Title PARALLEL SECRETS
Author ML BARRS
Genre MYSTERY
Publisher THE WILD ROSE PRESS
Book Blurb
After a young girl goes missing, former TV crime reporter Vicky Robeson joins the search with the help of her attractive new love interest. They take his RV to a tiny town in rural Missouri that's filled with odd characters and darker secrets. But Vicky has secrets of her own. She believes this kidnapped girl may be linked to a case she reported on nine years ago, when a mystery child was found walking on levee, bloody and unable to speak. Back then, Vicky failed to follow up clues only she knew. Now, she has a chance to redeem herself. As she uncovers secrets, it becomes clear someone will kill to keep them hidden.
Excerpt
Vicky’s first day in Walkers Corner turned interesting almost immediately. She tapped the screen on her fancy new phone, though she wasn’t really reading as she sat alone in the town’s only diner. She was too busy eavesdropping on the men in the booth behind her.
“No! That’s not what she was doing.” One of them had an Upper Midwest accent.
Some might call her nosy. She always considered herself curious, a crucial trait for journalists, though since she wasn’t actively working, she’d cut back on tuning in to other people’s business.
Mostly. Unless it was happening right behind her, and someone was loud enough to overhear. Could he be talking about the missing girl? Vicky tapped a few words under the name of the deputy who’d taken her name to become a search volunteer. It was so handy to read news and write notes right on the screen without a keyboard. Hard to believe she paid so much for this thing but it sure was a gamechanger.
She’d noticed one of the men when she walked toward him on the way to her booth. He’d leaned back and crossed heavily tattooed arms over his barrel chest. He wore a beat-up baseball cap and a scruffy denim shirt with rolled-up sleeves. When he tilted up his chin, his face was even more battered than his clothes—not from recent injury but from a life lived hard for fifty years or so. He looked tired and pissed off, and definitely didn’t like what he was hearing.
Or so she’d imagined. The other guy behind her sounded young. The dividing wall was too tall to see him, but she could hear his fierce whisper. “No, that’s not what I mean.” Yup, a Minnesota accent. Definitely.
There was a pause. Denim Tattoo Man must be talking but she couldn’t hear him. Minnesota Guy said, “No. And what would she be doing there, anyway? She was sneaking around. Acting shady.”
Shady? Didn’t sound like a missing ten-year-old.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub)
Amazon (print book)
Barnes & Noble
Goodreads (print book)
Goodreads (ebook)
Goodreads (author)
Author Biography
ML Barrs grew up one of thirteen children—the first girl, with three older brothers—a birth order she believes shaped her essence by the time she was eight. A girl’s gotta be a bit pugnacious to get along in that environment. Amid the chaos of fourteen people living in a mobile home (not a double-wide), she turned fifteen, dropped out of school and ran away from home. Being homeless, then working minimum wage jobs quickly grew old. She earned her GED and went to college, where she met and married the father of their two grown children. After a successful career as a television news director and general manager, she decided that what she really wanted to do is write mysteries. Parallel Secrets will be published September 2023, and its sequel is in the works.
Social Media Links
M Instagram
M Twitter X
M Threads
M Twitter