Helen Evans returns in Susan McBride's fourth River Road Mystery!
The Blurb
Spring has sprung, the river is rising, and when Luann Dupree, the head of River Bend's Historical Society, vanishes into the night, everyone in town is convinced she's run off with her Internet Romeo. But her lifelong friend, Sarah Biddle, is convinced Luann is the victim of foul play. No one believes her — not even her husband, the local sheriff, so she turns to Helen Evans for help.
As River Bend's resident puzzle-solver, Helen's tackled many a local mystery before. So she agrees to help Sarah, even though she's not so sure herself that Luanne is really in trouble. But as the town's flood waters slowly recede, dead fish and muck aren't the only things Helen finds. She begins to uncover town secrets, false identities... and the very real chance that Luanne might not be discovered alive....
Come Helen High Water by Susan McBride
Series: A River Road Mystery, #4
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Publication Date: June 27, 2017
Publisher: Witness Impulse
Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN-10: 0062427970
ISBN-13: 978-0062427977
e-Book File Size: 2356 KB
ASIN: B015WXQE5Y
Excerpt
The “walk of shame,” wasn’t that what they called it?
Despite the hangover that played timpani drums in her head, Luann Dupree cracked a smile as she locked her car and scurried toward her front door in the gray light of early morning. She’d always been such a straight arrow that it tickled her to envision herself being labeled a hussy. Unfortunately, it appeared that no one was around to witness her predawn homecoming.
She glanced right and left, checking an all-but-deserted Main Street beneath the still-glowing streetlamps. It felt very much like a ghost town, though there were a few signs of life: the lights flickering on at the diner down the block; a whip-poor-will calling out from a nearby tree; and a cat with a bell on its collar darting beneath a parked car. Otherwise, the town slept, not to awaken until the morning newspaper landed hard upon front porches.
“No one here but us chickens,” she murmured, shaking her head.
She let herself into the building that had, half a century ago, been the Spring Creek Hotel. Through the years the hotel had fallen into disrepair. When its owners died and their heirs placed it on the market for a pittance, the town council had scooped up the property for the River Bend Historical Society. Walls had been torn down to create vast space on the first floor for a museum. The second floor held countless documents and photographs that needed scanning into the system. Its unoccupied rooms also provided storage for the dozens of boxes found in the attic during the renovation and an extensive inventory of items left to the Historical Society by deceased town residents.
The renovation had been fully completed a year ago, and Luann was still sorting through the jumble.
She’d assumed the helm of the Society a decade before and had spent so much time in the building that it felt like home. Heck, it was her home. Before the town council had pushed forward plans to turn the attic into a tiny one-bedroom apartment, she’d often slept on the couch in her office. Though her brand-new living space was hardly bigger than a breadbox, it was all that she needed, seeing as how she was single without even a pet to her name.
One of these days, Lu imagined moving into a cottage perched atop the bluffs above the Mississippi River. How glorious it would be to wake up every morning and see the sunrise dapple the water! It would be even better if she had someone to share it with, she mused wistfully.
Not that there was anything wrong with living alone. Luann had been alone most of her fifty-two years. If she’d liked pets, it might have been a different story. But she was bored to death of herself and itched to share her passion with someone else, hopefully before another decade passed her by while her nose was buried in census tomes or dusty old photographs.
The Author
About Susan McBride
Susan has a second bestselling series with HC/Avon that debuted in May 2014, the River Road Mysteries, that include To Helen Back, Mad as Helen, Not a Chance in Helen, and Come Helen High Water.
A darker mystery featuring Texas police detective Jo Larsen, Walk Into Silence, was released in December 2016 by Thomas & Mercer and hit #1 in the US and UK (and #3 in Australia) for paid Kindle. The second Jo Larsen book, Walk a Crooked Line, is set for a July 2018 release.
Susan’s young adult thriller, Very Bad Things, came out in 2014 from Delacorte Press. Publishers Weekly raved: “McBride’s fast-paced plot is fueled by jumps between multiple characters’ perspectives, and her rendering of the venerable yet sinister school… is as absorbing as the tightly wound mystery.” She has authored several YA non-mystery novels for Delacorte about debutantes in Houston: The Debs (2008) and Love, Lies, And Texas Dips (2009). Gloves Off, the third book, will be released in 2017.
Susan has also penned three women’s fiction titles: The Truth About Love & Lightning, featured in Target’s Emerging Authors program, a Midwest Connections Pick, and dubbed “a poignant page-turner” by Publishers Weekly; Little Black Dress, a book club favorite and Target Recommended Read that spent five weeks on the St. Louis bestsellers list; and The Cougar Club, a Target “Bookmarked Breakout Title” and a Midwest Connections Pick. Foreign editions of Susan’s books have been published in France, Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Lithuania.
Susan has a short memoir available from HarperCollins: In the Pink: How I Met the Perfect (Younger) Man, Survived Breast Cancer, and Found True Happiness After 40, which tells her tale of becoming an “accidental Cougar” and marrying a younger man, her cancer diagnosis at age 42, and finding herself pregnant at 47. In 2012, Susan was named one of St. Louis’s “Most Dynamic People of the Year” by the Ladue News and was given the “Survivor of the Year” Award by the St. Louis affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. As Susan likes to say, “Life is never boring.”
The Giveaway
Susan will be awarding a print copy of Come Helen High Water
to two randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour (US only).
to two randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour (US only).
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