Tells the story of an unsolved mass murder of five family members in rural Wisconsin

"How well do you know your wife, Mr Crookham?" Peter Crookham arrives home late from work to a bloodbath: his journalist brother, Andy, is dead - covered in knife wounds - and his beautiful young wife, Mariana, is bathed in his blood. Convinced his wife is incapable of murder, Peter vows to clear her name. Yet he is forced to question his conviction when he discovers the subject of Andy's final investigation - Mariana's past. This past, Peter will discover, is inextricably linked to one man: an elusive, mysterious figure affiliated with the then East German security service, the STASI. But this man is more than that. Much more. And so is Mariana Crookham.

BLOOD RELATIVE Sole surviving member of his unit, Rogue Trooper is cut off from Souther lines and hunted remorselessly by the Nort forces. He's hot on the trail of the Traitor General who sold out Rogue and his buddies, three of whom accompany him as sentient life-chips stored in his high-tech weaponry. When his latest lead takes him back to the site of the Quartz Zone Massacre, Rogue gets more than he bargained for at the hands of a unit of brutal bio-warriors. The battlefields of the near future come to shocking life in this tale of loyalty, treachery, genetic soldiers, sinister experiments and all out warfare.

In this spine-tingling thriller--the dark offspring of The Lives of Others and The Fugitive--an architect races against the clock to clear his wife of his brother's murder. Architect Peter Crookham is running late for a dinner party with his estranged journalist brother and his gorgeous German wife, Mariana. He enters his home to discover his brother viciously stabbed to death and his wife covered in blood and clutching a knife, in a nearly catatonic state. Refusing to accept that Mariana could be responsible for Andy's death, Peter vows to clear her name. As he begins to search the past for clues, Peter soon learns that Andy had been looking into Mariana's murky past in Germany, and had even traveled to Berlin to piece together some facts about her childhood. Anxious for answers, Peter retraces his brother's steps in East Berlin--and finds himself caught in a web of intrigue involving violent remnants of the former East German security service, the feared STASI. With a split narrative that alternates back and forth between Peter's current hunt for the truth and the horrendous realities of life in communist East Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s, Blood Relative asks the question: How well do we really know the ones we love?

A suburban teenager is targeted by a traumatized survivor of a brutal dictatorship in this “fast-paced tale of obsession” (The New York Times). Pretty and popular sixteen-year-old Mariah Ebinger enjoys a pleasant and peaceful life, though she sometimes wonders about herself. She experiences weird dreams, and has an inexplicable phobia about helicopters. Strangest of all is her ability to speak Spanish. Rolando Carrera, a man from thousands of miles away, might be able to explain some of the mystery—but he has no intention of doing that. Years ago, his wife and daughter were murdered by the death squads in Argentina’s infamous “dirty war.” Now Carrera has crossed some terrible internal line. His grief and rage have blended into a toxic cocktail of obsession with one single burning aim: Kill Mariah Ebinger. . . . “Hougan is a master.” —Library Journal “Hougan’s sharp prose imparts urgency to her sensitively rendered account of all-too-plausible violence and its chilling consequences.” —Publishers Weekly

Investigation Discovery (ID) TV aired an episode loosely adapted as a partially fictionalized version of this book. Now read the REAL story. "BLOOD RELATIVES" proves that truth is stranger than fiction. This is a "who done it" with twists and turns and multiple murders you won't see coming. The characters and events are REAL - including "the mother who legalized abortion in America," and her children who are caught up in complex family relationships resulting from adoption, abortion, incest, greed, corruption and murders. Just as one may hand down a family recipe, this story, which takes the reader from the 1960s to the present, the story provides an intriguing mix of Southern pride and prejudice, mystery, motives and murders. Turn up the heat, stir in the action, add a pinch of reasonable doubt, allow to simmer, and feed your craving for a bloody tale.

Weary of his work, Lomax reluctantly takes a case defending a man he believes is guilty of murder When Samuel Butler, a cruelly arrogant titan of industry, learns his wife is cheating again, he expresses his feelings with a punch to her face. She is bruised when he leaves the house, but still alive. After a few hours’ drinking, he comes home to apologize, flowers in hand, and finds his wife bludgeoned to death on the floor. Or at least that’s what he tells the police. The cops don’t believe him, and neither do the people of Denver, who write Butler off as a murderer even before his trial starts. In desperation, Butler’s lawyer hires private detective Jacob Lomax to prove his client’s alibi. Fresh off a Mexican vacation and thinking of quitting the business, Jake hates himself for defending a man who is so obviously guilty. But as he digs into the victim’s past, he reconsiders. There are plenty of men who wanted this woman dead.