Books by R H Peake

On a flight to a birding tour in Australia, Margaret Smith develops a friendship with Hammond ("Porky") Frank. On the first part of the tour, they become close friends, although Margaret ("Maggie") becomes suspicious of Porky. On the northern part of the trip, they are joined by a new assistant leader, Jameson Kanger, who begins a scheme with Porky. Left to herself, Maggie spends time with other tour members, especially Patricia Shaper, a young Olympic Women's Trap Skeet champion. Kanger drugs Shaper and rapes her. Patsy confides in Maggie and they avoid Kanger and Porky the rest of the tour, although Porky renews his relationship with Maggie when she returns to Galveston, Texas. She arranges a meeting for him with Mackensie Craft, a wealthy birder willing to pay to see a rare and supposedly extinct Eskimo curlew. The proposed sighting goes awry as Shaper intrudes and, in the confusion, Craft kills Hammond and Kanger. Two local policemen try to solve the murders. They eventually do even though they are also working on a case involving a serial rapist, but Craft disappears. So, the murder mystery becomes a manhunt during which the policemen are married by women who help them apprehend the serial rapist.

A sequel to Moons Black Gold, this novel deals with the struggle of George Landsetter to keep his five hundred acres of woodland from Dave Blackmun, a lawless miner and criminal kingpin. Helped by Mike Barton and the FBI, George brings down Blackmun while trying to court Heidi Leaves, head of a nonprofit promoting better mining laws.

Everett A. ("Moon") Lunamin returns from battles in Vietnam determined to gain wealth and social status by becoming an entrepreneur in the coal industry at the height of the coal boom in the late 1960's and early 1970's.Moon struggles with his cousin George Landsetter, a reclamation officer, and his surface mining competitors, Dave Blackmun and Dab Whacker, whose greed exceeds their business ability and ethics.Lunamin's efforts succeed to a degree far beyond what he had imagined. After some missteps, he realizes his goal of marrying his high school sweetheart, Susan Stanard, whose family is duly impressed with his newly acquired wealth.Moon is less happy than his wife with their material success. They drift apart and seek companionship outside their marriage. In love with another woman, Lunamin pleads for a divorce, but Susan refuses because she wants to keep the lifestyle Lunamin's fortune provides.Conflicts sour Lunamin's success. Quarrels with his wife, his fellow surface miners, his cousins, the IRS, and a local district attorney bedevil Moon, who struggles to save his business, his reputation, and his life.