To solve a mystery, reach beneath for the stories.
Maria Pell Mystery Series
Like Christie’s Hercule Poirot, poet Maria Pell happens upon crimes, which she feels compelled to solve due to a strong sense of moral duty. She is psychic, but as a Kirkus reviewer noted, “…spirits guide her, but Maria works her way toward a solution primarily with gumption and intuition.”
The Untold Story of Edwina (Maria Pell Mystery Series Book 1)
“ . . . equal parts mystery, romance, thriller, and parable. The lively adventures of Maria Pell in the North Carolina backwater are punctuated by poetry that is sometimes achingly lovely and often just plain ingenious.”
Where the River Runs Deep (Maria Pell Mystery Series Book 2)
Distraught over her partner’s betrayal, poet Maria Pell, no stranger to paranormal phenomena, flees to Cherapee, a small coastal town in North Carolina, to participate in a writers’ retreat. She brings verses written by a deceased local poet, intending to find the woman who inspired them. Her writer friend, Bo Bennett has also signed on to teach at the retreat. Researching a history of the Creighton family, he discovers someone is killing descendants of Old Peter Creighton, a seventeenth century slave-owner.
Old Sins (Maria Pell Mystery Series Book 3)
Battered by her archeologist lover’s betrayal, poet Maria Pell flees to an Irish village to study prehistoric people and write her next volume of poetry, but her sanctuary is invaded first by her moody cousin and then by her Togolese lover who unexpectedly show up on her doorstep. When the discovery of a girl’s body on a rocky shore reawakens Maria’s devastating childhood memory of finding a dead baby floating in a stream, her days become haunted by this child’s death. As teenage girls disappear, villagers are terrified that sex-traffickers are targeting their community. With crimes to be solved, both past and present, Maria risks her life to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Let Us Be Raucous
Let Us Be Raucous is a shout, both jubilant and anguished, from the poet’s heart.
Spy Car and Other Poems
“If poetry is a car, this debut collection hums and purrs like an expertly tuned machine.” (KIRKUS)
In the Time of Peacocks
It is 1949 in a seaside town in Mexico, and Caterina lives happily as a cherished daughter of a wealthy family. She has only one worry: she has no early memories of her childhood. Increasingly, strange images drift into her mind—a gazebo, a farm, a blonde woman. She has no idea that she is really someone named Cate Miller, who was kidnapped from her Indiana farm family ten years earlier.
