Archives: Books

book cover, paneled wood door with small window splashed by waves against a dark gloomy sky

Welcome to Murders Under the Sun, a podcast that takes a trip to the dark side of sunny Southern California. I’m Molly Shure, your host.

Our journey begins on the stunning cliffs of Laguna Beach, the bright sun shining on the turquoise water below. But this idyllic setting quickly becomes a nightmare for real estate agent Gwen Bishop.

She has just landed her dream listing, a multimillion-dollar beachfront property. The home has a dark past, however. Three months ago, another agent was found dead in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Gwen believes the unsolved murder was random. When unsettling things occur, she tells herself the menace she feels is her imagination. When even stranger things happen—things that throw a wrench in her plans to get the home on the market—she brushes off the icy dread creeping through her.

The house itself couldn’t be evil…could it?

Gwen’s story is the first of seven linked by an almost invisible thread across five years. A thread I noticed while working as a crime journalist. In Season One, I pull that thread to see what unravels.

Travel with me to The Cliff House to learn what lay beyond its door.

(Portions of this story previously appeared in A Margin of Lust by Greta Boris.)

book cover - dark-haired woman in black dress holding hairdresser scissors with an open treasure chest to the right

Dead Men Tell No Tales

Embalmer’s assistant Imogene Lynch may or may not get the final sensations of the dead when she touches their hair. She used to, but something strange is going on. 

Her sixth sense disappears when the body of a local treasure hunter shows up at Greener Pastures Mortuary. But that doesn’t keep her from becoming embroiled in two bone-chilling mysteries.

Her boss’s lover is awol, and a tipsy ghost is giving her the hiccups. Someone’s been murdered. She dearly hopes it’s not the missing woman.

All clues lead to Catalina Island where rumors of a pirate’s buried treasure seem to have incited a gold rush. When Imogene stumbles into a viper’s nest, she discovers the dead aren’t the only ones with secrets.

If you can imagine Agatha Raisin as a twenty-something, rockabilly, ex-hairstylist with a weird connection to the dead, this book is for you.

 

book cover - dark-haired woman in black dress with a beehive and bees to the right

Is there anything scarier than a homicidal hospital?

There’s no love lost between Imogene and her boyfriend’s mother. But when Eleanor is admitted to a local sanatorium for her migraines, Imogene takes the high road and visits.

   The hospital is housed in a creepy mansion with a chilling past. The medicines being used are a throwback to the days of snake oil and superstition. And while she’s there, Imogene bumps into a newly deceased patient.

   As hauntings go, this ghost steals the show. And everything else. Turns out Becky Riddell was being treated for kleptomania. Her influence is hard to resist.

   Things take a sinister turn when dead bodies start popping up around the sanatorium at an alarming rate. Imogene knows she should investigate, but the last thing she needs is more drama in her life. She has enough thanks to the poltergeist that’s been dogging her steps for the past month.

   However, if Imogene doesn’t figure out who’s killing off patients and why, she’ll have to move out of her apartment. Thanks to Becky’s compulsion, she’s pinched so much stuff, there’s barely enough room for her and her cat. Besides, El would never forgive her if his mother became one of the not-so-dearly departed. 

 

book cover - dark-haired woman in black dress a beaker of poison to the right

What do you do when skeletons in the family closet come out to play?

Imogene Lynch, assistant to the head embalmer of Greener Pastures Mortuary, has always longed for family, but her newfound cousin, Chelsea, is a big disappointment. Not only are they complete opposites, but Chelsea needs help with the kind of problem Imogene does her best to avoid—murder. And this one seems impossible to solve since Chelsea doesn’t know who the victim is. 

Cursing her big heart and well-developed sense of guilt, Imogene plunges into a mystery more twisted than she could have imagined. Cryptic clues, as invisible as the ghosts who leave them, entangle the cousins, and dark family secrets begin to unravel. Imogene discovers she and Chelsea may have more in common than she’d thought. And that’s not a good thing. 

The Lynches have baggage of a supernatural kind. Can Chelsea and Imogene work as a team, solve the crime, and lay the spirits of the past to rest, or will their mismatched psychic abilities lead them into danger? 

If you can imagine Agatha Raisin as a twenty-something, rockabilly, ex-hairstylist with a weird connection to the dead, this book is for you.