“The Devil lurked nearby in our Kansas town, an evil that was as natural and physical as a hillside.”
“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it. It’s the Day blood. Something’s wrong with it.”
In January 1985 the Day family was murdered in the home, all but two were killed, Libby- 7 and Ben- 15. Libby testified that it was her brother Ben that killed her mom and two sisters that night. The Kinnakee Kansas Farmhouse Massacre they called it. But had she lied.
“Backdropped against clumps of rich black Iowa topsoil was an unmistakably human hand.”
Women’s murdered bodies are discovered concealed in the graves of the recently buried throughout Iowa. DCI investigator Cam Prescott is assigned lead on the case and they have called in several specialists to consult on it. One of those specialists is Forensic Psychologist Dr. Sophia Channing, brought in to assist by providing a profile on the suspect. “She’d spent the better part of graduate school interning with Louis Frein, renowned profiler at Quantico’s Behavioral Science Unit. In the last decade and a half, she’d interviewed the most notorious serial killers in captivity. There was more, much more to the woman than her appearance.”
“Jessica closed her eyes and imagined a fitting demise for the thesis advisor whose Birkenstocks had stomped on her dream of getting an advanced degree: a quick defenestration, a slow acting poison, or a hard bludgeon to his fat ugly head with the blunt side of an axe. Professor Baldrick Wolfgang Schmutzig, “Preeminent Philosopher” (and World-Class Dickhead) had insulted her for the last time.”
Jessica James is a philosopher student at Northwestern University, a long way from her Montana, trailer park home. She is secretly living in the attic of the philosophy department, sleeping on a desk but she is determined to get her doctorate. Professor Wolf is her thesis advisor and she is also his TA. Her and a couple friends decide to break into his office and snoop around while smoking pot but they find more than what they bargained for. Her thesis, looking untouched with a post dated letter pretty much kicking her out of graduate school and Wolf’s dead body in the bathtub.
“That unto me, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” -Isaiah 45:23
“Vickie told friends that H.G. Wells’s fifty-year-old stories had a lot of relevance in modern America, especially for someone like herself, someone who had begun getting messages from God while she took baths and who was having dreams of great violence and a cabin on a mountaintop.”
A small collection of essays or short stories by the author that cover topics from Data Mined advertising on the internet, that extra key we all have on our key rings and don’t know where it goes, to a logophile (which is a lover of words).
“Of all the mysteries in my life, the one I someday hope to solve is the mystery of my extra key.”
“The stranger stared into my eyes so deeply it felt like he was looking into my soul. The staring went on for so long I was starting to feel uncomfortable when he finally spoke. “You have presbyopia.” “Oh my God,” I said, “Is that serious? It sounds like a tropical disease.” The ophthalmologist laughed. “No, it means you have old eyes. You also have a touch of astigmatism.” I rubbed my blurry, traitorous eyes. “What’s the cure, doc?” He shrugged. “Longer arms so you can read a menu. Glasses, of course.”
A great, short read, very funny and extremely enjoyable. These stories are so relatable, things that we are all going through and thinking on a daily basis but Barbara has put them on paper for us to read and laugh about together. I literally laughed out loud on a few. For someone who is an attorney and an English major, you expect her writing to be stiff and full of words that most of us would have to look up but that is not the case at all. It’s written for everyone not just other logophiles to enjoy.
“It won’t be easy,” Miss Summer repeated firmly, “for the world to adjust to your presence. England will have to shift around, make space, adapt a little, stand on its toenails and stay alert to be able to absorb someone like you… It may happen… Miracles are not unheard of.”
Lucy Anne Trotter has turned 18 and now she must vacate the orphanage that she has grown up in. She has been procured a job as a governess at Rudhall Manor. Three months into her position and the Lord Sedley is found stabbed to death in his bed chamber and a jewel necklace is stolen.
“Lord Robert Archibald Sedley, Lucy recalled, had been a belligerent fellow. A rotten creature who had been bottle headed substantially cracked and had possessed a voice that seemed to emerge from deep within his intestines to break through his cruel lips in a bellowing, reverberating sound. A sound that had shaken the very air surrounding him and had held enough power to send a weak-willed creature shooting a few feet into the air in absolute terror. Along with his commanding voice, he had also possessed a lusty temperament, a lineage that could be traced back a hundred years, and blood so blue that one was amazed to see his red cheeks. He also happened to have been four feet, eleven inches tall.”
“My name is Jamie Quinn and after ten years of practicing law, I’ve seen it all. You wouldn’t think a sleepy town like Hollywood, Florida would have much drama, but it does. The judge who swore me in had warned me, saying, ‘You’ll never believe what goes on between four walls,’ and he was right; it’s unbelievable.”
Book 1 – DEATH BY DIDGERIDOO “You can’t make stuff like that up. I mean, who would’ve imagined a didgeridoo could be a deadly weapon?” Jamie Quinn is a divorce lawyer taking some time off after the death of her mother to cancer. Her aunt calls her in a panic one day stating the cops have arrested Jamie’s autistic cousin for murder and they need her help. She knows that her cousin did not murder anyone, he couldn’t hurt a fly but the evidence is not looking good. To help her find the real killer, because clearly the police are not looking, she enlists the help of PI and ladies man, Duke Broussard. “Okay, but before I tell you my long story that involves a heavy metal band, a murder, and a state attorney with political ambitions, I need to make one thing clear…” Duke’s green eyes were watching me closely, he loved a good story. “What’s that, Darlin?” “This is not a date.”
“What must her life be like, I often wonder, living as a human.”
Sara Douroux lives on the island of Maui with her elderly adoptive parents. She doesn’t remember anything of her childhood or of coming to live in Hawaii. She can remember a year ago she got very sick, so sick she almost died. Her parents are set in the old ways, no doctors, no telephone, and very private, Sara is not allowed to have friends. A letter comes in the mail one day to her parents and they tell Sara that four cousins will be coming to stay with them for a month. Not long after, four pale white young children arrive. They are so sick that they can barely walk or talk but Sara is told that under no circumstances is she to feed them. As soon as the children arrive, strange occurrences start to happen. The children seem to be growing daily, even through they never eat. Locals begin to see a pale white woman watching them at night. Sara knows that things are not right but her parents refuse to tell her the truth about their visitors or her. As a group of local kids start to investigate, they reveal a terrible danger and Sara may be the key to saving the whole valley.
Case 1: After the Rain – A woman hires Alex Fabier to find out who is trying to kill her. Sam is the owner of a boutique that is in financial troubles. A woman comes up in the investigation that has ties to Alex’s past and the death of his wife. Jade’s background unveils that she and Sam were best friends in college. Is his client the innocent woman Alex thinks she is? In attempts to keep Sam out of harms way, he takes her to Savannah, the Smokey Mountains, the Bahamas, and France, however at every turn Jade is one step ahead of them. Nothing will stand in Jade’s way of what she is after, not even murder. Can Alex put a stop to her before she causes any more tragedy?
Marcy Edmond was in a horrible car accident that left her in a coma for 6 months. When she awakes she discovers that plastic surgeons have had to reconstruct her face and she has lost over 60 pounds. Transforming her from the ugly duckling she once had been into a beautiful swan she always wanted to be. In her small town, everyone knows of Marcy’s miraculous recovery but she is not used to all the attention. When Marcy returns home she finds that her twin sister has moved in with her family and has been helping to take care of her kids while she was in her coma. While she knows that she should be grateful to her sister, there is just something nagging her about it, something she doesn’t like about it. Marcy is struggling with her transition back in to her old life, one that she was missable in before the accident. Now, she is a whole new person, she could start over. Is that what she really wants?
