Welcome.

If you enjoy fiction that blends high stakes with emotional depth, I invite you to explore my novels. From the wide-eyed optimism of a Southern teenager in a Columbia dorm room to the ruthless drive of a CEO in a corporate boardroom, my stories follow characters on deeply personal journeys with life-changing consequences—often shaped by secrecy, ambition, and the illusion of control.

Book cover for Playing by the Book by S. Chris Shirley, featuring a young man in a blazer with a backpack walking through a tree-lined path decorated with string lights.

Playing by the Book

Playing by the Book is a coming-of-age young adult novel about the joy and heartbreak we encounter in the search for our own truth.

When seventeen-year-old high school newspaper editor Jake Powell leaves his small Alabama town for Columbia University’s summer journalism program, it feels like a dream come true. But his father, a fundamentalist Christian preacher, senses trouble—and he’s rarely wrong.

Up North, Jake must navigate unfamiliar freedoms and uncomfortable truths, starting with his growing feelings for a handsome Jewish classmate named Sam. What he could keep hidden back home now rises to the surface in the Big Apple.

Standing by his side are a sharp-tongued classmate with a Park Avenue attitude and the designer bags to match, a loyal friend from back home who isn’t sure she’s ready to let Jake go, and an outrageously flamboyant aunt determined to help Jake embrace love—and avoid the heartbreak she knows all too well.

Temporary book cover for Bloody Hell with the subtitle "An Upmarket Corporate Thriller" and the words "In Development" on a dark background.

Bloody Hell

Bloody Hell is a corporate thriller that explores the limits of control, the price of ambition, and how far we’ll go to protect the people we love.

Skyler Longview, CEO of Blackwell Pharmaceuticals, has built his life on mastering outcomes. But when his new wife, Mimi, is deliberately infected with a rare, fatal virus during their honeymoon abroad, he faces a crisis that exposes his limits for the first time.

With less than a year to save her, Skyler launches the largest global drug race in modern history. But the search for a cure spirals into a labyrinth of hidden agendas, government cover-ups, and moral compromise—while Mimi’s body becomes the proving ground for a treatment that may come too late.

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