I’ve always loved suspenseful books, and I enjoy creating my own characters and helping them strengthen their faith as they triumph in difficult circumstances. I want to encourage other Christians with my writing, and introduce others to Christ who may be searching to see how God can change their lives. I also want to provide readers with a fun getaway of excitement, suspense, and thrills. I am an attorney and see many cases that don’t conclude with a happy ending, however, God can take what men meant for evil, and turn it into good, and there is a positive and encouraging ending waiting in each of my books.
I am a Christian, and I prefer a good suspenseful book without the sexual heat that I usually flip past when I read secular books.
This author handles the attraction between the characters in a positive way, yet still gives me page-turning suspense and a glance at Baltimore, the city where the actions occurs. I love the characters and enjoy getting to know them as the suspense unfolds.
Dani Pettrey Launches a New Romantic Suspense Series
In college, Griffin McCray and his three best friends had their lives planned out. Griffin and Luke Gallagher would join the Baltimore PD. Declan Gray would head to the FBI and Parker Mitchell would go on to graduate school as a crime scene analyst. But then Luke vanished before graduation and their world--and friendships--crumbled.
Now Griffin is a park ranger at Gettysburg, having left life as a SWAT-team sniper when a case went bad. The job is mostly quiet--until the day he captures two relic hunters uncovering skeletal remains near Little Round…
I've always wanted to be a detective. I remember writing stories on my mom's old typewriter and playing pretend investigator with my childhood friend. I have had an appetite for stories and mysteries for as long as I remember. I was intrigued by human behavior and had the desire to find justice. This led me to study forensics and use my fine art ability and critical mind to get answers for victims and their families. I have a Master's Degree in Forensic Science and years of government and experience as a forensic artist and investigator, making my writing as authentic as possible. My story and personal struggles, and life's discoveries are highlighted by my stories.
I enjoy murder mystery series where you can get to know the protagonist and be exposed to things I would never imagine. Nevada Barr does this in a fun way through the eyes of Anna Pigeon, a National Parks Ranger. The details about the job ring true because Barr herself worked as a ranger in National Parks. Through Deep South, we learn about sexism in the workplace. She highlights society's and nature's complexity and how it feels to be an outsider and hold onto your own worth.
Nevada Barr's ever-popular Anna Pigeon series is consistently praised as "exceptional" (Denver Post), "stunning" (Seattle Times), and "superb" (New York Times Book Review). In Deep South, Park Ranger Anna Pigeon heads to Mississippi, only to encounter terrible secrets in the heart of the south...
Anna Pigeon finally gives in to her bureaucratic clock-and signs on for a promotion. Next thing she knows, she's knee-deep in mud and Mississippi. Not exactly what she had in mind. Almost immediately, as the new district ranger on the Natchez Trace, Anna discovers the body of a young prom queen near a country cemetery, a…
I’m always inspired by nature. I’m sure that’s because my parents always took us to beautiful places on our summer vacations. I enjoyed snorkeling in Florida, hiking in the Rockies, exploring at Yellowstone National Park, to name a few places. I’ve never forgotten how in awe I was at seeing such beauty, and when I started writing romantic suspense novels, it seemed natural to look for a setting that not only inspired me to write but would lend to the suspense and tension aspect of my novels as well as provide an exciting adventure. Even now, when we travel and explore, it’s always setting that inspires me with new story ideas.
This novel is set in a national park and is filled with danger and drug traffickers.
I love the details the author writes of this amazing national park that begins in Natchez, Mississippi, supposedly follows a Native American trail, and then ends in Nashville, Tennessee. What a great setting for a novel, especially when you factor in that drug traffickers are using this trail. In truth, they’re using our national parks because no one lives in the parks. The forest is dark and makes a good cover.
Patricia Bradley pulls the reader in with her park ranger heroine who wants to find the truth about who murdered her father.
The Natchez Trace National Parkway stretches 444 miles from Nashville to Natchez, the oldest town on the Mississippi River. It's the perfect road for a relaxed pleasure drive. Unfortunately for park ranger Luke Fereday, lately it's being used to move drugs. Sent to Natchez to infiltrate the organization at the center of the drug ring, Luke arrives too late to a stakeout and discovers the body of his friend, park ranger John Danvers.
John's daughter Brooke is determined to investigate her father's murder, but things are more complicated than they first appear, and Brooke soon finds herself the target of…
Fer over ten years I skippered a small book publishing company. During them years I inspected countless book proposals, most which got tossed overboard. I kin quickly gauge whether a manuscript be ripe fer publication. I bring that same skill ter reading YA and middle grade fiction. Ter be honest, it be a good deal easier ter judge the work of others than write great ficiton. But since “voice” be the reflection of the author’s soul, it helps ter know that those who be crafting the tales ‘ave thar moral compass aligned ter true north. These four authors be stand up in my book.
This book takes readers into the swamps of Florida where wild things eat people. I’m a huge fan of Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, and John D. McDonald, all of whom write (or wrote in the case of McDonald) about south Florida. So it’s great to find a YA book for boys set in the Everglades. Like with most of Tim’s books, the characters push the boundaries of what they know to be right, but do not cross the line. Boys take chances. Or at least the boys I grew up with did. We explore the outdoors, go it alone, test things, break things, and often get trapped in situations of our own making. Escape from the Everglades allows me to enjoy being a kid again without, you know, getting gobbled by a gator.
Escape from the Everglades is the first book in the High Water series and blends contemporary mystery and suspense, dramatic situations, and high adventure that both boys and girls will love.
A park ranger’s son hates the Everglades, and he thinks he’ll just die if he doesn't escape Southern Florida soon . . . and he’s right. After Parker Buckman is mauled and nearly killed by an alligator, he sees the glades as a place of death. All he wants to do is get out of the area, and he’s convinced he won’t truly be okay until he does. But…
Nature is my passion. As an avid hiker, kayaker, snowshoer, and occasional scuba diver,nothing thrills me more than observing wild species in their native environments. Freedom fromthe constant noise of civilization helps maintain my sanity. I want to share my passion for theendless fascination and solace of nature with my readers, and I also enjoy using my ten years ofexperience as a private investigator to craft each mystery. And last but never least, I relishstrong characters who must rely on their own ingenuity to solve problems, so using a settingwhere 911 cannot immediately deliver help is a key element in many of my stories.
Nevada Barr worked as a ranger in the National Park Service, and if you yearn to explore morenational parks as much as I do, she’s definitely the mystery author to read, with 19 mysteries setin a variety of national parks. It’s difficult for me to choose a favorite, but this novel, the secondin the Anna Pigeon series, features Isle Royale National Park, a little-visited treasure in theGreat Lakes that I hope to explore one day. I’m also a scuba diver, so I especially appreciate thetense underwater scenes, as well as all the eccentric NPS characters that Barr portrays so well.You’ll enjoy this book even if you’re not a diver, as well as all the other national park settings inthe series. Nevada Barr has a true gift for describing natural places and interesting people.
Park ranger Anna Pigeon returns, in a mystery that unfolds in and around Lake Superior, in whose chilling depths sunken treasure comes with a deadly price. In her latest mystery, Nevada Barr sends Ranger Pigeon to a new post amid the cold, deserted, and isolated beauty of Isle Royale National Park, a remote island off the coast of Michigan known for fantastic deep-water dives of wrecked sailing vessels. Leaving behind memories of the Texas high desert and the environmental scam she helped uncover, Anna is adjusting to the cool damp of Lake Superior and the spirits and lore of the…
Andrew Vietze was five years old when he told his older sister that one day, he would be a park ranger. Twenty-eight years later, he put on his badge for the first time as a seasonal ranger in one of the premier wilderness areas in the East, Maine’s Baxter State Park. Home of Katahdin and the terminus of the Appalachian Trail, “Forever Wild” Baxter has no pavement, no electricity, no stores, no cell service. As a boy, Vietze imagined a life flying around in helicopters, rescuing hikers off mountaintops, fighting forest fires, chasing wilderness despoilers, and plucking people out of raging rivers. And he's spent the past twenty years doing just that.
Like Edward Abbey, Sid Marty is from the old guard and it’s one of his greatest strengths – he was one of the last park ranger cowboys, literally spending part of his career working for Parks Canada as a mounted, backcountry patrolman alone deep in the bush. That’s when he wasn’t climbing. Switchbacks is a paean to high places, a love song to the Canadian Rockies. In it, Marty notes that his faithful rucksack has been dragged up cliff faces with climbing rope, fallen down couloirs, banged around in helicopters, and washed down rivers. Just like he has. Just the kind of life I wanted.
In Switchbacks, Sid Marty draws on his own memories and those of friends and former colleagues in relating a series of true mountain tales. Among his subjects are: the old guide who built a staircase up a cliff; the stranded snowshoer who was rescued between rounds of beer in a Banff tavern; the man who catered to hungry grizzlies; an opinionated packrat with a gift for larceny; and a horse named Candy whose heart was as big as a stove.
Along the way, Marty tries to answer the kind of questions that all of us must face some day. Do…
I grew up hiking and camping with my family in the national parks of Washington. Isn’t that what everyone did in summer? Later, I learned how wrong I was. That most people had never seen a glacier, stood on a mountaintop, walked through a rainforest, gazed at the size of a grizzly, skied past erupting geysers, or rafted a rushing river. These experiences have shaped who I am. I return to the haunts of national parks, from deserts to mountains and remote islands, because they wow me and feed my soul.
Last month, descending on the tour again of Lehman Caves at Great Basin National Park, I immediately felt the terror in Blind Descent creep into my head. Then, the park naturalist turned off the lights so we could experience utter black darkness—and my own dread grew larger. Barr’s mystery-thriller digs into the real fear in the cave depths, not like controlled spookiness on a tour. A fun read, Barr’s book captures what caving is all about…and the hidden dangers. If you plan on visiting Carlsbad Caverns, where this story is set, it’s a must-read. But it’s also equally good if you plan on touring caves at Mammoth, Great Basin, Sequoia, or Wind Cave National Parks. Once you’ve read it, the story will haunt you on every underground exploration.
Park ranger Anna Pigeon is enjoying the open spaces of Colorado when she receives an urgent call. A young woman has been injured while exploring a cave in New Mexico's Carlsbad Cavern Park. Before she can be pulled to safety, she sends for her friend Anna. Only one problem: a crushing fear of confined spaces has kept Anna out in the open her whole life.
I am endlessly inspired by the beauty and majesty of our national parks. As a former seasonal ranger at Mount Rainier National Park and Oregon’s Silver Falls State Park, I was frequently surprised by the incredible scrapes that visitors could get themselves into. Of course, I wasn’t immune, and I experienced a few misadventures of my own. These books are great reminders to always respect your limits and be aware of your surroundings. Since I now write novels set in our national parks, I enjoy reading some of these real adventures—it provides great fodder for the imagination.
If you’re in the mood for a lighthearted book about the national parks, Bear in the Backseat is an entertaining look at the experiences of a wildlife ranger at Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It contains a variety of humorous anecdotes mixed with more sobering tales. This book will open your eyes to the difficulty in managing both wildlife and park visitors. It contains a variety of humorous anecdotes mixed with more sobering tales.
#7 in the USA audio book in 2016#9 in the USA Wall Street Journal best seller in 2013Named A Top 50 Must Read for the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service.Named A Top 10 Must-Read Books That Could Save Our National Parks and the Environment along with John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, Lewis & Clark, Bill Bryson, and Ken Burns. Bear in the Back Seat I is the first volume in a series of true stories from “[a]n extraordinary landscape populated with befuddled bears, hormonally-crazed elk, homicidal wild boars, hopelessly timid wolves, and nine million tourists, some of whom…
I don’t just write stories, I study them. I’ve noticed that nearly every major hero/ine’s journey and epic tale has an adoption component. From Bible stories and Greek myths (adoption worked out well for Moses, not so much for Oedipus) to Star Wars through This Is Us, we humans are obsessed with origin stories. And it’s no wonder: “Where do I come from?” and “Where do I belong?” are questions that confound and comfort us from the time we are tiny until we take our final breath. As an adoptive mother and advocate for continuing contact with birth families, I love stories about adoption, because no two are alike. They give us light and insight into how families are created and what it means to be a family—by blood, by love, and sometimes, the combination of the two.
This beautifully told tale of an adoptee searching for her original family is set against her ongoing relationship to the Southwest’s most awe-inspiring terrain, and the people who bring her there. I loved this book because it showed her evolution as a wilderness lover, romantic partner, and mother as she navigated fitting into various incarnations of family, which felt just as perilous, frustrating, and rewarding as finding the right footholds in the natural world. While we are all from Mother Earth, our earthly parents can be critical to a deeper understanding of who we are as people.
Adopted at birth, Andrea Ross grew up inhabiting two ecosystems: one was her tangible, adoptive family, the other her birth family, whose mysterious landscape was hidden from her. In this coming-of-age memoir, Ross narrates how in her early twenties, while working as a ranger in Grand Canyon National Park, she embarked on a journey to discover where she came from and, ultimately, who she was. After many missteps and dead ends, Ross uncovered her heartbreaking and inspiring origin story and began navigating the complicated turns of reuniting with her birth parents and their new families. Through backcountry travel in the…
Andrea Lankford’s account of the search for three hikers missing from the Pacific Crest Trail fascinated me. I learned that hikers often take on that trail not only for the physical challenge but also as a personal quest to find new meaning in life or a new way of living.
With this mindset, missing PCT hikers may have not only suffered accidents or attacks but may have also gone off the trail with new friends or even joined a cult-like organization that runs inviting rest stops along the southern part of the trail. The searchers gave an astounding amount of their time, money, and even their health in the quest to find the missing.
This book was especially fascinating as I am an avid hiker, and I frequently see notifications of missing hikers on trails. I am also a retired private investigator who has searched for missing people, and I’m…
** AN AMAZON "BEST BOOKS OF THE MONTH" FOR AUGUST 2023 (Biographies & Memoirs) **
From an award-winning former law enforcement park ranger and investigator, this female-driven true crime adventure follows the author’s quest to find missing hikers along the Pacific Crest Trail by pairing up with an eclectic group of unlikely allies.
As a park ranger with the National Park Service's law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America, from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she…
