Sage Adair Historical Mysteries Series

This mystery – set in 1902 Portland – shows a colorful but corrupt city.   If you were a single man strolling in Portland's Old Town a century ago, you might have been clubbed, drugged and dragged onto a schooner bound for China or a worm-riddled whaler headed for the Bering Straits. It didn't pay to complain too much–that is, if you didn't want to get thrown into the sea. The practice was called "shanghaiing" and it was common on the West Coast, with Portland as a key center. Shanghaiing, preferred by Portland's business leaders because it cut shipping costs, is at the center of Land Sharks, a new mystery by Oregon author, Susan Stoner. This book is the second in a series featuring Sage Adair and has him trying to find out what happened to a labor organizer who has disappeared, leaving behind a wife and baby.   Using authentic historical details, the book shows readers a different Portland–a time when houses of prostitution flourished, illegal votes bought corrupt judges and companies' opposition to unions took the form of murder. The reader follows Adair out of the seedy saloons and into Portland's extensive underground and through its tunnels to the waterfront, past cages where drugged men were imprisoned and waiting to learn their fates as shanghaied men.

In the fall of 1902, Portland's trestle bridges linking parts of the city across ravines and bog lands began collapsing. Labor union operative, Sage Adair, is observing a carpenter's union strike line. As the rain falls and the carpenters march for an eight hour day, the situation turns life threatening when the lumber mill owner's goons, safely atop huge horses and carrying long staves, ride down on the peaceful picketers. Within days the situation becomes dire when the mill owner's body is discovered within the charred remains of the company offices. All fingers point to the union president who is soon behind bars in Portland's dank basement jail. Sage has no choice but to embark on the mission of proving the man innocent. As the story unwinds, the falling trestles become key to solving the murder. As does the unlikely assistance of Portland's iconic ragpicker poet. This exciting tale is crafted around the true history of Portland's falling trestle bridges, municipal corruption, and the city's very real ragpicker poet.

Black Drop is a fast-paced story crafted around Theodore Roosevelt's 1903 visit to Portland, Oregon. The new president has threatened big business and Congress by adopting a progressive program aimed at equalizing wealth and power, reducing abuse of workers, rejecting racial discrimination and preserving the environment. It appears these efforts have triggered an assassination attempt. Against the backdrop of mounting excitement over the impending presidential visit, Sage Adair and his colorful, like-minded friends race to prevent Roosevelt's murder. And, since life is never simple, Sage also learns of young boys who need rescuing from a horrific fate. As the presidential train and the boys' doom rush ever closer, every crucial answer remains elusive. Once again, actual historical events lie at the core of this fourth book in the fascinating Sage Adair historical mystery series.

     This fifth book in the Sage Adair Historical Mystery series thrusts Sage Adair into an unfamiliar landscape and social milieu—a situation that challenges his skills and endangers his life.       It's 1903 and a range war is brewing in Central Oregon. Extortion by an enemy sends Sage on a wild stagecoach ride into the Crooked River country's deep canyons and parched valleys. There he finds cowboys blazing dead lines across the range land that sheep men and their animals dare not cross. The threat is real. Already two shepherds lay dead in remote mountain meadows and soon, another sheepman dies. This time, the murderer attacks his victim in the heart of Prineville—the area's fastest growing town. As Sage races to avert the conflict, he uncovers why these people of the central plateau are embroiled in a crisis not of their own making. And he learns that, unless he and his unlikely allies act quickly, these hardy folk will turn on each other.      As the deaths mount, Sage faces a different kind of deadline. If he doesn't uncover the murderer stalking the sheepmen, their restraint will snap—catapulting the entire region into a war where neighbor will slaughter neighbor. This fast-paced, well-researched and compelling novel lays bare the historical forces that threatened and, ultimately, shaped Central Oregon and its people.

In this sixth book of the series, Sage's mother Mae goes undercover as a steam laundry worker alongside women working six-day weeks, ten-hour days. Exhausted and ill the women implore the laundry owners to institute nine-hour workdays.   The insertion of white slavers, arsonists, and kidnappers into the ensuing labor dispute leaves Sage facing a nearly insurmountable problem when two women disappear. Even as Sage, Mae, and their colorful associates hunt for the missing women, they continue their effort to help the laundry workers win relief.   Like the series' previous books, The Mangle is a story built around the true-life actions of ordinary people at the beginning of the twentieth century. This time the focus is on the progressive women who were tackling a number of social injustices: wage inequality, prostitution, social diseases, and poverty.   As the historical notes at story's end reveal, these women's efforts changed history–for the entire country. Their case went before the Supreme Court, creating new legal precedence, paving the way for their attorney to eventually becoming one of the country's most revered Supreme Court Justices, as well as being written about by another great Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Slow Burn had its impetus in a one-paragraph, 1903 news article, reporting that the city council had voted to plank or gravel Powell Blvd and Milwaukie Ave. after being warned by the Fire Insurance Underwriter's Board that the city's continued failure to make the two roads passable during wet weather would result in all structures in that area being uninsurable. This organization's impact in this instance triggered the author's research into both the firefighters' working conditions and the Underwriter's Board.   Slow Burn's release, on June 26, 2018, marked the 105th David Campbell memorial service at Portland's Firefighters' Memorial Park on Portland's West Burnside. Campbell, Portland's most beloved fire chief, was killed in 1911 during a Standard Oil tank fire on the city's east side. He was the first to enter the building, intent on insuring it was safe for his firefighter crew to enter. This seventh book in the award-winning Sage Adair historical mystery series features Campbell and the firefighters he died to protect. Interwoven within this tale of courage and sacrifice is the equally compelling story of how Portland's black community addressed the growing racism of the nation's post-reconstruction era.   Ordered to a mysterious late night meeting Sage Adair is suddenly thrust onto firefighting's front lines and into the lives of Portland's firefighters. Concerned by the reality of early 1900's firefighting, Sage is soon hunting the arsonist who is burning down the city and framing innocent men for his crimes. Relying on original source material, contemporary news reports and firsthand accounts, this is an accurate portrayal of the lives of Portland's firefighters at the turn of the 20th century as well as a depiction of the black community's resilience in the face of that era's rising racism.

Bitter Cry is the eighth novel in the Sage Adair historical mystery series set in the early 1900's. Once again, we have an action-packed mystery that uses actual historical facts of social concern. Sage Adair, an undercover operative for the labor movement, is waiting to learn his next assignment when a young newsboy crosses his path. What follows is a journey into the dark corners of Sage's own past and into a present that includes, kidnapping, murder, and greed. When his heart gets captured by an earnest, elfin face, Sage finds himself battling child labor exploitation. What was life like for the impoverished child working as a newsboy, messenger, or childminder? Sage finds out, one heart tug at time. Fortunately, others he encounters show him, and us, that hope is found in the actions of the progressives. Many of the story's characters are based on actual progressives, people who changed the course of history.

Sage Adair and his multi-ethnic companions discover, in their fight for social justice, that what you eat might kill and has. Their effort to stop the poisoning takes the reader on a wild ride alongside the story characters who cross international borders, are shanghaied aboard a doomed whaler, imprisoned dark cellars, and locked inside an insane asylum. Along the way, their mission is eagerly joined by angry doctors, bold women, and noble farmers. This 10th book of the Sage Adair Mystery series is another rousing adventure crafted around actual historical facts and people.