#kellye garrett

Missing White Woman: A Novel

From Forbes.com, continuing to provide valuable information and ideas to authors.

Mystery author Kellye Garrett found out that her publisher, Midnight Ink, an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide, would be closing to new author submissions next year on the same day the news was announced publicly in October, when she received an email from the publisher.

Garrett has two current titles in her Midnight Ink Detective by Day series for sale: Hollywood Homicide, published in August 2017, and Hollywood Ending, published in August 2018, with a third, Hollywood Hack, scheduled for an August 2019 release. Hollywood Homicide was widely lauded in the mystery community, winning the coveted 2017 Agatha Award for Best First Novel and 2018 Anthony Award for Best First Novel, among others.

Garrett told Forbes.com that she and other Midnight Ink authors “were as shocked as everyone else. There are so many things you stress about when you have a book coming out—reviews, sales, publicity—that it never occurred to me that I would have to deal with my publisher closing.”

Author Mollie Cox Bryan, whose Classic Star Biography mysteries series will debut with The Jean Harlow Bombshell in May 2019, heard the news from her literary agent. This will be her first—and last—novel for Midnight Ink. Like Garrett, she didn’t have any inkling that the publisher planned to stop publishing. “I was shocked and saddened by the news for myself, but also for the mystery community,” Bryan said.

Midnight Ink publisher Bill Krause told Forbes.com that the 25 forthcoming Midnight Ink titles will still be published and promoted as planned, with the last being released in September 2019. “Midnight Ink will continue to produce, publish, market, support and sell forthcoming titles as well as the 250-title strong backlist into the foreseeable future,” Krause commented via email. Of those 25 forthcoming titles, Krause said, “Several are new authors to Midnight Ink with stand-alone projects, while others are series books that have had their slots from previous years.” The imprint’s mystery series are generally released via one new book in the series per year, released during the same month. Among their longest running series is Kathleen Ernst’s Chloe Ellefson series; the tenth volume, Fiddling with Fate, will be published by Midnight Ink in September 2019..

Publishers Weekly stated that the imprint, founded in 2005, would be closing, while Midnight Ink is adamant that they aren’t closing, merely not taking any new submissions and not publishing new titles beyond September 2019. But for authors with books pending, both descriptions leave the ultimate fate of their books and series similarly unclear.

Lena’s sister was a reality star. She dies, but, did she really die of an overdose? Or did someone kill her? And if someone did kill her, who? Lena is on the case, she wants to find out the truth about what happened to her sister. Of course, when she starts looking into her sister, she also starts finding secrets about her family too. Dark secrets.

It was a twisty story, and, the twists definitely made me keep turning the pages. The characters were all unique and interesting too. A really intensely fun read.

You may like this book If you Liked: Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth, The Hurricane Blonde by Halley Sutton, or L. A. Burning by D.C. Taylor

Like a Sister: A Novel

Review of Like a Sister

Book of the Month is a monthly subscription service that lets you choose a book each month. BOTM gives you five books to choose from and they’ll send whichever one you choose. I’m always excited to see which books are up for selection. They try to diversify their selections. So, when April arrived, I chose Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett. Garrett’s newest novel is a mystery around the death of…