“ Beside the Still Waters is a great read: Ms. Lynch has a thorough grasp of the historical back story, & the novel provides a fascinating narrative of the
Quabbin Reservoir project. Ms. Lynch also has a firm grasp of the New
England landscape, both historical & natural—her descriptions of the fields
& woodlands & towns are vivid & true.” - John Hayes,
“Robert Frost’s Banjo” blog.
Four towns, gone. Dismantled slowly while their inhabitants grieve for a
history and heritage that has been voted away from them. The present
threatens; the future belongs to the fearless. “Beside the Still Waters” is a
family saga based on an actual event which displaced four entire towns in
central Massachusetts for the construction of a reservoir. Today, the
Quabbin Reservoir provides water for millions of citizens, primarily in the
greater Boston area. Families are divided between those who protest the
construction project, those who give up and leave, and those who help to build
it. The central character is Jenny, a girl who comes of age facing the
extinction of her community, who becomes the guardian of her family’s heritage, and ultimately, the one to decide what happens to them.
Available in print and as an eBook at Amazon, and in paperback at Amazon, Kobo and my Etsy shop.
Quabbin Reservoir project. Ms. Lynch also has a firm grasp of the New
England landscape, both historical & natural—her descriptions of the fields
& woodlands & towns are vivid & true.” - John Hayes,
“Robert Frost’s Banjo” blog.
Four towns, gone. Dismantled slowly while their inhabitants grieve for a
history and heritage that has been voted away from them. The present
threatens; the future belongs to the fearless. “Beside the Still Waters” is a
family saga based on an actual event which displaced four entire towns in
central Massachusetts for the construction of a reservoir. Today, the
Quabbin Reservoir provides water for millions of citizens, primarily in the
greater Boston area. Families are divided between those who protest the
construction project, those who give up and leave, and those who help to build
it. The central character is Jenny, a girl who comes of age facing the
extinction of her community, who becomes the guardian of her family’s heritage, and ultimately, the one to decide what happens to them.
Available in print and as an eBook at Amazon, and in paperback at Amazon, Kobo and my Etsy shop.
“…a comforting, pleasant read that stays with you even after the last page is turned. After finishing the book, I found myself still musing about the relationships and how they'd changed and progressed. This book was a nice, hot chocolate sort of read.” Grace Krispy, “MotherLode” book review.
"...When I started reading this novel I couldn't put it down, the author's style of
writing and descriptions used throughout had me hooked."
- Beck Valley Books book review.
"...I've always enjoyed Jacqueline's witty and playful style of writing in her blog, and I'm glad to state that it's also on display here. She knows New England well, and she brings Nuthatch to life with little details as well as larger ones. It sounds
like the kind of small town you might encounter while on your way to or from
Boston or Hartford or Providence. .." Rich at Wide Screen World
Party like it's 1904! "Meet Me in Nuthatch", a novel of humor, warmth, Christmas tree farming, dressing up like it was 1904, and selling your small town to a theme park conglomerate is now issued as an eBook on Amazon Kindle, and in paperback at Amazon, and my Etsy shop.
A publicity stunt to attract tourists to a small dying town (population 63), results in the entire community turning the
clock back to 1904. It is local Christmas tree farmer Everett Campbell’s idea, after watching the film “Meet Me in St. Louis,” his young daughter’s new favorite movie. What begins as half practical joke and half desperate ploy initiates the rebirth of Nuthatch, Massachusetts. Tourists do come, along with the media. Everett’s resentful teenaged son rebels at living in the pretend past. His wife, a medical transcriptionist who works at home, a self-employed and self-professed loner, has panic attacks when tourists stop to take her picture. The town’s unofficial historian, a genteel septuagenarian, supports
Everett’s scheme, but for personal gain.
To Everett’s dismay, his campaign to save their community results in also attracting representatives of a chain of theme parks who want to buy Nuthatch 1904. Everett now stands to lose his town in a way he never imagined, and the community is divided on which alternate future to choose. On the sidelines but ever encroaching toward the center is a local drug dealer, the longtime enemy of Everett and his best friend Bud, who discovers a new opportunity to threaten them and exploit the town, or its new owner.
The novel is mainly humorous, a bit poignant, a little sad, briefly scary, incidentally educational, and so gosh darn entertaining if you like that sort of thing.
"...When I started reading this novel I couldn't put it down, the author's style of
writing and descriptions used throughout had me hooked."
- Beck Valley Books book review.
"...I've always enjoyed Jacqueline's witty and playful style of writing in her blog, and I'm glad to state that it's also on display here. She knows New England well, and she brings Nuthatch to life with little details as well as larger ones. It sounds
like the kind of small town you might encounter while on your way to or from
Boston or Hartford or Providence. .." Rich at Wide Screen World
Party like it's 1904! "Meet Me in Nuthatch", a novel of humor, warmth, Christmas tree farming, dressing up like it was 1904, and selling your small town to a theme park conglomerate is now issued as an eBook on Amazon Kindle, and in paperback at Amazon, and my Etsy shop.
A publicity stunt to attract tourists to a small dying town (population 63), results in the entire community turning the
clock back to 1904. It is local Christmas tree farmer Everett Campbell’s idea, after watching the film “Meet Me in St. Louis,” his young daughter’s new favorite movie. What begins as half practical joke and half desperate ploy initiates the rebirth of Nuthatch, Massachusetts. Tourists do come, along with the media. Everett’s resentful teenaged son rebels at living in the pretend past. His wife, a medical transcriptionist who works at home, a self-employed and self-professed loner, has panic attacks when tourists stop to take her picture. The town’s unofficial historian, a genteel septuagenarian, supports
Everett’s scheme, but for personal gain.
To Everett’s dismay, his campaign to save their community results in also attracting representatives of a chain of theme parks who want to buy Nuthatch 1904. Everett now stands to lose his town in a way he never imagined, and the community is divided on which alternate future to choose. On the sidelines but ever encroaching toward the center is a local drug dealer, the longtime enemy of Everett and his best friend Bud, who discovers a new opportunity to threaten them and exploit the town, or its new owner.
The novel is mainly humorous, a bit poignant, a little sad, briefly scary, incidentally educational, and so gosh darn entertaining if you like that sort of thing.
, The Current Rate of Exchange - Rose, a tall, bumbling American woman,
travels to New Zealand to re-establish ties with her late mother’s family,
navigating the otherworldly tension of traveling in the months after 9/11.
With an offbeat spirit of adventure and optimism, Rose discovers the better
angels not only her nature, but in those around her.
Her ill-planned adventure turns her life around, and that of Nora, her New Zealand cousin, whose family problems immediately begin to involve Rose. Nora’s elderly mother, who broke off ties with Rose’s family; Nora’s unemployed husband who confides his dreams to Rose instead of his wife; and Nora’s brother whose emotional meltdown when losing the family farm all challenge Rose to bring her family’s past full circle and force herself to mend a bitter loss. A sudden romance with the farm manager with the mysterious past of his own was not on her original agenda. She is anxious about continuing it lest she repeat mistakes her American father and New Zealand mother made.
Armed with old family letters, Rose also manages to trace her mother’s footsteps as a World War II government agricultural worker, or Land Girl. The information Rose learns from her mother’s letters heals her sense of loss, and helps to prevent a tragedy in Nora’s family. Now available from Amazon.com, Kobo, and my Etsy shop.
travels to New Zealand to re-establish ties with her late mother’s family,
navigating the otherworldly tension of traveling in the months after 9/11.
With an offbeat spirit of adventure and optimism, Rose discovers the better
angels not only her nature, but in those around her.
Her ill-planned adventure turns her life around, and that of Nora, her New Zealand cousin, whose family problems immediately begin to involve Rose. Nora’s elderly mother, who broke off ties with Rose’s family; Nora’s unemployed husband who confides his dreams to Rose instead of his wife; and Nora’s brother whose emotional meltdown when losing the family farm all challenge Rose to bring her family’s past full circle and force herself to mend a bitter loss. A sudden romance with the farm manager with the mysterious past of his own was not on her original agenda. She is anxious about continuing it lest she repeat mistakes her American father and New Zealand mother made.
Armed with old family letters, Rose also manages to trace her mother’s footsteps as a World War II government agricultural worker, or Land Girl. The information Rose learns from her mother’s letters heals her sense of loss, and helps to prevent a tragedy in Nora’s family. Now available from Amazon.com, Kobo, and my Etsy shop.
A late 21st century time traveler battles bards, druids, warrior queens, and Roman cohorts for survival during the Celtic rebellion against the Romans in Britannia, 60 AD.
Time traveler John Moore’s fate is determined by four women: the Celtic warrior queen Boudicca; Tailtu, a gentle slave purchased from another clan; Dr. Eleanor Roberts, a severe, jealous and brilliant woman who spearheads the time travel mission; and enigmatic Dr. Cheyenne L’esperance, herself a time traveler from an even more distant future. Moore’s mission to survive three battles against the Roman legions coincides with survival tactics and backstabbing in the modern department. The savage past clashes swords with the desperate future in a time continuum of treachery.
Available as an eBook and paperback from Amazon, and my Etsy shop.
Time traveler John Moore’s fate is determined by four women: the Celtic warrior queen Boudicca; Tailtu, a gentle slave purchased from another clan; Dr. Eleanor Roberts, a severe, jealous and brilliant woman who spearheads the time travel mission; and enigmatic Dr. Cheyenne L’esperance, herself a time traveler from an even more distant future. Moore’s mission to survive three battles against the Roman legions coincides with survival tactics and backstabbing in the modern department. The savage past clashes swords with the desperate future in a time continuum of treachery.
Available as an eBook and paperback from Amazon, and my Etsy shop.
DOUBLE V MYSTERIES SERIES: |
|
The fifth book in my Double V Mysteries series is now published! - Murder at the Summer Theater. Join Elmer and Juliet in a theatrical caper on the Connecticut shore in the summer of 1951. Get the eBook at Amazon and Kobo, Apple iTunes, Barnes & Noble, and a variety of other online shops for $2.99. The print version is available at Amazon for $9.99. Here's a preview: Rehearsals grow tense at a summer theater on the Connecticut shore. The lead actress goes missing – or was she murdered? Juliet Van Allen and Elmer Vartanian, the “Double V” duo, are called in on the case, but even with Juliet pretending to be an actress and newcomer to the cast, the players are guarding their secrets closely. There are spurned lovers, jealous wives, scene-stealers and heartbreakers, with enough spirit of vengeance to fill up the loge. Will the show go on? Even when a body is found? Murder at the Summer Theater is the fifth book in the Double V Mysteries series set in New England in the late 1940s and early 1950s. If you like the charm of a classic film, this “cozy noir” will return you to an era of soft ocean breezes and a glamorous game of suspicion played between acts. The painted backdrop is the heyday of summer theatre, when greats from the New York stage and Hollywood performed in barns and tents on New England’s famed “straw hat circuit.” Passionate accusations light up the balcony, grim consequences lurk in the dressing room. Join the nervous producers on the veranda for a champagne cocktail. It’s a seaside caper where murder is in the spotlight in the summer of 1951, and Juliet and Elmer are on the verge of a new professional – and personal - relationship! Whitewash in the Berkshires -- In eBook and paperback on Amazon here. Also from Kobo. Elmer and Juliet's fourth adventure in this cozy mystery series takes place in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Berkshires of western Massachusetts in the bleak midwinter of 1951. An incident from Juliet's past puts her on a blacklist. A priceless work of art brings her to a secret bunker. A kidnapping and a threat to her life result in a desperate chase. How does all this fit in with the unidentified corpse? Elmer has no idea, but he's right behind her. The partnership of the wealthy heiress and the ex-con continues in this fourth book in the Double V Mysteries series. |
Dismount and Murder-- third in the Double V Mysteries series is now available in eBook, and paperback. Elmer and Juliet continue their tentative
relationship while investigating murder at a wealthy estate in Litchfield,
Connecticut, in the summer of 1950, while a horse show on the grounds covers the tracks of a number of suspects. Elmer, an ex-convict, is now off parole, the Korean War has just started, and television antennas are starting to spring up on rooftops all over the place.
Then there's that missing corpse.
It's the dawn of a new, unsettling day.
Available in eBook and paperback online here:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords
Apple
Kobo
And other online merchants.
relationship while investigating murder at a wealthy estate in Litchfield,
Connecticut, in the summer of 1950, while a horse show on the grounds covers the tracks of a number of suspects. Elmer, an ex-convict, is now off parole, the Korean War has just started, and television antennas are starting to spring up on rooftops all over the place.
Then there's that missing corpse.
It's the dawn of a new, unsettling day.
Available in eBook and paperback online here:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords
Apple
Kobo
And other online merchants.
Speak Out Before You Die,
the second in the “Double V Mysteries” series reunites wealthy Juliet Van Allen and ex-con Elmer Vartanian on New Year’s Eve, 1949. Guests are gathered in snowbound mansion for the wedding of Juliet’s widowed father to an elegant younger woman just after the clock strikes midnight. When Juliet finds what appears to be a threatening note directed at her father, she calls
Elmer to pose as a hired servant to help ferret out the danger…but midnight is approaching and time is running out. There may be murder as the old year
dies.
Available in eBook or paperback here from Amazon. Available also as an eBook from Barnes&Noble.
Also from:
Kobo
My Etsy shop
the second in the “Double V Mysteries” series reunites wealthy Juliet Van Allen and ex-con Elmer Vartanian on New Year’s Eve, 1949. Guests are gathered in snowbound mansion for the wedding of Juliet’s widowed father to an elegant younger woman just after the clock strikes midnight. When Juliet finds what appears to be a threatening note directed at her father, she calls
Elmer to pose as a hired servant to help ferret out the danger…but midnight is approaching and time is running out. There may be murder as the old year
dies.
Available in eBook or paperback here from Amazon. Available also as an eBook from Barnes&Noble.
Also from:
Kobo
My Etsy shop
"A terrific mystery...how these two characters get thrown together by fate (the
initial 'meet' of these two is as inventive as anything I've read in a long
time) and manage to keep out of jail, solve a murder, catch a killer and
discover what has happened to Elmer's daughter is as good a way to spend a
couple of hours as I can think of." - Yvette, "In So Many Words..."
blog.
Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red is the first book in the Double V Mysteries series.
A “cozy” post-World War II mystery eBook about a museum heist, a missing
child, a murder, and the partnership of a recent ex-con and an even more recent widow.
In Hartford, Connecticut, 1949, Juliet Van Allen, a museum administrator, returns home from work early to find her artist husband having an
affair with another woman. Juliet slips unseen back to her office, where
she meets an intruder. Elmer Vartanian, recently released from
prison for a museum robbery, is coerced into helping scout the museum for a
heist by a gang that has kidnapped his daughter. Since Juliet left
her apartment, her husband has been murdered. She is the prime suspect,
and Elmer is her only alibi.
Juliet, the rebellious only daughter of a wealthy financier, and Elmer, a lower-class ex-convict who has educated himself in prison, learn to rely on each other. Juliet is Elmer’s guide to a post-world that has changed so much since he entered prison. He feels guilty for having missed his daughter’s childhood, for being safe when friends were killed in World War II,
and is bewildered over atomic energy, Modern Art, ballpoint pens, and frozen orange juice concentrate.
Juliet is not sure she believes Elmer’s story. Elmer is not sure she didn’t kill her husband. They are compelled to work together, dogged by the scandal-monger newsman, the shrewd police detective, and scrutinized by the even
more judgmental eye of Hartford’s elite in world where Modern Art meets old-fashioned murder.
Available in eBook and paperback, from Amazon.com, my Etsy shop, Apple iTunes, Barnes & Noble-Nook, Kobo. Other online stores.
initial 'meet' of these two is as inventive as anything I've read in a long
time) and manage to keep out of jail, solve a murder, catch a killer and
discover what has happened to Elmer's daughter is as good a way to spend a
couple of hours as I can think of." - Yvette, "In So Many Words..."
blog.
Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red is the first book in the Double V Mysteries series.
A “cozy” post-World War II mystery eBook about a museum heist, a missing
child, a murder, and the partnership of a recent ex-con and an even more recent widow.
In Hartford, Connecticut, 1949, Juliet Van Allen, a museum administrator, returns home from work early to find her artist husband having an
affair with another woman. Juliet slips unseen back to her office, where
she meets an intruder. Elmer Vartanian, recently released from
prison for a museum robbery, is coerced into helping scout the museum for a
heist by a gang that has kidnapped his daughter. Since Juliet left
her apartment, her husband has been murdered. She is the prime suspect,
and Elmer is her only alibi.
Juliet, the rebellious only daughter of a wealthy financier, and Elmer, a lower-class ex-convict who has educated himself in prison, learn to rely on each other. Juliet is Elmer’s guide to a post-world that has changed so much since he entered prison. He feels guilty for having missed his daughter’s childhood, for being safe when friends were killed in World War II,
and is bewildered over atomic energy, Modern Art, ballpoint pens, and frozen orange juice concentrate.
Juliet is not sure she believes Elmer’s story. Elmer is not sure she didn’t kill her husband. They are compelled to work together, dogged by the scandal-monger newsman, the shrewd police detective, and scrutinized by the even
more judgmental eye of Hartford’s elite in world where Modern Art meets old-fashioned murder.
Available in eBook and paperback, from Amazon.com, my Etsy shop, Apple iTunes, Barnes & Noble-Nook, Kobo. Other online stores.
