Category: Writing

What’s it about?

Elaine Viets’ My Dead-End Job mysteries have become classics.  But even classics need a little reboot. The first thirteen novels have been re-released by JABberwocky Literary on March 6 as e-books. All books have new covers by the award-winning Jenn Reese at Tiger Bright Studios.

Inside, you’ll find your favorite adventures of Helen Hawthorne, the St. Louis woman who had a high-finance job, a beautiful home— and a good-for-nothing husband she caught in the act with their neighbor. When she divorces the bum, the judge saddles Helen with alimony. Helen refuses to pay her ex, tosses her wedding ring in the Mississippi River and goes on the run.

She winds up in Fort Lauderdale, working dead-end jobs for cash under the table. Follow Helen as she learns to thrive in subtropical South Florida. Along the way Helen changes. She goes from a bitter woman who distrusts men to a happily married bride. She becomes a private eye. She still works those low-paying jobs, but now she’s undercover.

Continue reading “Blog Tour: The My Dead-End Job Series by Elaine Viets”

What’s it about?

Ren Ishida has nearly completed his graduate degree at Keio University when he receives news of his sister’s violent death. Keiko was stabbed one rainy night on her way home, and there are no leads. Ren heads to Akakawa to conclude his sister’s affairs, failing to understand why she chose to turn her back on the family and Tokyo for this desolate place years ago.

But then Ren is offered Keiko’s newly vacant teaching position at a prestigious local cram school and her bizarre former arrangement of free lodging at a wealthy politician’s mansion in exchange for reading to the man’s ailing wife. He accepts both, abandoning Tokyo and his crumbling relationship there in order to better understand his sister’s life and what took place the night of her death.

As Ren comes to know the eccentric local figures, from the enigmatic politician who’s boarding him to his fellow teachers and a rebellious, captivating young female student, he delves into his shared childhood with Keiko and what followed. Haunted in his dreams by a young girl who is desperately trying to tell him something, Ren realizes that Keiko Ishida kept many secrets, even from him. Continue reading “Blog Tour: Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan”

What’s it about?

On an empty desert road, stressed-out ex-cop Lyle Deming finds a bullet-riddled body next to a mint-condition 1970s Pontiac Firebird. When he returns to the scene with sheriff’s deputies: no car, no body.  Does the answer lie in Nostalgia City where Lyle works? The Arizona retro theme park re-creates—in every detail—an entire small town from the 1970s.  It’s complete with period cars, clothes, music, hairstyles, food, shops, fads, restaurants—the works.

Lyle swapped his job as a Phoenix homicide detective for a cab in Nostalgia City when the anxieties and disappointments of police work nearly pushed him over the edge.

Nostalgia City VP Kate Sorensen, a former college basketball star, is in Nevada on park business when she gets mixed up with a sleazy Las Vegas auto dealer who puts hidden “kill switches” and GPS trackers in cars he sells—mainly to low-income buyers.  Miss a payment—sometimes by as little as a few days—and your car is dead.  Maybe you are, too.

When Kate’s accused of murder in Reno, Lyle arrives to help his blonde, not-quite-girlfriend and they plow through a deadly tangle of suspects and motives.  Kate and Lyle hit one dead end after another as they struggle to exonerate Kate, catch a blackmailer, save a witness’s life, and help find the missing corpse.

Continue reading “Blog Tour and Excerpt: Desert Kill Switch by Mark Bacon”