The Avid Reader

Mystery

Date to be Published: March 5, 2024

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In a bid to heal from the grief of a personal loss, forensic genealogist, RaeJean Hunter, takes on a straightforward case —identify human remains found on a nearby college campus, believed to be the 180-year-old remains of Mary Rogers, a woman who died mysteriously in 1841 and was believed to have been buried in the nearby cemetery that had washed away. It should be simple enough, a project to get her back in the game.

Unfortunately, it quickly becomes anything but. In fact, it becomes downright dangerous.

Someone doesn't want RaeJean to investigate the puzzling death of the woman whose death inspired Edgar Allan Poe's "The Mystery of Marie Roget." As she follows clues through four states and discovers living family members who both help and hinder her search, she quickly realizes that the secrets of Mary Rogers' demise were never meant to be exposed.

What lengths will someone go to keep the truth buried in the past? As threats escalate and RaeJean and her family's lives become endangered, she's forced to follow every lead and use every skill she has to find the answers she needs before it's too late. Using DNA from two famous New England families, historical data, modern genealogical techniques, and a little guidance from a seemingly mystical antique desk, RaeJean takes on the cold case despite being given every reason to abandon it.

After all, what truths have been hidden for 180 years that would be worth bribery, kidnapping, and even murder?

RaeJean Hunter is about to find out.

About the Author

ML Condike has published short stories in anthologies that include Strange & Sweet, (2019), Tall Tales and Timeless Stories, (2022), Malice in Dallas, Metroplex Mysteries, Volume 1 (2022), and won first place in the fifteenth annual Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards, Mystery/Crime category (2019), and 2nd Place in the Tennessee Williams Short Story Contest, Key West Art & Historical Society (2022).

She’s an associate member of Mystery Writers of America Florida Chapter, Sisters in Crime National, Sisters in Crime North Dallas (Treasurer), Granbury Writers’ Bloc, and Key West Writers Guild.

As the result of her study of genealogy for her debut novel The Desk from Hoboken, she researched her own family and she discovered she had a direct bloodline to a Patriot. So, most recently she has been inducted into the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).

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Books2Read

Suspense Novella

Date Published: September 27, 2023

Publisher: The Wild Rose Press

Sweethearts Eric Leidheldt and Desiree Chauveau are spending a weekend at his uncle's cabin when they encounter two strangers cutting wood. Eric is knocked unconscious, and Desi is viciously attacked. The following day two police officers come to their apartment to arrest Desi. Her assailants are dead, murdered with an axe, and her fingerprints are on it. She confesses—but is she really guilty? Eric is determined to stand by her, but the physical and emotional effects of the attack severely challenge their relationship.

Excerpt

The pickup was a very old, battered Dodge. Beyond it were two bearded men in plaid flannel shirts. The one with the axe was about forty, broad-shouldered, and dark-haired. The other one was tall, scruffy, a little younger, and had red hair. They both turned toward the approaching couple. The red-haired one stared at Desi in a way Eric didn’t like, but the other man smiled genially and said, “Howdy, folks. Pretty day, ain’t it?”

And then he swung the axe.

About the Author

Linda Griffin knew she wanted to be a “book maker” as soon as she learned to read and wrote her first story, “Judy and the Fairies,” at the age of six. She retired as fiction librarian for the San Diego Public Library to spend more time on her writing. She has had stories of every length from short shorts to novellas published in numerous literary journals, and The Axe is her seventh book from the Wild Rose Press.

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