Marilyn's Musings

A bit of history about The Astral Gift. After writing my two historical family sagas, I wondered what I should write next--the answer came easily--a mystery. Mysteries were what I loved to read. The Astral Gift is fiction, of course, I don't know anyone who can astral project nor have I done it, except in dreams.  The heroine in the story has some resemblance to a young woman I know well who did suffer abuse as a child. The setting is much like the beach community of Oxnard California back when I first lived there. The policeman in my story has similarities to the police officer I knew best at the time, my then son-in-law.  The day care center is much like one I worked in though it was in Ventura. I plucked various personality traits from some of the teachers who worked alongside me. None lived in a mortuary. I just like mortuaries. I do hope some of you might like to try this mystery which is also a bit of a romance. Or perhaps you know someo...

A perfect holiday gift for the women on your list (or get it for yourself.) The holidays—Christmas and Thanksgiving—are usually a stressful time for me.  I imagine they must be for every woman. There's so much cooking to be done, and it all has to be perfect. And it all has a hard deadline. My mother-in-law and I try to get dinner on the table by 6:30 pm, latest. What every woman needs at this time is a diverting and entertaining mystery.  While you're waiting for the oven to pre-heat or the pumpkin pie or turkey to cook,  you can put your feet up, relax with a nice cup of coffee or tea, and read a few pages of A Minor Deception , the first in the Joseph Haydn series. I can promise you, it will be diverting. If you've enjoyed Kate Kingsbury's delightful Pennyfoot Hotel mysteries or Emily Brightwell's Mrs. Jeffries series or even Amanda Carmack's riveting Elizabethan Mysteries, then A Minor Deception is  just the right book for you or a friend...

House of Dark Shadows, by Robert Liparulo This is the perfect book for a boy who is a reluctant reader. When fifteen-year-old Xander King is forced to move away from his friends and interests into a backwoods town in northern California he isn’t the least bit happy. An up-and-coming film maker, he sees things a bit differently than any of his family. When his parents decide to move into a dilapidated vacant house with too many rooms to count, Xander is the first one to pick-up on the fact that something weird is going on with the house. Xander and his younger brother, David have an eerie experience when they are transported from a spot in the house right into the school they’ll soon be going to. Things begin to get downright scary, when the boys learn that there are other weird things that go on in the house, including a monster-size man wandering the halls. Once a reader gets into the story, he’ll have to read all the rest in the series because there are too many unanswered mysteries...