you would have called the lawyer first). It seemed the diner placemat was the last holdout from the internet’s encroachment on modern life. For crying out loud, how could a video rental store still be in business, if not for something just a little bit off going on there?

And then of course, there was the feel of the diner.

It was a place of refuge for Ledgerman. A safe, calm place where the world’s problems didn’t dare creep in past the big windows.

A place where time seemed to stop. Welcome relief.

Not just this one, either, as it was almost indistinguishable in so many ways from the multitude of others he had spent time in. More, the genre of diners appealed to him. He read a magazine article a while back (in another diner somewhere) about how children often created strong emotional connections to foods and places their mother visited when they were forming in the womb. Ledgerman knew nothing about his mother, but based on his own feelings about diners, he would have put a tenner down on her sitting in a booth like this one, Disco Fries and a nice greasy burger on its way while he was getting cooked to the right temperature. Ding, ding, order up.

Place like this, you could sip coffee, read a magazine, the paper (or just the ads on the placemat). Ruminate. All without