The Parking Space (23 page)

Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the day the stock market crashed, and the day Evelyn Ford will never forget.

With the untimely death of her parents and the loss of their only income, Evelyn, and her brother, Frank flee to a make-shift hovel built in Central Park. After Frank mysteriously goes missing, bare cupboards force Evelyn to seek employment anywhere she can find work, even if that means working at a burlesque theater.

Catching the attention of Don Vincent Giovanni, a Kingpin in the New York mafia, Evelyn discovers that Frank is serving time in prison for running hooch and he owes Vincent a lot of money. In order to pay off her brother’s debt, Evelyn is thrown into the world of mobsters and bootlegging.

Between running hooch all over the city of New York and trying to save her brother, Evelyn finds herself drawn to Max Catalano, Vincent’s Consigliere. Even with secrets of his own, he’s the only one she can trust when she entangles herself in the middle of the New York mafia crime wars.

Armed with her six-shooter, Ava De La Vega dips the pen into the inkwell and etches her name on the Esmerelda County tax record book. A formidable force, that's what her peers have called her. The woman in a man's world, what did she know of mining ore, silver, and copper? Plenty. And it's this knowledge that makes her of the richest miners in Nevada in 1903.

Of course, it also makes her a target. Traveling back and forth from Tonopah, Nevada and San Francisco, Ava spends her life digging up precious metals from the depths of mineshafts then blowing her money on the finer things in life.

Unfortunately, for Ava, she doesn't see Craig Harrison coming.

A claim jumper from the snowy Klondike, Craig has traveled from the harsh Canadian mountains down to the Sierra Nevada range. With aspirations of a wealthy strike of his own, he sets his sights on the young woman and begins plans to steal her claim.

Unfortunately, for Craig, he doesn't see Ava coming.