Tom & Scott Mysteries Series

Father Sebastian, the only good priest everybody knows, is dead. Pastor of a parish outside Chicago, Father Sebastian was also involved in the gay community through his work with Faith, the gay Catholic organization the diocese is trying to drive out of the church. High school teacher Tom mason, who has gained some local notoriety from his involvement in a couple of murder cases, is asked by friends to look into the priest's death; was it murder? Along with his lover Scott Carpenter, a professional baseball player, Tom plunges into ecclesiastical intrigues, the hidden underground of gay Chicago and the tragedies caused by a hypocritical church.

Simple Suburban Murder is the book that started it all--the debut novel of Lambda Literary Award winner Mark Richard Zubro. When a gay high school teacher starts investigating a colleague's murder, he finds beneath the calm veneer of his Midwestern suburb a seamy underbelly of gambling, prostitution, and child abuse.

One would think teaching would be a quiet profession. But not in Chicago, thinks high school teacher Tom Mason when he hears that one of his students has been accused of killing his girlfriend. As a friend of the boy's family, Tom is asked to help clear him, and the more he probes, the more it seems that something sinister is going on in the usually quiet suburbs of Chicago. With the aid of his lover Scoot Carpenter, a professional baseball player, the two set out to discover what really happened that night. Mark Richard Zubro's second mystery for Tom and Scott is just as stunning as the first. Why Isn't Becky Twitchell Dead is a delicious satirical page-turner.

The Principal Cause of Death is the next entry in Mark Richard Zubro's Tom and Scott series. When gay high School teacher Tom Mason is accused of murdering the school principal, Tom and his partner, Scott Carpenter, need to catch the real murderer and clear Tom's name. Kirkus Reviews raves, "The school politics are dead-on" in this fourth installment in Zubro's Lamda Literary Award-winning series.

Scott Carpenter, Chicago baseball player, and his lover, Tom Mason rush to rural Georgia to be by the side of Scott's father, who has just been stricken by a heart attack. Once there, they discover that the locals are none too pleased to have them around. To make matters worse, the local sheriff turns up dead, in the back of their rental car, and the local officials can't imagine anyone they'd rather convict of the crime than the two of them...

After a difficult summer, the last thing that gay high school teacher Tom Mason needs in the new school year is turmoil. But a conservative parents' group, "worried" about gay teachers corrupting the students, is attempting to take over the local PTA. And it soon gets worse--one of the ringleaders of the parents' group is murdered in the high school after a very contentious PTA meetings, and Tom's best friend is arrested for the crime. Now to prove her innocence, Tom must hunt down the real killer...

After years of avoiding volunteer organizations, Chicago high school teacher Tom Mason is finally guilted into volunteering a few hours a week at a local gay services clinic. Since he finds the bitter in-fighting at the organization to be intolerable, and the head of the clinic to be downright poisonous, Tom does his hours on early Saturday morning before anyone else arrives and avoids most of the office politics. But his quiet Saturday goes quickly awry when two gay teens, in a particularly difficult situation, seek him out for counseling early to avoid being seen by anyone else. After they leave, Tom decides to tidy up the cramped, disordered office and file some of the tettering piles that are practically everywhere. Filing turns out to be a surprisingly gruesome task, however, when in one of the filing cabinet drawers Tom finds the severed head of the director of the clinic. The director, called Snarly Bitch behind his back because of his unpleasant demeanor, had a particularly long enemies' list and Tom himself is not particularly choked up about his untimely demise. But with a long suspect list, a fairly indifferent police force, and the welfare of some of the clinic's youthful charges on the line, Tom himself must sort out the murder before an innocent takes the fall for this very unusual crime.

Chicago area high school teacher Tom Mason and his lover, professional baseball player Scott Carpenter have had a taxing year. After publicly coming out, Scott and Tom have had to deal with a firestorm of publicity, a major loss of privacy, a great outpouring of support and an equal number of cranks. Now, finally, they are going to do something that they've always wanted - get married in a service before their family and close friends. Despite the potential problems of such of an event, the ceremony comes off with nary a hitch. With the reception in full swing - with a guest list ranging from long-time family friends and co-workers to the cream of the social elite - a small problem emerges. Tom happens to stumble over an ex-boyfriend from many years ago in the bathroom. Unfortunately, what he stumbles across is actually the corpse of the murdered ex-boyfriend and in addition to casting something of a pall across the proceedings, it puts Tom in the awkward position of being the prime suspect in the murder. If he's ever going to get to go on his long-planned honeymoon, Tom is going to have to uncover the truth behind the murder of this unwanted guest.

A series of three bombs destroy a local health clinic, killing many and injuring many others including high school teacher and clinic volunteer Tom Mason. While Tom is hospitalized, his lover, professional baseball player Scott Carpenter, begins to believe that Tom may have been the intended victim of the bombing - the third bomb was wired to Tom's truck and Scott is receiving threatening letters saying that he's next. With a long suspect list and a mounting death toll, Scott must find the killer before the killer finds them.

Tom Mason, former Chicago area high school teacher, recently made a public splash by marrying his long-term lover, former professional baseball player Scott Carpenter. After the hoopla surrounding Scott's public coming out and, of course, the marriage, the couple are in dire need of a quiet vacation -- somewhere far from the fans, the paparazzi and the general noise of Chicago. Escaping to the privately-held Aegean island of Korkasi -- a resort with twenty-two seperate villas for those desiring, and who can afford, absolute privacy. But first a building storm traps them -- and the others -- on the island, cutting them off entirely from the outside world. Then the current owner of the island is found murdered, his body lying on the floor of Tom and Scott's villa. As the storm gathers strength and begins to ravage the island, the guests and employees are being killed off by a person or persons unknown. Trapped on the island with no hope of escape, Tom and Scott must uncover and stop the murderer before everyone dies.

Tom Mason, Chicago area high school teacher, has been teaching at Grover Cleveland High School for a while - long enough to loathe the faculty meetings and long enough to know that as bad as they are, they aren't fatal. Usually. Having had all he can take of the endless bickering, picking and factional disputes, he sneaks out of the meeting for a short break only to find the meeting over when he returns, the usual suspects having departed to the four winds. Having decided that this was a sign of his good fortune, he decides to see if the stockroom actually has the supplies he needs. What he finds there however is a trysting couple in the dark (one married, the other not) and, once the light is turned on, a dead body in the corner. The body is that of one of his colleagues who stormed out of the faculty meeting earlier, a blackboard eraser stuffed into her lifeless mouth. Having disappeared from the meeting at roughly the same time, Tom finds himself in the unwelcome position of prime suspect and with the help of his husband, former baseball player Scott Carpenter, he'll have to figure out who really killed the other teacher before the crime is pinned on him.