The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES Wendy Corsi Staub's New Book: Blue Moon.
New York Times bestselling suspense novelist Wendy Corsi Staub is a Mystery & Thrillers and Suspense writer.
Blue Moon
Mundy's Landing Book Two
Author: Wendy Corsi Staub
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Hair neatly braided, hands serenely clasped, eyes closed, the young woman appeared to be sound asleep. But the peaceful tableau was a madman’s handiwork. Beneath the covers, her white nightgown was spattered with blood. At daybreak, a horrified family would discover her corpse tucked into their guest room. The cunning killer would strike again . . . and again . . . before vanishing into the mists of time.
A century ago, the Sleeping Beauty Murders terrified picturesque Mundy’s Landing. The victims, like the killer, were never identified. Now, on the hundredth anniversary, the Historical Society’s annual “Mundypalooza” offers a hefty reward for solving the notorious case.
Annabelle Bingham, living in one of the three Murder Houses, can’t escape the feeling that her family is being watched—and not just by news crews and amateur sleuths. She’s right. Having unearthed the startling truth behind the horrific crimes, a copycat killer is about to reenact them—beneath the mansard roof of Annabelle’s dream home . . .
Excerpt from BLUE MOON
Annabelle inhales deeply as she opens a search window on the computer. The antique woodwork is particularly aromatic in the muggy heat, infused with the sweet old-fashioned perfume of mock orange, honeysuckle, and peonies blooming beyond the screens.
Is this the same scent Florence Purcell breathed on that awful morning a century ago?
Fingers poised on the keyboard, she fights off morbid curiosity. Additional information about the Sleeping Beauty murders is the last thing she needs right now. Instead, she types Mundy’s Landing summer programs for 12-year-olds and hits Enter, then scans the results.
Mundy’s Landing has overshadowed her other search terms, and is, predictably, synonymous with Mundypalooza. Every hit revolves around the upcoming extravaganza, with its well-publicized daily schedule of events, everything from a “Forensics Expert Q&A” to a “Whodunnit Roundtable”—whatever that is.
She deletes Mundy’s Landing and presses Enter again. This time, she gets a number of promising summer programs for kids—but none located in this geographical region. A third search yields several local options Oliver might enjoy, but all are past the enrollment deadline, filled to capacity, or too expensive.
Frustrated, she leans back in her chair and sips her ice water.
What am I going to do with him?
The rubbery-gravelly sound of a car floats through the screened windows behind her. Rather than driving on past, it slows in front of the house. Turning, she spots an unfamiliar black SUV lingering in the middle of the street. She can’t see the driver, but she can feel him watching her.
No wonder Florence’s daughter, Augusta Purcell, cloaked the windows in layers of heavy fabric until the day she died.
I’ll ask Trib to install those vinyl shades down here, too, Annabelle decides. I don’t even care what it looks like. I don’t want to be a sitting duck for snoops all summer.
At last, the shadowy driver moves on down the street.
But I’m sure he’ll be back, she thinks as she resumes her dogged online search.
* * *
This is what it must feel like to be high on drugs, Holmes decides, as he turns the corner from Bridge onto State Street.
Unlike his idol Sherlock, who dabbled in cocaine and morphine, he doesn’t use illegal substances. He prefers to derive pleasure from being squarely rooted in every moment. Surely no chemical-induced sensation could rival his exhilaration when he saw Annabelle Bingham sitting in her parlor. It was all he could do to move his foot from the brake to the gas pedal and drive on past 46 Bridge.
To think he almost hadn’t allowed himself to detour through The Heights this morning. He’d promised himself he’d stay away, but the house pulled him like a magnet, as always.
There she was, plainly visible through the front parlor window.
Once again, he could have sworn she’d seen him.
Once again, she didn’t let on. She didn’t jump to her feet and rush to the window, or disappear from view.
Until now, he hasn’t wasted much time wondering what makes Annabelle Bingham tick. There are too many others to worry about.
The Beauties are becoming a problem.
“Shut up!” he hollered this morning, amid their incessant wailing. “I can’t hear myself think!”
A pity, because frankly, one of Holmes’s most pleasurable pastimes is hearing himself think. And speak.
“I love the way your mind works,” he says aloud, a perfect imitation of his mother’s admiring tone. She often said those very words to him. Now that she’s gone, Holmes carries on the tradition.
“There’s nothing wrong with talking to yourself,” he adds, driving on down State Street. “How else can you be assured of an intelligent speaker and attentive audience?”
Of course, if you are alone, some errant eavesdropper might misinterpret one-sided conversation for loneliness, or even mental illness. Holmes suffers from neither affliction, though when he was in London a few years back, he was memorably accused of the latter. He quite sanely and methodically set matters straight, though his efforts went unappreciated by the accuser, lying as she was in a puddle of her own blood.
No raging madman, Holmes.
He goes sensibly yet stealthily about his business just as his predecessor did a century ago. How else can one expect to hide in plain sight?
With a satisfied smile, he drives on through The Heights. The infamous dates—three of them, spaced about a week apart—loom as tantalizingly close as the trio of Murder Houses themselves.
June 30: 65 Prospect Street.
July 8: 46 Bridge Street.
July 14: 19 Schuyler Place.
The agenda is set for the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s return visit to Mundy’s Landing, and the clock is ticking.
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Suspense, Contemporary
Website: Wendy Corsi Staub
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Twitter: @WendyCorsiStaub
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Author Description: New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub is the award-winning author of more than eighty novels, best known for the single title psychological suspense novels she writes under her own name. Those novels and the women's fiction she writes under the pseudonym Wendy Markham also frequently appear on the USA Today, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookscan bestseller lists.
In 2015, Wendy will publish three new novels: THE BLACK WIDOW (on sale in February), which concludes her cyber predator suspense trilogy for HarperCollins; BLOOD RED (on sale in September), which launches Mundy’s Landing, a new psychological suspense trilogy for HarperCollins; and NINE LIVES (on sale in October), which launches Lily Dale, a new cozy mystery series for Crooked Lane Books. Her Wendy Markham novel HELLO, IT’S ME, originally published in 2005, will air as a television movie starring Kellie Martin and Kavan Smith on the Hallmark Channel in September.
A two-time finalist for the prestigious Simon and Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award, she’s won the 2008 RT Award for Career Achievement in Suspense, the 2007 RWA-NYC Golden Apple Award for Lifetime Achievement, an RWA Rita award, and five WLA Washington Irving Prizes for Fiction.
She previously published a dozen adult suspense novels with Kensington Books as well as the acclaimed young adult series Lily Dale with Walker/Bloomsbury. Earlier in her career, she published in a broad range of genres under her own name and various pseudonyms, and has co-authored and ghostwritten for a number of celebrities.
Wendy grew up in Dunkirk, New York, a small town near Buffalo and graduated from SUNY Fredonia. She moved to Manhattan and became an editor before selling her first novel in 1992. She now lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband and sons. A vocal and active supporter of Relay for Life, Support Connection, and the American Cancer Society, she was a 2012 Ovarian Cancer Awareness month national spokesperson for the Sandy Rollman Ovarian Cancer Foundation. As an animal rights advocate, she fosters for various rescue organizations.
Author's Book List
Nine Lives
- A Lily Dale MysteryIn this warm and witty series debut from New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub, a widowed young mom plans a fresh start in Chicago--but instead finds her way to a quirky lakeside village that just happens to be populated by mediums.
When reluctant road trippers Bella Jordan and her son Max detour to Lily Dale, New York, they're planning to deliver a lost cat to its home and then move on, searching for one of their own. But the footloose feline's owner Leona Gatto has unexpectedly passed away, leaving behind a pregnant pet without a mistress, a busy inn without a keeper--and a lovable circle of neighbors who chat with dead people.
After agreeing to help out temporarily, sensible Bella doesn't need psychic gifts to figure out that a houseful of tourists and a litter of kittens lie in her immediate future--or that Leona was murdered. It's up to her to solve the case so that she and Max can leave town, but their new home--like Leona's killer--might just lurk where she least expects it.
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Blood Red
- Mundy's Landing Book OneThe razor's gleaming blade slices effortlessly through skin and tendon, and he relishes the final anguished moments of his prey. There's only one thing he prizes more: their long, silken strands of red hair. But these women are merely stand-ins . . . a prelude to his ultimate victim.
Nestled in New York's Hudson Valley, Mundy's Landing is famous for its picturesque setting—and for a century-old string of gruesome unsolved murders. Rowan returned to her hometown years ago, fleeing a momentary mistake that could have destroyed her family. Life is good here. Peaceful. Until an anonymous gift brings Rowan's fears to life again.
The town's violent history was just the beginning. Soon everyone in Mundy's Landing will know that the past cannot be forgotten or forgiven—not until every sin has been paid for, in blood.
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Witch Hunt
Abbey Hanover's parents have just inherited a run-down old house in Seacliffe, Massachusetts. Being forced to spend the summer there is bad enough, but the place gives Abbey the creeps. Especially when she learns that Felicity Crane, a teenaged girl who lived there 300 years before, was falsely accused of being a witch...and hanged.
Then Abbey meets Zachariah, a guy who wears weird-looking clothes and talks strangely. So does Elspeth, who breaks into Abbey's house one night and threatens her with a knife. Soon Abbey makes a shocking discovery: Zachariah and Elspeth are really time travelers from the long-ago past!
Now, as Abbey suddenly finds herself hurtling back through time, she meets the real Felicity Crane. Can Abbey save Felicity from the hangman's noose...or will she be the one who's branded as a witch--and sentenced to die?
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The Black Widow
In a chilling new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub, one woman looking for love online is entangled in a killer's terrifying scheme . . .
In the moonlight, shovelfuls of earth fall on a wooden crate at the bottom of a deep pit. Soon the hole will be filled and covered over with leaves, erasing all trace of the victim below, waking to the horror of being buried alive . . .
Newly divorced Gaby Duran isn't really expecting to find her soul mate on a dating site like InTune. She just needs a distraction from pining over her ex-husband, Ben, and the happy marriage they once had. And she's wise enough to know that online, the truth doesn't always match the profile. Almost everyone lies a little—or a lot.
But Gaby quickly discovers there is much more at stake than her lonely heart. Local singles are going missing after making online connections. And a predator is searching again for the perfect match. One who will fulfill every twisted desire . . . Or die trying.
Book Trailer: The Black Widow
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The Perfect Stranger
In New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub's new thriller, one woman finds herself in the crosshairs of a twisted predator who might just be masked behind a familiar screen name . . .
During the darkest period of her life, Landry Wells found solace in a group of bloggers who had been in her shoes and lived to tell the tale. She's shared things with her online friends that even her husband and children didn't know. Things that now, looking back, make her uneasy.
One of the bloggers is dead, victim of a random crime—or was it? Did she trust too easily; reveal too much? At the funeral a thousand miles from home, Landry is about to come face to face at last with the others. These women are her closest confidantes in the world: they understand her; they know everything about her—and one of them might be a cold-blooded killer . . .
Book Trailer: The Perfect Stranger
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Cold Hearted
In this prequel novella to New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub’s psychological suspense novel THE PERFECT STRANGER (Harpercollins, on sale 7/29/14), readers are introduced to the enigmatic Johanna Hart. Abandoned by her teenaged birth mother and raised by callous grandparents, Johanna is determined to escape her bleak Midwest existence at any cost. But that blind ambition comes back to haunt her years later, after she’s reinvented herself as glamorous golden girl Jenna Coeur. Now her secret past has caught up with her, embodied in a calculating young woman who will stop at nothing to destroy her—a woman with a strangely familiar face...
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The Good Sister
In New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub's electrifying new thriller,a mother races to save her daughter beforeher darkest nightmare comes true.
Sacred Sisters Catholic girls' school has hardly changed since Jen Archer was a student. Jen hoped her older daughter would thrive here. Instead, shy, studious Carley becomes the target of vicious bullies. But the real danger at Sacred Sisters goes much deeper.
The only person Carley can talk to is "Angel," a kindred spirit she met online. Carley tells Angel everything—about her younger sister, about school, about the sudden death of her former best friend. Angel is her lifeline. And Angel is closer than she knows.
When another schoolgirl is found dead, Jen's unease grows. There are too many coincidences, too many links to her past. Every instinct tells her that Carley is the next target. For someone is intent on punishing the guilty, teaching the ultimate lesson in how to fear . . . And how to die.
Book Trailer: The Good Sister
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She Loves Me Not
She loves me … she loves me not.
When a homemade, heart-shaped valentine with no signature shows up in Rose Larrabee's mailbox, she is surprised to say the least—as a widow and mother of two young children, she has little time for romance. But what one might mistake for a sweet gift is really a terrifying reminder of the secret she shares with two other women … a secret that has deadly consequences.
I want her … I want her dead.
When the phone rings in the middle of the night, playing a song that chills her to the bone, Rose is determined to keep her family safe from the threat she cannot see but knows is out there ... watching. After one of the other women is murdered, it becomes clear that each valentine is not the gift of a secret admirer but a warning from the madman who is getting all too close to the very heart of her deepest, darkest fears …
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Shadowkiller
Nestled in the warm, domestic cocoon of loving husbandand family, Allison finally feels safe—unaware that astranger's brutal murder on a Caribbean island is the first step in an intricate plan to destroy everything in her life.
For seasoned NYPD Detective Rocky Manzillo, the signs are clear that something terrible has emerged from the shadows:a murder victim left without a face and a faded photograph that yields a startling connection.
Now, as Allison's murky memories of a troubled childhood creep back to light, a cunning predator who shares her history prepares toenact a horrifying retribution—and won't stop killing untilAllison faces a shocking truth . . .and pays the ultimate price.
Book Trailer: Shadowkiller
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Fade to Black
Sometimes secrets can kill . . .
I know who you are. When Elizabeth Baxter reads these words, her world crashes. Five years ago, she was Hollywood superstar Mallory Eden—until a mysterious stalker turned her life into a nightmare. Now she hides in the small town of Windmere Cove, Rhode Island, living in fear, constantly looking over her shoulder . . .
Then her house is ransacked. The phone rings, and no one is on the other end … And very soon Elizabeth realizes she's being hunted again. Her only peace is the solace she's found in the arms of Harper Smith. She longs to tell him the truth—and then she learns of his own secret past … a past that connects to Mallory Eden's.
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Lullaby and Goodnight
Hush Little Baby, Don't You Cry. . .
At thirty-nine, Peyton Somerset has an enviable life, with a thriving advertising career and a beautiful Manhattan apartment. And now she's going to have the one thing she wants most--a baby. Peyton's biological clock went off just as her fiancé took off, leaving her at the altar. So Peyton's going it alone. Already, she's making plans for the little one inside her. . .buying the layette, daydreaming, and worrying over the littlest things. That's only natural. All mothers do. But Peyton has reason to worry. In fact, she has every reason to be terrified. . .
Mama Won't Be Singing Any Lullabies.
As the months pass, Peyton can't help feeling that something is terribly wrong. She's certain that someone has been in her apartment, that she's being followed, that someone is watching her. Maybe it's just hormonal paranoia that makes her distrust everyone around her. Or maybe her maternal instincts are dead on. Maybe there's someone close who doesn't think she should give birth at all. Someone who would do anything to have a baby. Anything. . .
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Sleepwalker
Ten years after the catastrophe, a great fallen city has risen again. Ten years after, a horror begins anew . . . or never truly ended.
The nightmare of 9/11 is a distant but still painful memory for Allison Taylor MacKenna—now married to Mack and living in a quiet Westchester suburb. She has moved on with her life ten years after barely escaping death at the hands of New York’s Nightwatcher serial killer. The monster is dead, having recently committed suicide in his prison cell, but something is terribly wrong. Mack has started sleepwalking, with no recollection of where his nighttime excursions are taking him.And here, north of the city, more women are being savagely murdered, their bodies bearing the Nightwatcher’s unmistakable signature.
Suddenly Allison must confront a devastating truth: her life is in jeopardy once again . . . And quite possibly from the man she trusts and loves.
Book Trailer: Sleepwalker
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NIGHTWATCHER
As the city sleeps in the early hours of September 10, 2001, the killer waits and watches, unaware of the cataclysm to come. Even the nightmare of 9/11 will not postpone his private reign of terror. Allison Taylor adores her adopted city, New York, loving every minute of the invigorating urban hustle. But on a bright and clear September morning, the familiar landscape around her is savagely altered—and in the midst of widespread chaos and fear, a woman living upstairs from her is found, brutally slaughtered and mutilated. For Allison . . . for her neighbor, James "Mack" MacKenna, desperately searching for news of his missing wife . . . for homicide detective Rocky Manzillo, hunting for a monster called "The Nightwatcher" amid the smoking ruins of a devastated city, this tragic day will hold a special horror. Because a different kind of terror has entered their lives . . . and it's coming to claim Allison Taylor as its next victim.
Book Trailer: NIGHTWATCHER
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Dearly Beloved
To have. To hold . . . To die.
On a windswept New England island, he waits, fingering the wedding gowns he's had made for each of them . . . the dresses they will wear when he kills them.
Three women have come to the Bramble Rose Inn. Sandy Cavelli longs to find romance through a personal ad. Liza Danning hopes to land a publishing deal with a reclusive author. And Jennie Towne, masquerading as her own twin, seeks a getaway weekend. They have nothing in common—or so it seems.
Then a storm bears down on the eerie, isolated inn, and the three women are plunged into a terrifying fight for survival. Because someone consumed with revenge has chosen them—for better, for worse . . . 'til death do them part.
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Mike, Mike & Me
- Red Dress InkWritten by Wendy Markham, a pseudonym
Once upon a time in the 1980s, a girl named Beau was torn between two Mikes: did she prefer her high-school sweetheart or the sexy stranger she'd picked up in an airport bar? One she eventually married, the other she left behind (and forgot all about, or tried to, anyway).
But which Mike did she choose? This delightful tale by the bestselling author of Slightly Single and Slightly Settled alternates between the story of Beau's summer of Mikes and the outcome fifteen years later…without giving away which Mike ended up where—in Beau's marriage bed or in her memory.
In "The present" chapters, the former swinging single lives in the 'burbs with a childbirth-traumatized body, an increasingly distant husband and a sad sack maid who isn't much for cleaning. When out of the blue the Mike-not-taken sends her a flirty e-mail, she suddenly finds herself back to square one, trying to decide which man is the Mike of her dreams.
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Slightly Single
- Red Dress Ink NovelsWritten by Wendy Markham, a pseudonym
A heat wave in Manhattan is enough to drive a girl crazy, and for Tracey Spadolini, a 24-year-old New York transplant who's been "left behind" for the summer, there's even more to sweat about. Her Slightly Significant Other, Will, will be returning from summer stock in September, to pick up where they left off. (Or will he?)
But, in the days after Will's departure, Tracey decides it's time for a reality check. Her un-air-conditioned East Village apartment is a dump, her entry-level ad job sucks, her thighs don't seem to be getting any thinner, and Will seems to have dropped off the face of the earth. So, Tracey, with the help of her friends and one very attentive guy, decides to spend her summer reinventing herself…and taking a chance on liking the new woman she becomes.
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