An opportunity she can't refuse. A killer that won't stop!

Reeling from the shock of losing her newly found mother, Amanda Blake is compelled to uncover hidden secrets and bring her mother's killer to justice.

Everyone's keeping secrets in a house full of strangers, but some secrets can kill.

Amanda claws her way to the truth even when it threatens her own life.
When a hail of bullets sends Amanda running for her life, it is clear that the killer will stop at nothing until she is dead.
YOU THINK YOU KNOW HOW BAD THINGS CAN BE . . . BUT NOT THIS TIME. .

What some readers said...
"This book moves at a brisk pace from the very beginning, Amanda meeting her mother Jean for the first time after many years. The backstory surfaces rapidly, Amanda adopted out in Australia when Jean was seventeen and penniless, but now a rich widow in California able to call them back together. It is a busy plot around diverse characters eyeing a huge inheritance while a murder takes place and suspicion is rife, giving investigators a puzzle to unravel. Your prose is clearcut and to the point in both narration and dialogue, making the story easy to follow. Thank you so much for the captivating read." (Beta reader)
"Bravo for a plot that grabs the reader! The characters are intriguing and in the early chapters you've stirred up enough suggestion of internal conflict for at least Amanda, and Dorian to make readers want to go deeper into their lives and individual situations." (Beta reader)
When you reach the end, you think it's the end. However, the end is just beginning. Book 2 Deeds of Darkness is out now.
About the Author: Someone asked me why I wrote The Deadly Caress. It's what captured my attention at one time from a newspaper article and I started to get the what if's going. What if a person was to discover that the woman she thought was her mother wasn't. How would she feel? What if this mother was murdered? What would this person do? Then there's a scary scene with Amanda driving down a mountainside and that comes from my memory banks. I grew up across the road from a very bad intersection and every weekend there would be at least one horrific accident. Some of these were youths speeding or chasing each other. Others were drunks or drivers who had miscalculated the sharp turn and careered into an oncoming car or the nearby light post. My dad would run over to see if an ambulance needed to be called as we were the only family in the street to have a phone. He'd take blankets over if the person/people was badly injured and I would help him. My sister and my mother would be too upset to be of help and didn't go. Once a car overtook another and miscalculated. He caught the side of the vehicle and the side panel was peeled away like a giant orange peel. This I have included in one of my scenes. I find my characters everywhere and nowhere.