In the 1920s, archeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle made headlines around the world with the discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun. But behind it all stood Lady Evelyn Herbert—daughter of Lord Carnarvon—whose daring spirit and relentless curiosity made the momentous find possible.
Nearly 3,000 years earlier, another woman defied the expectations of her time: Hatshepsut, Egypt’s lost pharaoh. Her reign was bold, visionary—and nearly erased from history.
When Evelyn becomes obsessed with finding Hatshepsut’s secret tomb, she risks everything to uncover the truth about her reign and keep valued artifacts in Egypt, their rightful home. But as danger closes in and political tensions rise, she must make an impossible choice: protect her father’s legacy—or forge her own.
Propelled by high adventure and deadly intrigue, Daughter of Egypt is the story of two ambitious women who lived centuries apart. Both were forced to hide who they were during their lifetimes, yet ultimately changed history forever.
DAUGHTER OF EGYPT by Marie Benedict is an informative as well as an engaging dual timeline historical fiction novel featuring a young English woman in search of the tomb of a female Egyptian Pharaoh and the life of said Pharaoh from research and the speculation of an author whose books continually satisfy.
Lady Evelyn Herbert grew up listening and learning about the wonders of Egyptian archeology from her father, Lord Carnarvon, and Howard Carter, the archeologist who ran Lord Carnarvon’s digs. Evelyn becomes obsessed with Hatshepsut; finding her lost tomb and discovering why she was nearly erased from history 3000 years previously.
In the 1920s, Evelyn is allowed to accompany her father and Carter to Egypt. While there is disappointment in their first attempts to uncover Hatshepsut’s tomb, they finally make headlines around the world with their discovery of Tutankhamun’s intact burial chambers.
In the second timeline, Hatshepsut tells her story and even though she reigned over a time of peace and prosperity, she was nearly erased from all history. Her bold and visionary rise as a female pharaoh took political and religious maneuvering, but not all accepted her reign.
This is a compelling take on the lives of two strong, ambitious women who lived centuries apart. I knew nothing about Evelyn accompanying her father and Carter on the digs, so I found that very interesting. I love reading and learning about ancient Egypt and the pharaohs and I found Ms. Benedict’s resolution to Hatshepsut’s story as acceptable as any others I have read about previously.
Ms. Benedict consistently brings one or both of her compelling female protagonists out of the shadows and to readers’ attention. Overall, this is another entertaining historical novel that taught me something new.
***
About the Author
Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years of experience as a litigator, who found her calling unearthing the hidden historical stories of women. A graduate of Boston College and Boston University School of Law, she is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of DAUGHTER OF EGYPT, THE QUEENS OF CRIME, THE MITFORD AFFAIR, HER HIDDEN GENIUS, THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE, LADY CLEMENTINE, THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM, CARNEGIE’S MAID, and THE OTHER EINSTEIN. She has also coauthored with Victoria Christopher Murray the New York Times bestselling THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN, a Good Morning America book club pick, and THE FIRST LADIES, Target’s 2023 Book of the Year — and with Courtney Sheinmel, THE SECRETS OF LOVELACE ACADEMY. All have been translated into multiple languages, and many have been selected for national book clubs. Writing as Heather Terrell, Marie also published the historical novels The Chrysalis, The Map Thief, and Brigid of Kildare. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for AVALON MOON by Michael Amos Cody on this Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links, and a PICT giveaway. Enjoy!
***
Book Description
In Avalon Moon, a local man has gone missing and then is soon found dead in a highland meadow, side-by-side with an unknown woman. When another man and woman go missing and a female deputy is found murdered, Gabriel Tanner, editor of Runion’s weekly newspaper, and Plumer Reeves, a reclusive local hawkshaw working for the niece of the first dead man, suspect a monster is hunting in their western North Carolina mountains. Two extraordinary young women, the Avalon community’s Ariel Anderson and Lonesome Mountain’s Livvy Goforth, join Tanner and Reeves to lead the attempt to discover and stop the killer.
Genre: Psychological Horror, Thriller Published by: Madville Publishing Publication Date: May 19, 2026 Number of Pages: 340 ISBN: 9781963695670 (ISBN10: 1963695674)
***
My Book Review
RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars
AVALON MOON by Michael Amos Cody is an atmospheric Southern Gothic genre mash-up that seamlessly blends horror, mystery, suspense, and crime thriller into a book that captivates and engages.
Gabriel Tanner owns, edits, and writes for the local paper in Runion, North Carolina. As he is putting information about a missing woman in the paper, he is called to photograph a crime scene. What he discovers at the scene are the remains of a man and a woman. At about the same time, a young mountain woman, Livvy Goforth, has asked Plumer Reeves, a local hawkshaw, who finds missing things, including people, to find her uncle, who she knows is dead. More people disappear and the community begins to realize they have an unknow killer in their mountains and everyone must work together before more end up dead, including themselves.
Set in the mountains of Madison County in western North Carolina and featuring a mix of social class protagonists, this author’s writing pulled me right into the intensifying suspense, and beauty of the location. Paranormal elements and folklore traditions are woven throughout the plot, but do not overtake the plausibility of the crime plot.
I am very glad to have joined this book tour, because I probably would not have been aware of this book otherwise and that would have been a terrible shame. I highly recommend this Southern Gothic mash-up genre book and hope many more people discover it!
***
Excerpt
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
ONE
Gabriel Tanner
“Editor of and chief contributor to a country weekly” never made my top ten list of things I wanted to be when I grew up. For the longest time, I had only one item on that list—Rock Star! I toyed with adding a second item, maybe being just a hit-making songwriter, but the songwriting I did throughout the 1980s was so closely bound up with the Rock Star! idea that I couldn’t pull the two apart. If I didn’t become the next Bruce Springsteen, which I didn’t, I was unlikely to become the next Bob McDill—ditto on the didn’t.
So, with the Rock Star! phase of my life gone grumbling into my dreams, I left Nashville in the hot gut of August 1990, retreated, tail between legs, to Runion, my hometown in the North Carolina mountains, and the following January entered Runion State University, where I double-majored in English and Journalism. I took a part-time job as student reporter and all-around grunt for Sheldon Dean’s Runion Recorder. A couple years after I graduated, Sheldon decided he was tired of writing and offered me a full-time position as editor, keeping only the title of “General Manager” for himself. I accepted.
And so it came to pass that on a cold evening in early March, on the darker side of twilight, I drove toward the Lonesome Mountain end of Genesis Road, planning to swing around the back way into Runion. On regular mornings going to work, or any other time I was in a hurry, I drove down to the French Broad end of Genesis and took the river road up a short hill and onto Main Street, but I was dreading two hours minimum of sitting in a meeting at the Madison County Cooperative Extension Office complex, housed in the recently renovated Old Mill on Mill Street, and taking notes for a regular report to appear in next week’s paper. The room would be stuffy with heat and humanity, and to be honest, I was lollygagging.
This year’s March was looking like a lion-lamb version—in like a lion, out like a lamb. We expected to wake up the next morning to some serious snow and ice courtesy of Winter Storm Ulysses. The fields on my left and the woods on my right seemed to hold their breath in anticipation.
I rolled to a stop at the T-intersection where Genesis Road dead-ends at Jewel Hill Road, with Lonesome Mountain ahead and to my left, dark against the sky. My new Honda hybrid sat quietly, and still not used to its workings, I thought it might have died but relaxed when no warning lights appeared. Even though the temperature was in the upper thirties, I opened my windows and—with no other traveler sitting at my bumper and politely honking, as our mountain folk do—sat at the intersection with my eyes closed and my skin alive to the chilly air. I heard a few of last summer’s still-tethered leaves shivering in the boughs overhead and something scurrying through the underbrush in the woods off to my right. I think I could’ve engaged the emergency brake and gone to sleep, but I opened my eyes, suddenly uneasy and unsure why.
The headlights shown across Jewel Hill Road and lit the lower part of a hillside pasture beyond. A few head of cattle midway up the slope stood at the edge of the light and grazed on pale grass.
Not one to be unnerved by a bovine presence in the twilight, I strained my senses to catch and identify what raised hairs along my forearms and around the back of my neck.
To my left, a field rolled away in successive swells toward a wooded ridge standing blackly against the sky. Runion lay on the other side of that ridge, but somewhere between the town and me, yips and cries rose from the gathering dark. These joined together into an eerie howl of various voices that twisted around one another, broke apart, and swelled together again.
Coyotes.
When I was growing up in these mountains, coyotes existed only in old TV westerns. But they were voice-over actors only, strictly behind-the-scenes. They were soundtrack features. Technicians of ambiance. Nothing said a cowboy was alone in the darkening wilderness like the distant howl of a coyote. The cowboy would raise his eyes from the campfire and sit still and listen for a moment, alert to the wild. But it was never the coyote itself that frightened him. Maybe the coyote’s cry was a reminder of his loneliness and vulnerability—that if such a critter could be out there in the dark, then anything could be out there.
But in recent years, coyotes had loped out of the faded glory of Hollywood’s western and into our world, maybe crossing the Mississippi around Memphis and moving steadily east across Tennessee until they reached Appalachia and Runion. They were seen trotting along the edges of regional four-lanes or lying dead on twisting mountain highways. They stole cats and small dogs just beyond the lights of back porches. That evening at the stop sign, they yipped and yapped and cried somewhere out on the verge of a Runion farmer’s field.
Still, I thought, at least they aren’t wolves. Wolves, of course, were a different story. Send up the howl of a wolf into the night, and the cowboy would become focused on the beast, not on loneliness or vulnerability. The wolf’s howl menaced, threatened. Eyes might shine at the edge of the campfire’s light, followed by snarling close-ups. Then enter the legend of the wolf mixed with a man, and the beast achieved cinematic glory, jumping genres from westerns to horror, something coyotes could never quite pull off.
When I pressed the accelerator, the Honda whispered to life, and I turned left toward town. If I sat there much longer, I would be late for the extension meeting, during which one item on the agenda just happened to be related to the beasts of my T-intersection musing. . . .
***
Author Bio
Michael Amos Cody is author of the 2017 novel GABRIEL’S SONGBOOK and the 2021 collection A TWILIGHT REEL, winner of the Short Story category in the Feathered Quill Book Awards 2022. His 2025 literary suspense novel STREETS OF NASHVILLE won the Thriller category in the 2026 Independent Press Awards. His new novel, released in May 2026, is the psychological thriller AVALON MOON. Cody lives with wife Leesa in Jonesborough, Tennessee, and teaches early American literature and creative writing in the Department of Literature and Language at East Tennessee State University.
THE OLD GIRLS’ NETWORK by Judy Leigh is an emotional roller coaster of a women’s fiction story with romantic elements featuring a trio of septuagenarians; two very different sisters and the man they befriend after hitting him with their car. I enjoy reading these small village British stories to compare and contrast with small town American stories.
Barbara and Pauline are sisters in their seventies who have never been close in location or attitude. Barbara is strait-laced, opinionated, and bossy, while Pauline is a friendly, open-minded, and homey. After a health scare, Barbara tells her sister she is coming to convalesce at her home in the small village of Winsleigh Green. The two soon begin to have trouble with each other.
When Pauline accidentally knocks down an apparent vagrant, Bisto, with her car, she invites him into her home to recuperate. Now as the three get to know each other they learn to embrace each other, let go of the past, and possibly make the changes they need to embrace fresh starts and new loves.
This is a charming story with three protagonists that will make you laugh, cry, and want to hug them all. And while I loved the main characters, the village members were just as eclectic and fun to follow. To read the changes brought on by both pain and/or love in all the characters’ interactions made this heart wrenching, heartwarming and ultimately very satisfying. It was also nice to see these characters in their 70’s find their HEAs and demonstrate that is never too late to change and find happiness and love.
I recommend this delightful women’s fiction.
***
About the Author
I’m Judy Leigh. I’ve lived all over the UK from Liverpool to Cornwall, but currently I live in Somerset. After teaching theatre, writing lyrics for a punk band and setting up Shakespeare Festivals, I completed an MA in Professional Writing. Since then, I have been writing novels and having the time of my life doing it.
I write ‘golden’ stories that feature characters of all ages, but focus on the lives of older people.
These novels celebrate communities, fun and friendship, love and the power of laughter, the belief that everyone should have another chance at happiness.
I also write under the name of Elena Collins, who was my grandmother. These are dual timeline historical stories, slightly spooky. Writing in this genre gives me the opportunity to focus on history and the lives of women then and now. Please take a look at my Elena Collins author page. I love writing in this genre and I know you’ll enjoy the stories.
I also write cozy crime under the name of JR Leigh. The Morwenna Mutton ‘Seal Bay’ series is set in a beautiful coastal town in Cornwall, and Morwenna is a sixty-something sleuth who gets into mischief solving local crimes.
In my second series, set in beautiful rural France, DI Archie Darling and his trusty Dalmatian companion Juno set off in their camper van to explore the surrounings, but uncover more than they expect.
.Please check out these books – I know you’ll love them.
When I’m not writing, I’m often on the beach or on the moors, walking, doing yoga or travelling. I’m a Reiki healer, a vegan, an interpreter of dreams and an animal lover. I have three black cats and I enjoy sunshine, conversation, laughter, travelling, live music, theatre and football.
In December 2000, Derwin Brown, the newly elected sheriff of DeKalb County, Georgia, was ambushed and murdered in his own driveway just days before taking office. He had run on reform—promising to clean up corruption and restore integrity to the sheriff’s department—defeating the powerful incumbent in a bitter runoff.
The case fell to J.Tom Morgan, then the county’s elected District Attorney. Working alongside local, state, and federal law enforcement, Morgan pursued the case through months of dead ends, mounting pressure, and intense public scrutiny. It became a national media sensation, combining political intrigue with revelations of government corruption, murder-for-hire plots, and a never-before-tried legal strategy in the Georgia criminal justice system. Then the case became personal: Morgan learned that his own name was next on the killer’s hit list.
In A Rainy Night in Georgia, Morgan gives readers something almost no one else can—a first-person account of power, danger, and integrity from inside the justice system. What began as a baffling, unsolved murder evolved into one of the most extraordinary political assassination cases in modern American history after a shocking discovery.
A RAINY NIGHT IN GEORGIA by J. Tom Morgan with John Capouya is an engrossing true crime book told in the first person by the then District Attorney of Dekalb County Georgia, J. Tom Morgan who was tasked with bringing the murderers of Sheriff-elect Derwin Brown to justice and proving the corruption in the current Sheriff’s office. This book is written with an excellent balance between personal observations and emotions, investigative facts and deals, and courtroom strategy and drama.
In December 2000, the newly elected sheriff, Derwin Brown, was gunned down in his home driveway. Derwin Brown had run on cleaning up the corruption in the sheriff’s office and accused his successor in public. A corruption investigation had already begun six months previously, but Derwin Brown’s murder brought every alphabet agency into the investigation.
District Attorney J. Tom Morgan worked with local, state, and federal agencies, and while the corruption investigation moved along, the murder investigation hit dead ends at every turn until J. Tom was forced to make a controversial deal and learns his name was next on the hit list.
I love true crime, so I followed this case on the national news, but I lost track of it due to 9/11. While I heard about the verdict later, this book brought me back to that time and filled in all the facts and added the personal views and emotions of J. Tom Morgan. The writing brings this story to life once again with the clear and concise step-by-step retelling of the murder, investigation, and trial. It is a sadly often repeated story that shows how absolute power corrupts and, in this case, results in a senseless murder that results from that corruption.
I highly recommend this captivating true crime book!
***
About the Authors
J.Tom Morgan served as the elected District Attorney of DeKalb County, GA, from 1992-2004. He was the first recipient from the United States to be awarded the Special Achievement Award from the International Association of Prosecutors in 2003. Prior to his time as DA, Morgan served as an Assistant District Attorney in DeKalb County for nine years and was the first prosecutor in Georgia–and one of the first in the nation–to specialize in the prosecution of crimes against children. As a nationally recognized expert on criminal justice, he has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, CNN, Court TV, and 48 Hours, among others. Morgan has lectured to prosecutors and law enforcement officials in more than 30 states, Puerto Rico, and Europe, and served on the faculty of the National College of District Attorneys.
John Capouya has written and edited for publications including the New York Times, Newsweek, SmartMoney, and Sport, among others, over his 25-year career in journalism. He taught journalism and nonfiction writing at the University of Tampa, and his developmental editing clients include New York Times bestselling authors. He is the author of Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture, among other books on yoga and music.
The House for Lost Children and The German Sisters by Marty Wingate take readers on an emotional roller coaster ride. People will realize how kindness, compassion, and security can help in restoring hope to those who have experienced severe trauma and heartache.
The plot of The House for Lost Children has divorced Lady Louisa Brightford and her best friend/cook, Iris, alone in a countryside mansion. David, her son, is away flying Spitfires for the British Air Force. Trying to keep relevant, she learns of a group of children and their two teachers displaced by a bombing in London. Realizing Oxburrow Manor can be a boarding school for the nine evacuee children, she calls the family lawyer and asks for his assistance in moving them to the mansion.
One of the children, Gracie, is traumatized to the point of becoming mute after being buried in the rubble with her dead mother. Louisa adores all the children and does everything she can to give them a good home but takes a special interest in Gracie. She has not spoken since she lost her mother, but clings to Louisa who continues to offer her love. Louisa also finds herself becoming closer to Jack Barry, one of the teachers. So, when the governors of the charity that run the school threaten to take the children away because she is a divorced woman, she will do everything in her power to keep them.
The second book in the series, The German Sisters, was inspired by the true events surrounding Kindertransport. It’s a bitter- sweet story. The girls, Dagmar and Heike, were sent to an unknown country, England, to escape the horrors of the Nazi persecution of the Jews yet while at Oxburrow with Louisa they have fellowship, love, and begin to heal.
Louisa and Dagmar form a bond and offer each other love and understanding, drawing from each other’s strength. Dagmar realizes as the older child she must be responsible for Heike, but once at Oxburrow a lot of that responsibility is no longer needed. Now Dagmar must try to find out what happened to her parents and does so with Louisa’s help.
These stories seem very realistic. They are both heart wrenching and heartwarming. Readers will take the emotional journey with the endearing characters. The only fault with these books is that there are no more books to read in the series.
***
Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Did you do research about the evacuees?
Marty Wingate: I had read about the evacuees while doing research for my other book Glamour Girls. I had also, in my own reading that I’m interested in, come across references to evacuees and where they went. I’ve seen stories on television about it. There’s one of my favorite wartime series, “Foyle’s War,” a British series which had a boy featured, who was an evacuating. So, I knew about the evacuees. And I thought this would be fun having her take in a bunch of children and animals. The idea where a lot of different people stuffed in one house is always fun. In the second book, The German Sisters, readers will see how the children adapted during the book. There are a couple of them that stayed including Gracie, Athena and George.
EC: In the first book, The House for Lost Children, there was a scene where Louisa, the female lead, was worried about losing her mansion. Please explain.
MW: I knew houses had taken in evacuees, and some country houses could be used for any purpose in the war. Sometimes the army would take them. That was what she was afraid of. Her ex-husband would want to burn the place down so he could get it back again, get the land back. They could also be used for hospitals as well.
EC: How would you describe Louisa?
MW: She is a very generous person and considered herself a part of the village. She was not a snobby entitled person. When the children came to live with her, she had welcoming arms along with her cook who happened to be her best friend, Iris. Both women were generous, loving people. Her mom had died and her father was not around a lot because he had to work, so she was pretty much left on her own. She missed having that home life. I think that Louisa was always looking for an opportunity to have that big family that she always wanted. The way she fulfilled the need of hers was to invite all these children and adults to stay at Oxburrow Manor.
EC: How would you describe the setting of Oxburrow?
MC: The village Debden Ash is made up, but Suffolk, of course, is not made up. Suffolk is a real county. And a lot of it is very flat. I love Suffolk. We go to England a lot, and we are always staying, either at the coast in Suffolk or in, western Suffolk inland. I saw a manor and like some characters, the setting just came to me. I pictured it as a country house, but early Victorian, and after several generations of not having a whole lot of money around, getting to be a little shabby. Also, there’s a book by Robert Bly titled Akenfield, which is about a village of the same name. There was a reference in that book of how Akenfield was really hidden away, because it wasn’t on the main road, but a Roman road running by it. Where there was a little fold of land, and so people almost didn’t notice it. People wouldn’t even realize they were passing it because it wasn’t on the main road. So that’s how I created my vision of Oxburrow.
EC: What was the impact of Oxburrow?
MW: It was a place to heal, where children could thrive in both books. It became a home and a family to the children. It helped them with their trauma. And it was mystic. The children felt safe and protected there. I wrote how not only the children, but the adults as well, were disparate people who have their own stories and their own secrets and how they interacted within Oxburrow.
EC: What about Louisa’s relationship with one of the children, Gracie?
MW: The House for Lost Children is Gracie’s story too. Her backstory is that in the bombing, several of the children’s mothers died. Gracie and her mother were buried for two days before they were found in the rubble. This was an actual news story I read of the time. It was just heartbreaking, because they find Gracie’s mother dead, and there’s Gracie holding her hand, and will not let go. Obviously, Gracie has an enormous amount of trauma, thinking her mother’s death is her fault. When she first comes to Oxburrow she is not talking. And of all the children, Louisa sees the trauma in her more clearly. The other children miss their mothers, and they act out a little bit in other ways, but Louisa realizes she can help, and that’s how she and Gracie bond.
EC: Did Louisa in Gracie’s mind become her new mom?
MW: Gracie wears Louisa’s clothes because it soothes Gracie and helps her feel safe. Gracie’s mother loved her daughter and now that love, that support, and that security is gone. She knows her real mother died, but has a good replacement in Louisa, realizing she has security and love once again. I can’t say that Gracie would ever get rid of all that guilt, but it becomes understandable, just like grief does after a while, it doesn’t hurt as much.
EC: Why was divorce considered so bad?
MW: I turned in the first draft of the manuscript I had a conversation with my editor who is younger than I am. She said, ‘I don’t understand why that’s bad.’ I realized that I had to paint a better picture about what divorce looked like during those times. Louisa couldn’t get remarried in the Church of England at that time. There was still a huge stigma. Louisa and Jack grow close but she was afraid to commit to marriage. I think she did not face up to her hidden fear. that maybe she was the one that wrecked her marriage. She questions if it was her fault. We take on guilt that we shouldn’t a lot of times, and that’s what had happened to her.
EC: Divorce played a role for Mrs. Harrison, the children’s guardian and head mistress. Do you agree?
MW: Mrs. Harrison did not look beyond the person, because Louisa divorced. I think that she acts in that way because believes she is right. I think she’s a very caring person. She’s a very good teacher and always good with the children. She could not imagine letting the children share a house with a woman who had broken the rules, whether they were moral rules or the rule of law. She’s just too strait-laced, and it was very difficult for her to get through that. She did, but it was very difficult.
EC: What about Jack Berrie?
MW: The First World War was an awful war, where he lost friends, and was traumatized. He got married, had a baby, and his wife died, which certainly didn’t make it any better for Jack. He had a rough life, until he ended up falling into what he had always wanted to do in the first place, and that’s be a teacher. He’s a diamond in the rough.
EC: The second book, The German Sisters, has a powerful scene about the children having to leave their parents. Please discuss this.
MW: There’s a wonderful documentary from a few years ago called “Into the Arms of Strangers.” There were interviews with adults who had been part of the children’s transport coming out of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. They told amazing stories of how children had to say goodbye to their parents. The scene on the platform and on the train, came from one of those actual stories. The parents were devastated in having to give up their children and send them to a foreign country, England, but they wanted them to be safe. They wondered if they will ever see each other again.
EC: In the second book, Louisa eventually takes in two Jewish German evacuees. Can you describe the older sister, Dagmar?
MW: Dagmar and her sister Heike were two children who were part of the British rescue operation known as the Kindertransport. She’s responsible. She grows up too soon. She’s calm, fearful, a worrier, feels guilty, an observer, and is afraid for her parents. At the beginning of the story, she is ten years old when her parents say goodbye to them on the platform. The parents explained, ‘We must do this, we must get you out, but don’t forget to write the letters.’ Well, Dagmar took this on, literally, feeling she was the only one that could do this. And so that’s what follows her through the story.
EC: How would you describe the younger sister, Heike?
MW: She is sociable, attentive, sweet, happy, and rambunctious. She just bounces back. She’s tearful at first. She misses their parents, yet she thrives at Oxburrow. I think the two sisters are quite a contrast. She just fell in with Gracie and Athena, the two girls from the first book. It’s like, they are a threesome now, that she’s just that kind of girl.
EC: How would you describe George?
MW: I love George. He’s a bookworm. He was quiet in the house when there were a lot of children, but in the second book he gets a bigger part. He and Dagmar both have a way of ordering their world. They want things in the right place. I was so pleased that George had a friend. He and Dagmar are both inquisitive and love to learn, especially about maps. George and Athena have their mothers die in the bombing in the first book, but their fathers are still alive. Athena’s father is a jazz musician in London. Sometimes she thinks she hears him on the radio playing in his orchestra. And George’s father is in the merchant navy on some ship somewhere. They have that hope that they will be a family, but in the meantime, they are quite content to be with Louisa.
EC: What role does Rebecca play in the story?
MW: She has secrets and is too direct at times, can be abrupt. She works for the Jewish Refugee Committee. Her sister, Mrs. Gedge, is a Quaker and Rebecca is not. She is caring and responsible.
EC: Next book?
MW: I got a two-book deal for the historical fiction. So, it looks like these are going to be the only two. I’ve really enjoyed writing them, and I love writing about World War II.
My next book is a Christmas mystery, titled A Murder is Rehearsed, coming out in November. Its set in England and Scotland, maybe in Wales too. There is a tradition going back to early Victorian times to put on a pantomime at Christmas. They’re comedy parodies that are hugely popular even today in theaters at Christmas time. I’ve decided to set this murder mystery at a production of Cinderella in a little town in Kent in England, in 1952. Cinderella’s coach, is on a fly rigging, up above the stage and then comes down when it’s time for Cinderella to look as if she’s getting in her coach to go to the ball. But someone releases the brake on the fly rigging and it falls and hits the actor who is playing the fairy godmother and kills him.
THANK YOU!!
***
BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Retired secret service agent Ron Eldon hunts his daughter’s killer, taking on the role of detective in a case that everyone says is suicide. Aided by his ex-colleague Yolanda Reddy, they are confronted by official obstructions, plagued by red herrings, confounded by false information, and tricked by a Russian spy who has history with Eldon from the Cold War. Leaving behind him a trail of bodies and a minefield of revelations, Eldon is beaten and captured before escaping to continue his crusade across London, Bristol, Cornwall, and Yorkshire. Ending with a shocking twist that reframes the story in a new and defining light, this spy thriller delves into Britain’scolonial past, present-day slavery, and Russia’s dirty tricks, uncovering truths that dare not speak their names.
JOVE: A Novel by Jack Davies is an engrossing British espionage/crime thriller mash-up that gives the reader an exciting, action-packed story of a retired secret service father seeking justice for his daughter, Jove, the deception and double cross of British and Russian spies, and a far-right criminal conspiracy.
Retired secret service agent Ron Eldon is sent to identify the body of a young women who is believed to have committed suicide by jumping off the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol. The young woman is his daughter, Jove, who is currently a secret service asset who followed her father into service. With the help of an ex-colleague, Eldon searches for information, but with official obstructions, kidnapping, murders, and a Russian spy from his past, Eldon will have to use all his experience to discover the truth and survive.
This novel is written with such intimacy and intrigue it is difficult to put down. As we meet and follow our protagonist, retired secret service Ron Eldon you feel as though he could walk right off the page. Eldon is not a super spy caricature, but a very human man. As you follow him throughout the story, the plot contains many red herrings, twists, and surprises that continue through the end of the book. Being a novel of spies, deception, and misinformation, I was continually guessing if what I was reading and being led to believe was true. The tie-in of the historical subplot of Bristol’s part in England’s slave trade is interesting and added to the questions and suspicions around Jove’s investigations into historical slave holders’ compensation, BLM, and right-wing extremists.
I highly recommend this smart and surprising British espionage/crime thriller mash-up!
***
About the Author
Jack Davies is an award-winning writer/director/producer based in London. Writer of published short stories, film scripts and poetry, he was shortlisted for the York Poetry Prize in 2020. He lives in London, UK.
