Child advocate attorney, Liz Fallon, desperately needs a break after legal blunders and her own negligence lead to the kidnapping and death of a mother and daughter she represents. Fluent in her mother's native Corsican tongue, she nabs a job at a Paris newspaper as a lingua corsa translator for Pierre Benatar, whose coverage of the explosive Corsican Nationalist movement has enraged every separatist faction. When Benatar and his seven-year-old son disappear, she resolves to prevent another tragedy and cons her way to Corsica under the ruse of researching a tabloid story about the mazzeri, the isle's ancient harbingers of death. She cozies up to the prime suspects using her secret knowledge of lingua corsa and the aid of an elderly Brit and a courageous teen Corsican cousin. The hunters suddenly become the hunted when Liz's inquiries arouse the suspicions and passions of both the separatist leader and the French police chief. When the mazzeri story also takes a chilling personal turn, she has to wonder whether Corsica intends to reclaim her as its prodigal daughter or destroy her. Cover photo by Fabie Centulle (Corse Passion)
About the Author: My fabulous adventure in Corsica as a teenager has percolated in my brain for decades and has inspired my second novel MOTHER TONGUE, which is available in both Kindle and paperback versions on Amazon. MOTHER TONGUE is upmarket women's fiction with suspense and thriller elements set amid the danger and chaos of the separatist movement in modern-day Corsica. The back story is based on that wild adventure I had at nineteen involving, among other things, trying to sneak two Foreign Legionnaires off of Corsica! My first novel DEGREES OF OBSESSION was published in a Kindle earlier in 2014. The paperback version was first published back in 2005 and has been recently revised. I was born in Chicago, Illinois to a father who was off a few days later to fight the good fight in as a naval officer in WWII and a mother who had graduated from the University of Chicago in Political Science in 1937--quite the feminist before her time. I grew up in La Jolla, California where I mastered the art of body surfing with my girlfriends and the art of the writing from my honors English teacher. I graduated near the top of my class in high school and went on to Stanford University to major in chemistry. Love took priority over Bunsen burners, and I switched to a psychology major, which allowed time to pursue my first real romance (the back-story for "Degrees of Obsession"). I graduated from San Diego State in 1965 and garnered a Masters degree in 1968 and a Doctorate in Psychology in 1970 from the University of Illinois. Over the next forty years I worked as a psychologist. I retired from the nation's largest HMO in 2009 but have recently been lured out of Granny-dom to assume a position as a Mental Health Director of a health plan serving the Medi-Cal population in 14 northern CA counties. In 2001, I got bitten by the fiction and began taking writing classes and participating in professionally led critiquing groups. DEGREES OF OBSESSION was published in 2005. I was thrilled to be asked to promote my novel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 2006 at UCLA. I am the mother two grown children and am devoted to my four grandchildren. I collect antique flamingoes and admit to having a neon flamingo in my bedroom, which makes it look like a pink bordello! I live in the San Francisco Bay area.