Author Spotlight: Mystery Writer Carol Light Joins Us Today!

It’s always a treat to welcome my pal and fellow Tule Publishing author Carol Light to the Spotlight. I love her mysteries and the fact that I always get a first look because besides being her travel buddy, I’m also her copy editor. I love seeing if I can figure out the whodunnit before I get to the end of the edit.

Carol Light is an avid reader and writer of mysteries. She loves creating amateur sleuths and complicating their normal lives with a crime that they must use their talents and wits to solve. She’s traveled worldwide and lived in Australia for eight years, teaching high school English and learning to speak “Strine.” Florida is now her home. If she’s not at the beach or writing, you can find her tackling quilting in much the same way that she figures out her mysteries—piece by piece, clue by clue.

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Thank you, Nan, for inviting me back into your spotlight! I’m excited to be here today to introduce my latest book, Fatal Silence, which will be released by Tule Publishing on March 16. This is the third mystery in my Southern Secrets series. The setting for all three books is Crossroads, a small town in Southern Arkansas. Each book features a different female main character, along with police chief Tim Birch and newspaper publisher Jack Huddleston. If you’ve read the first two books, you’ll recognize many of the other townspeople too.

In Fatal Silence, Lexie Gilroy, a young divorced mother, becomes a victim of a theft when the bulldozer recently purchased by her family’s construction business is stolen. She recognizes one of the thieves, her one-time hero, Gage Pope. Instead of telling Tim Birch, a close family friend, she decides she owes Gage a chance to explain himself. She confronts him the next morning at his home, and he promises to try to return her bulldozer. Lexie’s life then spins out of control when Gage is found murdered and rumors start to fly about her visit to his house.

Southern Secrets is my second series, and my first set in a small town. Crossroads has just over seven thousand residents and is located deep in pine forest country. The biggest employer in town—in the entire county for that matter—is Southern Pines, a paper products manufacturer that turns those tall trees into products we use every day, including toilet paper and paper towels. In Fatal Silence, Cal Kinney, a California transplant and the company’s newest director, begins to suspect someone is embezzling money. He needs to have absolute proof before he makes accusations, but with someone intent on stopping him at any cost, he may not have that luxury.

Jack Huddleston also has something to prove. Someone is behind the dumping in Crawfish Pond that he witnessed one night after receiving a tip. Not long after, Jack was nearly killed when someone firebombed his newspaper office. Suffering from PTSD, Jack isn’t sure he still has the courage to confront the business owner he suspects is behind the illegal dumping. When his research points to a wider conspiracy, he realizes he may have uncovered the biggest story to hit Crossroads in decades. Proving it is a different matter. Jack will have to overcome his fear to find enough evidence to convince Tim Birch take him seriously.

Even crime novels need a lighter side, and despite the shadows cast by the pines, Crossroads is a friendly place—most of the time. Like Nan’s River’s Edge books, it has landmarks readers will come to recognize. There’s Main Street, the Crossroads Gazette newspaper office (or what’s left of it), the library, and Annabelle’s Café. Brother and sister Dave and Cindy Lee who run the café don’t offer gourmet-standard fare like Mac’s Riverside Dinner in River’s Edge, but Dave does grill a mean burger. Cindy also dishes up the best gossip in town, along with the pie of the day. If you’ve ever picked up a southern cookbook, you know how important dessert is in the South! My Arkansas cookbooks have multiple chapters with sweet recipes. The recipe names are just as sweet, like Mama’s Gingerbread, Mission Sunday Fudge Cake, and Sky-High Lemon Icebox Pie.

But let’s resist that pie and leave the café. After all, there is a murder to solve and a stolen bulldozer to locate. Tim has his hands full already without hearing about that possible embezzlement at Southern Pines, and he’s too mad at Jack to pay him much attention. Besides, I don’t want you to think my mysteries are light-hearted cozies. While I don’t write dark, gritty, or graphic crime stories, my characters occasionally swear and the bad guys don’t all have good manners or play fair. However, you can be assured that justice is served in the end.

I think you’ll enjoy Fatal Silence and meeting Lexie, a hard worker who’s feisty and not quite as independent as she’d like to be. If you haven’t read Deadly Inheritance or Death Watch, I hope you’ll want to meet Merritt Quinn and Jana Nance too. And, by the way, along with secrets and murder in my mysteries, you may find some romantic undertones to sweeten up your visit to Crossroads, along with Cindy’s pie. Just don’t let them distract you from solving the crime!

***Giveaway*** For a chance to win an e-book copy of Fatal Silence or the Southern Secrets book of your choice and a $10 Amazon gift certificate, tell me why you like reading about small towns and whether you live in one or would like to.

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you’ll visit my webpage at www.carollightauthor.com soon and sign up for my monthly newsletter.

All the best,

Carol

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Fatal Silence

Lexie Gilroy thought running the family construction office for a week would be routine—until thieves rumble off with their brand-new bulldozer before sunrise. She knows one of the criminals. He once saved her life. Now she wants answers, and she’s not waiting for the police to hand them over.

Reporter Jack Huddleston is chasing redemption, and Southern Pines board member Cal Kinney has his own suspicions about missing money. They, too, would rather keep the law at arm’s length while they get their facts straight.

And Crossroads police chief Tim Birch has a big problem of his own. The FBI has informed him of a link between their quiet town, a truck driver stabbed in a bar fight, and an international theft ring.

Secrets here run deeper than anyone guessed. And in Crossroads, loyalty can be the most dangerous weapon of all. If Lexie, Tim, and two unlikely allies don’t trust the right people—and the wrong ones at the right time—they’ll be the next names added to a killer’s list.

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