NOTHING FOR FREE

Two of my latest books from Border Press became available at amazon.com this week. One is a young adult book, the sequel to MARTIN’S QUEST entitled MARTIN FINDS HIS TOTEM, and the other volume is an adult “cozy” mystery set in Louisiana entitled NOTHING FOR FREE.

MARTIN FINDS HIS TOTEM was reviewed in an earlier blog and involves young Martin Romero’s fascination with voodoo following a major Louisiana hurricane that almost sweeps away his Grandmother Eulalie’s treating shed while she is in it, a disaster which causes her to become ill. Grandmother Eulalie’s opposition to voodoo influences Martin to search for a native American totem to help him extricate himself from his fascination with voodooiennes so that he can continue his work as a traiteur using native American and Cajun healing practices.

The second book, NOTHING FOR FREE, features Kate Patton, a woman who leaves her job as food editor with a New Orleans newspaper the day her husband threatens her life while they are netting crabs in Lake Pontchartrain. She flees to Robeline in central Louisiana, intending to write about food specialties of the area, and lands a job as a columnist for the Robeline newspaper. Kate is invited to dinner at Roselea Plantation, a place to which writers and painters often retreat to pursue their artistic projects. During a dinner held at Roselea, Kate witnesses the poisoning of a guest writer, and Amelia, a descendant of the People of Color, points a finger at several of the boarders at the plantation. When a plantation worker becomes a second victim of poisoning, local police arrest a guest painter, and all visitors become suspect. Kate, frightened by Amelia and her brother performing suspicious dances in the backyard of Roselea Plantation, is led to uncover a mystery involving the old plantation and its eccentric owner.

I’ve been working on another writing project daily, and the publishing of these two books is almost anticlimactic, but I’m pleased to see their bright covers on amazon.com. Both covers are derived from paintings by my brother Paul, who lives in California, and designed by my grandson Martin, who practices landscape architecture in Madisonville, Louisiana.

Readers can order copies of both titles, MARTIN FINDS HIS TOTEM and NOTHING FOR FREE, from amazon.com. I think you’ll enjoy my latest books… they’re suspenseful “reads.”

If you’re interested in other books I’ve written, log on to the Border Press (www.theborderpress.net)site. Thanks for being part of my reading public. Young readers have been asking for a sequel to MARTIN’S QUEST for several years, and might appreciate your ordering copies of MARTIN FINDS HIS TOTEM for them. NOTHING FOR FREE is my first adult fiction book to be published.