Before I started writing cozy mysteries, like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, I enjoyed a career as a ladies’ apparel sales executive. Fortunately for my writing, sales execs are also students of human nature. All my life, I have been fascinated by what makes people tick. How do they react, especially when they are out of their lane or comfort zone, such as being away from the safety of home and forced to deal with a crisis? I have taken all I have learned and applied it to my writing.
Nothing tickles my funny bone more than a laugh-out-loud, madcap tale chock full of zany, but imperfect characters to fall in love with one moment and want to smack upside their heads the next.
Give me a plot like this one that runs at a breakneck pace, with a bumbling protagonist getting herself out of one mess only to fall into a bigger one the next time, and I’m a happy camper.
Add snappy dialogue that is spicier than hot salsa and a dash of romance with a smokin’ hot local sheriff to the foibles as this book does, and I bought myself a ticket to take a rollercoaster-worthy wild ride that was more fun than whacking a piñata.
Andi Anna Jones, so-so travel agent and amateur sleuth, puts aside her resentment of her father's widow and books a sixtieth birthday cruise to Cancun for Ruby and three friends. Never does Andi imagine the cruise will include the murder of a has-been lounge singer--or that Ruby might be the main suspect. Flirting with more than danger after arriving in Mexico, Andi connects with charming local sheriff, Manual Gonzales. An embarrassing night involving the sheriff, too many margaritas, and a Mariachi band, can't quell her determination to clear the name of her ex-stepmother. While gathering clues and interviewing witnesses, however,…
I was anxious to experience all the excitement, romance, sights, and flavors of Paris, but I couldn’t leave the country.
Luckily, French Ghost took me on a fun-filled romp through Paris with descriptions of the food, sights, and social mores so deliciously detailed by the snappy, sassy dialogue of Parisian characters that I had jet lag when I turned the last page of the book.
So, if a Parisian adventure is the same dream for you as it was for me, say Bon Jour to this gem and off you go. Au Voir.
Ghost-writer Melody Layne is stranded in Paris when the over-sexed but unloved French movie star who hired her to produce his memoir accidentally drowns before the interviews begin. It's a major financial relief when his enigmatic Spanish son re-hires her, but the seductive Carlos Ortega is strangely silent about his reasons for funding a feel-good bio about a father that he clearly despised. There's enough amour in the air for Melody to ignore this apparent paradox... at least until she uncovers a hidden cache of death threats addressed to the actor. For the French police, the sexy, secretive Spaniard -…
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…
Nothing gets me giggling more than a hilarious ocean adventure starring a lovesick whale courting the protagonist’s boat.
Give me a fast-paced, madcap escapade that features a macho rent-a-Captain with Lucy and Ethel as the crew on a cruise where whatever could go wrong would go wrong, and I’ll be yours forever.
I laughed out loud at the snarky banter between the hapless duo as they stumbled and bumbled their way through a deadly hurricane while outrunning an assortment of international bad guys.
Hetta Coffey is a woman with a yacht, and she's not afraid to use it!
Hetta, a globe-trotting engineer with attitude, a penchant for trouble, and a yacht, is back, and this time she s steering us into hot Mexican waters.
Miffed that vacation plans with her chronically absent boyfriend Jenks Jenkins have gone awry, she accepts a job in Baja. So what if she and her friend Jan are spectacularly unqualified to take her yacht on a thousand mile cruise in the eastern Pacific Ocean in the middle of hurricane season? Hiring a handsome, if somewhat fishy captain for…
I might not be Irish, but I love leprechaun stories, especially ones featuring a sprite with a mischievous streak who will do anything to get what he wants.
Show me charming characters in a witty tale when past and present worlds collide like this one, and my eyes are glued to every page. Nothing makes me happier than a rollicking rollercoaster ride of magical mishaps that tickle the funny bone and warm the heart as this one did.
Elmville, a mischievous leprechaun, is desperate to retrieve his long-lost gold coin. Without it, the delicate balance between good and evil within him becomes skewed. But the elusive coin has fallen into the hands of the Tobin family, and Elmville will stop at nothing to get it back. Through the centuries, he's relentlessly haunted the Tobin's descendants, leaving a wake of destruction and death in his path. Meanwhile, Kitty and her mother, Annie, arrive in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, modern-day tourists with their own emotional baggage. Neither has a clue about the curse, nor do they believe in leprechauns. After centuries…
The second in the new series featuring amateur sleuth Imogene Durant, a retired professor of Comparative Literature. This time she’s in Ireland, and in the right place to help out when her friend’s daughter is implicated for murder.
My pet expression, “You can pick your friends but not your relatives,” was on full display in this raucous sea cruise romp.
As a student of human nature, nothing gets my attention more than a juicy story that features zany characters, the foibles of family ties, and the fact that things are not always what they appear to be.
I’m a sucker for a story that is part mystery, part romance, and part redemption with a second chance at life and love, and this one lived up to my expectations and more.
Two years ago, Jack Madison and Mary Bradley found each other. Both had suffered through difficult marriages and as Mary broke free from her abusive husband, Jack was recovering from the death of his wife. Now these two are embarking on the final chapter of their lives as they marry on a cruise ship with family surrounding them on a sunny voyage to Mexico. It looks like they will finally have their 'happily ever after'. What could possibly go wrong? With one family member objecting to their union and Mary's ex-husband lurking behind the scenes waiting to crash the reception,…
Obnoxious Mystique Swimwear sales rep Simon Posnick was universally despised by competitors and customers alike. So, there was no shortage of suspects when he ended up dead as a doornail at the Miami Beach Swimwear Trade Show with the jagged edge of a coconut shell jammed into the base of his skull.
But the treacherous trail to find his killer is packed with more dangerous human predators than the alligators and black pythons in the Everglades.
In the first century, Rome’s celebrated love poet Ovid finds himself in exile, courtesy of an irate Emperor, in the far-flung town of Tomis. Appalled at being banished to a barbarous region at the very edge of the Empire, Ovid soon discovers that he has a far more urgent -…
