The Tarbender Chronicles, Book 1: I’ll Have the Special (available now)
Behind the bar at Cliff’s Bar, Hops pours drinks, dodges darts, and keeps his secrets buttoned at the cuff. The regulars think he’s just another wise-cracking bartender with a bad knee and a knack for trouble. But when three strangers walk in with a photo of his cook Alice — and another of his own tattooed arm — Hops realizes the past he buried six years ago has come looking for him.
What follows is a week of spilled whiskey, broken glass, and revelations that twist through every shadow of the bar. Old debts resurface, alliances shift, and the line between loyalty and survival blurs faster than a shot poured on a Friday rush. Hops, Alice, and a retired cop with selective hearing find themselves caught between the man who saved them and the man who wants them gone.
Laugh-out-loud funny and razor-sharp, I’ll Have the Special serves up crime, redemption, and the kind of chaos only a bartender could stir. In The Tarbender Chronicles, every pour has a story — and every story comes with a tab.
