Showing results by author "Alexie Linn" in All Categories

Two women lay sprawled in front of my truck. They are very dead. Queenie sits like a statue on the passenger side of my vintage Chevy pick-up, looking like the circus fat lady that she thinks she is - but she's not laughing. I am on sabbatical in the Kaibab National Forest, feeding my own free spirit with life-changing time by myself, much needed and anticipated after my last exhausting coaching case.

My name is Mary Linn Hasenpfeffer. I’m 15 years old. I’m in my sophomore year of school, and today is the first day of my 12th school since first grade. All I want to do is finish school in peace, maybe make a new friend, and help my mother get through the chemo and back to herself.

The body wedged in the doorway, floating on a pool glass shards and red liquid, was very much alive. But the body laid out under a palo verde tree in my retention pond was very much dead. The live body wedged in the doorway was blinded in the line of duty, living a demoralizing life of forced retirement with no enemies and no hope. The corpse under the Palo Verde tree was a county code enforcer with a plethora of enemies - and I was the targeted fall gal for the murder. A cozy mystery set in the desert southwest that started as two women on an adventure.

Have you ever felt like you have to don your Yosemite Sam persona to protect your home from marauders? But not because you flaunt and hoard treasure. Oh no. It’s because the marauders aren’t in it for the loot alone. The marauders get their kicks from breaking and turning everything in their path inside out. It’s like they get their jollies from turning tidy, functional, and organized needs into heaps of trash. The cost in dollars, time, and outside help to repair and replace what these yahoos tear apart is more than Sally can manage at 87 years old.

When Charlemagne, Bobby’s pup, roots out a mega lottery winning ticket, the mysterious misadventures begin.

Sally’s mother came for tea—20 years after her death. The reason for the visit? To charge Sally with the task of clearing her mother (Sally’s grandma Lydia) of three imaginative but despicable murders. But wait! There’s more than meets the eye in this conglomeration of old and new characters bumping heads. Who’s really the evil one? Or is it evil ones?

The rules state contestants must be 18-years-old. Bobby is 12 years old, going on 32. His father has vanished. His mother is rehabbing after being run over by a boulder.

Bobby is confident his surprise installation of artificial intelligence into Alliwicious will please Gram Sally. But he didn’t have time to educate her about AI. Or about her new and improved man-doll named Alliwicious.

What’s worse? Getting shipped off to an Alzheimer’s Care Center where nobody will listen…or being kidnapped by your rescuer? Introducing Joan Freed’s 87-year-old spunky Aunt Sally and her sidekick they call the Sourdough Kid.

What if your 12-year-old grandson’s fingerprints turned up in a missing person’s database? What would you do? Would you investigate? Or blow it off as a blip in cyberspace?