About the Book:

What does an ex-con, thief, drug addict, and hustler know about crime and love North of the Apple? Answer: A lot.

What does a newspaper reporter, school teacher, and teen counselor know about crime and love North of the Apple?  Answer: A lot.

Kelly "Smooth" Michaels is an aging, lonely New York City thief and hustler exiled to cities north of the Big Apple. There he finds love, sex, and the chance to make the millions of dollars that eluded him in the big city. Michaels is also a trained killer who "don't take no shorts."

Randy Kopec is an idealistic, love-struck newspaper reporter with a chance to find his heart when his best friend, a former high school basketball star, is brutally murdered. Kopec can't find peace or rest until he helps catch the killer . . . so he can marry his best friend’s widow. 

Follow the lives and loves of New Yorkers on a collision course, where greed, lust, and the search for elusive happiness expose the not-so-innocent days in America before 9/11.

About the Author:

After a Catholic school education on the South Side of Chicago, Joseph T. Gray studied English and American Literature at New York University and Photography at the New York Institute of Photography, earned an AAS in Business Administration at Duchess Community College, and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA in the integrated study of English, Communications, and Psychology from Marist College.

In 1992, he was duly elected and inducted into membership of the Gamma Eta Chapter of Alpha Sigma Lambda at Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY.