SHORTS FROM THE SHELF features short serialized fiction by author Shannon Muir, administrator of SHANNON MUIR’S THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF, that may be later released as part of e-book or print collections. The story line featured currently is “A String of LaChances,” which will run over the next five weekends. This is Part One.

Rowena LaChance’s name gave her the world.

Thing was, she didn’t want it.

She lived to use her influence and power to investigate and report on the injustices in the world. Not everyone liked this, especially not the rest of her family.

So she’d chosen to exist exiled from them, and generally, that did not bother Rowena much.  The only person she really missed would be her twin brother, Rowan, but he’d disappeared from the family’s life some time ago. It seemed by his own choice.

Part of Rowena craved to find out what happened to him. If something evil befell him, Rowena would want to use all the powers at her disposal to find justice. Perhaps, however, he’d just gone to want to build a new life away from the LaChance family spotlight. Rowena knew how hard that would be. You’d practically need to disappear off the face of the earth to pull that off.

Yet, Rowan’s fate kept nagging at her.

One day, she heard news of a woman named Rikah LaChance appearing on a television interview, talking about being married to an Edmond LaChance, and how the interview had been quickly closed off due to fire breaking out at the studio.

That immediately caught her attention. Edmond LaChance was her much older brother’s son, the same age as Rowan and herself.

Rowena decided to look further into the circumstances of the fire, and how this mysterious Rikah LaChance fit into her own family background.