FREE ARC of Echo of Lies — Last Chance!
Echo of Lies is edited, proofed, and ready for publication at the beginning of February! This is your last opportunity to receive a free Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review on any online platform. Just click the button below.
Shadowed by post‑war New Mexico and the Roswell mystery, a young woman fights to reclaim her future.
Francie Cortez is smart, determined, and wants more from life than dust under her boots. But in a world ruled by ingrained customs and deep-rooted tradition, she’s pushed out of college and away from the physics* career her talent should have made possible.
When her father vanishes, it’s too much to outrun, and Francie retreats to the family ranch, a refuge where she tends wounds she’s no longer sure will ever fully heal.
Her isolation shatters when an alien object crashes on her land. The impact sparks a chain of events that pulls Francie into a web of lies, unexpected allies, and unseen enemies. As she digs into the object’s origins, she realizes it’s tied to her missing father—and to a secret some people will do anything, even kill, to protect.
Francie races to uncover her family’s hidden truths and the role she might play in a future still unfolding. Caught between a menacing spaceman and a charming, enigmatic soldier, she must choose—risk everything to rewrite her story, or retreat into a smaller, safer life.
For fans of richly layered historical fiction with thrilling speculative twists and burgeoning romance, Echo of Lies draws you into a world where the unknown is always closer than it seems, and love, loyalty, and sacrifice quietly shape a tomorrow worth living.
*Yes, there is math/physics in the book, but there won’t be a quiz.
De-Extinct Zoo Mysteries
The Pleistocene epoch lasted from about ~2.5 million years ago until ~ 11,700 years ago and was defined by huge sheets of ice that ebbed, formed, melted, and reformed over large areas of the continents.
It was also defined by the rise of megafauna—mammoths, giant sloths, enormous bears, great cats, and apes twelve feet tall—and some megafauna are extant today—elephants, rhinoceros, bison.
But it’s the extinct animals that populate the De-Extinct Zoo Mystery series, in a futuristic zoo and re-wilded New Mexico and Colorado that I write about in this series.
Each story spotlights a de-extinct, while the senior veterinarian at the Pleistocene BioPark Zoo is my amateur sleuth*. These books are linked in a series, and the first one, Unmasked, is free on most online platforms.
Shattered is the fourth book in the series, starring a pair of woolly rhinos (Coelodonta antiquitatis). Look for it in late Spring or early Summer.
*BTW, these books are NOT cozies. You’ve been warned … 🦣
Ice Age Tragedy turned into Genetic Gold
Fourteen thousand years ago, a ~two-month-old wolf pup near what’s now Tumat, Siberia, swallowed a chunk of woolly rhinoceros for dinner, then died when his den collapsed and froze solid in permafrost (poor puppy).
When scientists opened the pup’s stomach, they realized the meat was so well preserved they could sequence the entire genome of that rhino—one of the last of its kind before the species vanished—and only the third full woolly rhino sequence analyzed.
So, we got our best look yet at a woolly rhino’s DNA from half-digested flesh inside a mummified predator, a little Ice Age tragedy that turned into a gold mine for understanding how and how fast the species went extinct.
Mystery Authors looking for New Readers … 📚
SHELBY GRIFFIN MYSTERY THRILLERS
The streets of L.A. are safe under her watch … but at what cost?
Detective Shelby Griffin’s stubbornness is legendary. Its honestly why she’s survived the streets of Los Angeles as long as she has. She patrols the streets vowing to rid the city of the vermin that take advantage of the weak and innocent.
But this threat is unlike any she’s ever seen before.
Brace yourself for a roller coaster ride of emotions as Shelby fights to keep the city safe, all while questioning whether it’s worth the sacrifice.
DANNY COOGAN MYSTERY (Frontier series book 4)
Danny Coogan is now working as a US Marshal, and he is within weeks of becoming a father for the first time.
During a takedown of a fugitive, he makes a grisly discovery: a body, and it's the son of someone he knows and works with.
Thus begins an off-the-books investigation that leads him to millions of dollars in stolen money, an entire collection of dead bodies, and an ultimate showdown with an adversary determined not to be taken alive.
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