Bøker av Ellen Byerrum

It's 1934. PROHIBITION IS OVER!Champagne corks are popping and guns are blazing!When Broadway's hot new female playwright crosses paths with a handsome (and mysterious) private eye, there will be drama (and comedy too.)"It occurred to me that if I hadn't tried to do a good deed and return the gold watch Mr. Scavullo left at the lunch counter, a strange man wouldn't be holding me at gunpoint. That was the problem with good deeds. Unintended consequences."Comedy, mystery, and romance intertwine in a frothy mix in CROOK TALES FOR TWO, a caper set in New York City in 1934 with an Art Deco verve. Prohibition is over and those with money pop the bubbly, dance the nights away, and attend the latest plays.Mere days before her first Broadway opening, playwright Esmé de LaForet discovers what happens when good deeds go awry: murder, mobsters, reporters, dangerous dames from high and low society, and nerve-wracking opening nights. Esmé has enough on her plate. She doesn't need the complications that come when she tries to return a lost watch to its owner, a man she's seen at church. There's a lot about this Scavullo guy she doesn't know. She follows him with the watch and sees him duck into an empty school, so she does the same. That's when shots ring out and she seeks safety in a supply closet, only to be discovered by a stranger--with a pistol in his hand. He claims to be one of the good guys, but he's dressed like a flashy mobster.Scavullo's murder kicks off their first meeting with a bang, and Esmé finds herself playing cat-and-mouse with this secretive stranger, private investigator Graydon Chase, while coping with gold-digging debutantes, mothers and butlers, lurking mobsters, and a major dose of romantic chemistry. This detecting duo dig, clash, crash, and match wits, while juggling temperamental-yet-dramatic actors, unpredictable gangsters, and a deadly virus sweeping the city. Oh, and with Esme's life at risk from an unknown killer, she might also be trying to dodge a case of love.CROOK TALES FOR TWO is an effervescent, fun and delightful read with a stylish Nick-and-Nora vibe.

"It's not like it's murder," Mimi told her boss."Don't kid yourself, sister. People commit all kinds of crimes for all kinds of reasons. There's murder afoot whenever money is involved."In wartime Washington, D.C., stolen sugar, illegal moonshine, ladies of the evening, and shortages of goods converge in murder.It's June 1943, halfway through a World War that feels like it will never end. Rationing, victory gardens, and making do or doing without have all become a patriotic way of life. But the flip side of patriotism is hoarding, profiteering, theft, and black marketeering.A young Mimi Smith has gone to Washington to work for the war effort. Yet Mimi's got bigger plans than laboring as a mere stenographer at the government agency that investigates black market activity. When two "magdalens" who were selling information and stolen goods are murdered, Mimi traces a connection to a killer that no one else suspects. While others don't care about the women who service the servicemen, Mimi can't turn away from a promise to a friend. She teams up with a skeptical policeman and a country boy soon to enter the Navy to trap a killer that everyone has been happy to see.The Brief Luminous Flight of the Firefly is the prequel to the bestselling Crime of Fashion Mysteries, featuring Lacey Smithsonian. Set decades before Lacey plies her trade as a journalist in D.C., Firefly explores Lacey's Great-aunt Mimi Smith's wartime journey that brought her to Washington, the parallels between the two women, including their love of fashion and the clues people wear without knowing it, and the origins of Mimi's trunk full of mysteries, the trunk Lacey later inherits. And both Mimi and Lacey discover they have a passion for finding out how the story ends.

STOLEN SUGAR, ILLEGAL MOONSHINE AND RATIONING converge in murder in wartime Washington, D.C. as a young woman from out West teams up with a cop and a Navy-bound country boy to trap a murderer everyone has been happy to see.