The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES Lauren Carr's Book: Kill and Run
Best Selling #Mystery Author Lauren Carr is the author of the Mac Faraday Mysteries & the Lovers in Crime Mysteries.
Kill and Run
A Thorny Rose Mystery Book 1
Author: Lauren Carr
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Five women with seemingly nothing in common are found brutally murdered in a townhome outside Washington, DC. Among the many questions surrounding the massacre is what had brought these apparent strangers together only to be killed.
Taking on his first official murder case, Lieutenant Murphy Thornton, USN, believes that if he can uncover the thread connecting the victims, then he can find their murderer.
Before long, the case takes an unexpected turn when Murphy discovers that one of the victims has a connection to his stepmother, Homicide Detective Cameron Gates. One wintry night, over a dozen years before, her first husband, a Pennsylvania State trooper, had been run down while working a night shift on the turnpike.
In this first installment of the Thorny Rose Mysteries, the Lovers in Crime join newlyweds Lieutenant Murphy Thornton and Jessica Faraday to sift through a web of lies and cover-ups. Together, can the detectives of the Thorny Rose uncover the truth without falling victim to a cunning killer?
Excerpt from Kill and Run
Prologue
Thirteen Years Ago
Friday, January 24: 10:25 pm
Pennsylvania Turnpike—Roadside Stop West of Pittsburgh
“Man, it’s colder than a witch’s tit.” Pennsylvania trooper Reese Phillips shivered while bringing the steaming hot, freshly-brewed coffee to his lips.
With a grin that stretched across his face, Officer Nicholas Gates asked, “Where do you come up with phrases like that, Phillips? Do you make them up?”
The middle-aged officer looked the young trooper up and down. With the fresh face of a college heart-throb, Nick Gates was little more than a rookie.
“Don’t tell me you never heard that one, Gates,” Officer Phillips grumbled. “You’re killing me.”
Chuckling, the two men made their way to the cashier to pay for their coffees.
“Half hour more and I’ll be checking out to go home and climb into bed with Rufus.” Officer Phillips shot a wicked glance over his shoulder at his trainee. “Wipe that grin off your face, Gates. My hound dog may not be as pretty as your sweet bride, but he doesn’t complain when I snore either.”
“Neither does Cameron,” Officer Gates replied. “She’s never heard my snoring.”
“I’m referring to mine,” the young officer laughed.
“She will. They all do.” Officer Phillips handed the cashier a five dollar bill. “This one’s on me, Gates. Next will be your turn.”
Officer Gates slipped his money back into his wallet and picked up the coffee he had set down on the counter in order to pay. “Hey, Phillips, do you still have that contact with the FBI?”
Officer Phillips had to think a moment while they strolled toward the door that led out into the sub-zero temperature. “Do you mean Hatfield? He used to be with the Pennsylvania state police and then joined the FBI.”
“He works in Quantico now, right?”
Bracing themselves for the blast of icy air, they pushed open the doors and stepped outside.
“Yes,” Officer Phillips said, “Why? You looking to move on already?”
“I was wondering if he’d be able to look through their national database for a missing person.”
Too cold to continue talking, the two men ran in opposite directions for their cruisers.
“I’ll have his number for you tomorrow,” Phillips yelled above the howling wind.
With a wave of his hand to acknowledge that he heard him, Officer Gates climbed into his cruiser. On the other side of the parking lot, Officer Phillips spotted a sedan speeding past the rest stop at top speed. Before the older man could react, Officer Gates turned on his flashing lights and gave chase.
“Yeah,” Officer Phillips sighed while enjoying the warmth of his hot coffee in the comfort of his patrol car. “Leave it to the young ones.”
A pair of headlights bathed the compartment of his patrol car with its high beams. A black truck followed Gates’ cruiser out onto the turnpike.
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers
Website: Lauren Carr Mystery Writer
Author's Blog: Literary Wealth
Twitter: @TheMysteryLadie
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Amazon Author Profile
Author Description: Lauren Carr fell in love with mysteries when her mother read Perry Mason to her at bedtime. The first installment in the Joshua Thornton mysteries, A Small Case of Murder was a finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Award.
Lauren is also the author of the Mac Faraday Mysteries, which takes place in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. It's Murder, My Son, Old Loves Die Hard, Shades of Murder, and Blast from the Past have all been getting rave reviews from readers and reviewers. The Murders at Astaire Castle is the fifth Mac Faraday Mystery. The Lady Who Cried Murder, the sixth installment in the series will be released October 2013.
Dead on Ice introduces a new series entitled Lovers in Crime, in which Joshua Thornton will join forces with homicide detective Cameron Gates. Lauren is currently working on the next Lovers in Crime Mystery, Real Murder (coming January 2014).
The owner of Acorn Book Services, Lauren is also a publishing manager, consultant, editor, cover and layout designer, and marketing agent for independent authors. This year, fifteen books written by independent authors will be released through the management of Acorn Book Services.
Lauren is a popular speaker who has made appearances at schools, youth groups, and on author panels at conventions. She also passes on what she has learned in her years of writing and publishing by conducting workshops and teaching in community education classes.
Author's Book List
Open Season for Murder
- A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 10“It’s Ashton. Robin, it’s me, Ashton.”
Spring is in the air. In Deep Creek Lake, the burst of blossoms on the trees has the effect of a starting pistol in the race to get the resort area ready in time for the seasonal residents return to Spencer, Maryland.
This year, the Spencer Inn, Mac Faraday’s five-star resort, has the added duty of preparing for the Diablo Ball, an annual benefit event that used to kick off Deep Creek Lake’s summer season. The exclusive gala has drawn in A-listers from across the country—including suspects and witnesses connected to Ashton Piedmont, a young woman who had disappeared while skinny dipping in Deep Creek Lake five years earlier—days after the last Diablo Ball.
Intrigued by a mysterious phone call from a young woman claiming to be Ashton, retired homicide detective Mac Faraday can’t resist diving head first into the cold case. But he’s not the only one. Someone behind the scenes has gone to a lot of trouble to bring Ashton Piedmont’s friends and enemies to the Diablo Ball—which promises to be a gala event to die for!
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Three Days to Forever
- A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 9In this latest Mac Faraday Mystery from best-selling mystery author Lauren Carr, readers will embark on a rollercoaster adventure with old friends (including the Lovers in Crime team of Prosecutor Joshua Thornton and Homicide Detective Cameron Gates), but also meet new ones as Mac Faraday’s daughter Jessica Faraday and Joshua Thornton’s son Murphy Thornton join the team in the race to get the love birds to the altar!
With three days left to the year, Deep Creek Lake is hopping with holiday vacationers and wedding guests pouring into the Spencer Inn for Mac Faraday and Archie Monday’s huge wedding ceremony which is being touted as the social event of the year.
But droopy flowers and guests who failed to RSVP are the least of Mac’s and Archie’s problems when a professional hit squad hits Spencer Manor to send the groom, Joshua Thornton, Archie’s mother, and Gnarly running for their lives.
With time running out to the big day, Mac Faraday and Spencer’s small police force have to sort through the clues to figure out not only who has been targeted for assassination, but also who is determined to stop everything … FOREVER!
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Twelve to Murder
- A Mac Faraday MysteryTwo people are brutally murdered in their summer place on Deep Creek Lake. Suspected of the murders, former child star and one-time teenybopper idol Lenny Frost takes innocent bystanders hostage in a local pub and demands that Mac Faraday find the killer. Can Mac save the hostages and himself from the wrath of the enraged has-been by piecing together the clues in less than twelve hours, or will it be a fatal last call at the stroke of midnight?
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The Lady Who Cried Murder
- A Mac Faraday MysteryFame comes at a price. Some pay with their privacy. Others pay with their pride. Khloe Everest paid with her life.
Determined to get her pretty face in front of the cameras, Khloe Everest fakes an abduction only to make a grand entrance in the midst of a press conference held by Spencer's Police Chief David O'Callaghan.
Three years later, after failing to catapult her notoriety into a long-lasting celebrity, Khloe Everest returns to Spencer upon her mother's sudden death and seemingly finds another weapon to propel herself into the spotlight. Unfortunately, someone kills her before she can make this entrance.
In Lauren Carr's sixth Mac Faraday Mystery, Mac and his friends come up against reality stars, politicians, has-beens, and wannabes. Mac also finds himself face-to-face with an old foe from his past who had managed to escape arrest during their last encounter. Now, Mac sees that his adversary has only become more powerful, and dangerous, with the passage of time.
Intent to not let this killer escape again, Mac and his friends need to put all of their talents together to put a stop to a cold blooded lady killer.
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Shades of Murder
- A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 3Question: What do you get the man with everything?
Answer: When that man is the heir of the late mystery writer Robin Spencer, retired homicide detective Mac Faraday, you get him cold case to solve.
In Shades of Murder, Mac Faraday is once again the heir to an unbelievable fortune. This time the benefactor is a stolen art collector. But this isn’t just any stolen work-of-art—it’s a masterpiece with a murder attached to it.
Ilysa Ramsay was in the midst of taking the art world by storm with her artistic genius. Hours after unveiling her latest masterpiece—she is found dead in her Deep Creek Lake studio—and her painting is nowhere to be found.
Almost a decade later, the long lost Ilysa Ramsay masterpiece has found its way into Mac Faraday’s hands and he can’t resist the urge to delve into the case.
A world away, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; former JAG lawyer Joshua Thornton agrees to do a favor for the last person he would ever expect to do a favor—a convicted serial killer.
The Favor: Solve the one murder wrongly attributed to him.
Joshua finds an unexpected ally in Cameron Gates, a spunky detective who has reason to believe the young woman known to the media only as Jane Doe, Victim Number Four, was the victim of a copycat. Together, Joshua and Cameron set out to light a flame under the cold case only to find that someone behind the scenes wants the case to remain cold, and is willing to kill to keep it that way.
Little do these detectives know that the paths of their respective cases are on a collision course when they follow the clues to bring them together in a showdown with a killer who’s got a talent
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It's Murder, My Son
- A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 1What started out as the worst day of Mac Faraday’s life would end up being a new beginning. After a messy divorce hearing, the last person that Mac wanted to see was another lawyer. Yet, this lawyer wore the expression of a child bursting to tell his secret, which would reveal Mac as heir to undreamed of fortunes, and lead him to the birthplace of America’s Queen of Mystery and an investigation that will unfold like one of her famous mystery novels.
Soon after she moves to her new lakefront home in Spencer, Maryland, multi-millionaire Katrina Singleton learns that life in an exclusive community is not all good. For some unknown reason, a strange man calling himself “Pay Back” begins stalking her. When Katrina is found strangled all evidence points to her terrorist, who is nowhere to be found.
Three months later the file on her murder is still open with only vague speculations from the local police department when Mac Faraday, sole heir to his unknown birth mother’s home and fortune, moves into the estate next door. Little does he know as he drives up to Spencer Manor that he is driving into a closed gate community that is hiding more suspicious deaths than his DC workload as a homicide detective. With the help of his late mother’s journal, this retired cop puts all his detective skills to work to pick up where the local investigators have left off to follow the clues to Katrina’s killer.
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A Reunion to Die For
- A Joshua Thornton Mystery Book 2High school cheerleader Tricia Wheeler didn’t make it to her graduation because a bullet went through her heart and killed her.
Twenty years later, a journalist is investigating Tricia’s supposed suicide for a book. Suddenly, a second cheerleader is dead and the body count in the small West Virginia town continues to rise.
For Joshua Thornton, the case is personal. The reopening of the Wheeler case stirs up memories and feelings for a girl who died without knowing his true feelings for her. Now, the newly-elected prosecutor is challenged to use everything he’s got to find out what had really happened to Tricia and stop the killing.
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A Small Case of Murder
- A Joshua Thornton MysteryBest-Selling Mystery Author Lauren Carr's debut novel, A Small Case of Murder (originally published in 2004) is set in the quaint West Virginia town of Chester, where everyone knows everyone, and there is never a secret that someone doesn’t know. In such an intimate town, how many suspicious deaths can be left unquestioned?
Following his wife’s death, Joshua Thornton leaves a promising career in the U. S. Navy’s JAG division to move across country with his five children into his ancestral home. While clearing out the attic they find a letter written to their grandmother postmarked 34 years ago.
In the letter Lulu Jefferson wrote “…Remember that dead body we found in the Bosley barn?...I saw him today…I went to talk to the reverend and there was his picture on the wall.” What dead body? His interest piqued, Joshua asks about Lulu and finds that in 1970 she died on the same day that she penned the letter implicating the pastor in an unreported murder. There is much more to this story than a 34-year-old letter. It’s a 34-year-old mystery!
Today, a double murder has the whole town under a microscope. The state attorney general appoints Joshua special prosecutor to solve the crimes. In a small town where gossip flies as swiftly as a spring breeze it is impossible to know who to trust.
Asking simple questions about events long ago could prove to be deadly for Joshua and his family.
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Authors in Bathrobes
- How To Be A Successful Author Without Getting DressedWho doesn’t want to be successful while sitting in their own home with their feet up? Well, Authors in Bathrobes tells budding writers what it takes to do just that. In Lauren Carr’s new book, she tells writers the truth about what it takes to be a successful writer today: determination, hard work, a dependable laptop, a full pot of coffee, comfy slippers, and a durable bathrobe.
Lauren Carr is the best-selling mystery author of the Mac Faraday Mysteries and Lovers in Crime Mysteries. Based on book sales for her mysteries and anthologies, Amazon regularly lists her among their top one-hundred mystery authors in both ebook and print.
A popular speaker, Lauren is frequently asked for advice about how to succeed as an author while running a business, cooking dinner, feeding dogs, and doing laundry. “Ten years ago, it wouldn’t have been possible,” Lauren says. “Nowadays, with a good wi-fi connection, an author can reach readers on the other side of the world while sending their child off to school and having a bad hair day.”
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Author Recommended by: HBSystems Publications
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