The sixth Charlotte Diamond mystery finds the retired FBI agent and her significant other, movie star Brenda Brandon, on the edge of the Florida Everglades to film a movie within a movie about an old movie. Brenda has taken a cameo role in the reprise of her first film experience, a Vietnam air war film of forty years earlier that was closed down by a brush with espionage, a murder, and the disappearance of the movie’s star, White Orchid, factors that combined to pique the interest of the FBI. Charlotte has been hired as a technical consultant to help weave a blockbuster movie script out of the earlier, failed filming.  

  When the mysteries of the earlier film come back to haunt the new film crew and cast after the crash of a company plane in the Everglades, Charlotte finds herself deputized by the FBI to figure out not only what happened then, but what is happening now—and why. In this, she receives the help of another technical expert on the film, Ed Winslow, who always seems to know more than he is revealing and who takes an interest in Charlotte that equals that of Charlotte’s former lover and FBI contact, Evan Worthington, who wants Charlotte back in his life.  

As badly as Charlotte wants to unravel the mysteries of the lost White Orchid, an unknown someone seems even more determined to keep the past buried—even if it means that Charlotte needs to be buried as well.

The Velvet Interrogation by Stephen Kessel

Fiction, Thriller, Romance, Gay Male

U.S. diplomat Chet Bender saves young Nabil Shabili in an extraction from Palestinian refugee camps inside Lebanon in the shadow of an impending Israeli attack leading to a massacre in the camps. He subsequently accepts Nabil into his life, bed, and heart. Nearly twenty years later, Nabil is rising to a run at the presidency of Lebanon and the forces promoting this rise are busy cleaning up loose ends in Nabil’s past. And one of those loose ends is Chet. READ MORE

Price $US2.99

In 1973 James’s seventeen-year-old sister, Maria, disappeared while on her way home from school. Her disappearance not only shattered her family, it had strange, far-reaching repercussions for her ten-year-old brother. He was too young to fully understand what had happened but was left to cope alone while his parents struggled to deal with his sister’s disappearance.

Over thirty years later the police arrive on James’s doorstep to tell him that Maria’s remains have been found outside Broken Hill, an isolated mining town nearly half way across Australia from where she was last seen. But it is a town that had strong connections with his family back when his sister went missing.

Savannah Series by Olivia Stowe

Savannah Series Book 1

Chatham Square by Olivia Stowe

Inspirational, Romance, Mystery/Suspense

This charming and inspirational story reflects perfectly what makes the beautifully designed and peopled southern city of Savannah the special place that it is.  

It is seemingly a coincidence that master doll maker Ginny Standler inherits a co-op apartment fronting on the Chatham Square of Savannah, Georgia, from her Aunt Marie while simultaneously being offered an interim teaching position at Savannah’s College of Art and Design. Both circumstances enable and propel her to escape the Fan district of Richmond, Virginia, and its constant reminders of a romance having gone disturbingly sour and giving Ginny pause to question her value system and relationships with others.

Dropped unceremoniously in the quirky charm of Savannah’s park-laced historical district—and most significantly into contact with the people who live and thrive in that environment—Ginny quickly becomes entwined with a grouchy recluse; a sour, erratic, and sometimes irrational bag lady; a young girl direly in need of  healing; a young waiter laughing through his tears; a bitter poet; and a possible new love interest . . .

Savannah Series Book 2

Savannah Time by Olivia Stowe

Inspirational, Romance,

Savannah Time is a story of human caring, loyalty, inevitable change, bittersweet heartbreak, and hope, set in the lovely garden that is historic Savannah.

In this follow-on to Chatham Square, the eclectic collection of residents of one of Savannah’s original residential squares have moved along in the almost-glacial “Savannah time” pace of this southern city, although, for some, the concern is that the pace is going too fast—that inevitable unwanted change is in the air.

Samantha, the little black girl with the deformed leg of the previous book, has grown to nearly her eighteenth birthday. The residents of the square who rallied to ensure she had the reconstructive operations she needed are, for the most part, now in need of nurturing attention themselves, and Samantha is providing the “Florence Nightingale” support they need. But Samantha is at a cross-roads in her life. She has long said she wanted to become a doctor, but as the time approaches for her to leave home in pursuit of that dream, she feels the pull to remain in Chatham Square to help her friends.

Conflicted between what they want and what Samantha needs, her friends on the square fight to conquer their own fear of change for Samantha’s sake. The doll maker, Ginny, who is the emotional “glue” for the residents of the square and employs Samantha as her assistant; Rose, the matriarch “queen of the square”; Arnie, the irascible but kindly super of Ginny and Samantha’s apartment house; and the ailing bookstore pair, Tom and Edward, all have to bow to inevitable changes if Samantha is going to be set free.

Added to the mix are two young men vying for Samantha’s attention and a new resident to the square, a novelist on a mysterious mission.

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