In celebration of this beautiful summer weekend, I’m offering three great FREE beach reads to all of my Facebook followers and friends.
The Kindle versions of DEGREES OF OBSESSION, MOTHER TONGUE, and SINISTER SUGGESTIONS will be available for FREE downloads SATURDAYJuly 22nd and SUNDAY, July 23rd, 2023 on AMAZON. [Amazon.com, Amazon.fr, and Amazon.co.uk]
And be sure to view all three BOOK TRAILERS on my WEBSITE (see links below)
DEGREES OF OBSESSION: Longtime therapist, Dr. Charlene “Charlie” Pederson hates to admit that her fixation with college flame Danny Shapiro has turned to obsession. Jolted by turning fifty and burdened with a condescending husband, she crafts a harebrained scheme to find Danny and recapture his heart. He accuses her of being the stalker that has plagued his life for years. Worming her way back into his life on the pretext of helping him escape his tormentor, she instead is thrown into unfamiliar depths of pain and mortal danger. She must rely on every trick in her book to survive. WATCH the DEGRESS OF OBSESSION BOOK TRAILER.
Go to Amazon on JULY 22nd or 23rd to download a free Kindle copy of DEGREES OF OBSESSION.
MOTHER TONGUE: LINGUA CORSA: A child missing, an escape to Paris…with yet another tragedy unfolding as the journalist she works for as a Lingua Corsa translator is kidnapped along with this young son. And so begins Liz Fallon’s dangerous undercover mission to Corsica using her secret knowledge of Lingua Corsa, her mother’s native tongue, to infiltrate a group of Corsican Nationalist separatists and rescue them. Caught between her blossoming love for a Separatist leader and his prime enemy’s obsession with her, will the Scented Isle reclaim its native daughter or destroy her? WATCH the MOTHER TONGUE BOOK TRAILER.
Go to Amazon on July 22nd or 23rd to download a free Kindle copy of MOTHER TONGUE: LINGUA CORSA
SINISTER SUGGESTIONS: 1961 – A time caught between Camelot and catastrophe. A hypnosis experiment has ruinous effects on female subjects. A student prank turns sexually violent. A coed suffers from sudden amnesia. A near-demonic predator lurks in the wings. Then, two mysterious deaths on campus ignite a maelstrom the university would prefer to ignore. Flouting demands that they shut down their investigation of the murders, renegade student journalists on the Stanford Daily put their very lives on the line to uncover the truth. WATCH the SINISTER SUGGESTIONS BOOK TRAILER
Go to Amazon on JULY 22nd or 23rd to download a free Kindle copy of SINISTER SUGGESTIONS.
Marietta and I were on the cusp, so to speak, graduating from high school in 1961. We entered puberty in 1955 along with a generation of kids who spent their formative years crouching in dirty hallways, sweaty fingers laced behind their well-scrubbed necks, waiting for the A-bomb. We graduated at the peak of the SAT scores. Our parents were afraid of Sputniks, and we were afraid of our parents. There were rumors about poodle skirts, but I never laid eyes on one. I felt out of kilter with my own generation. My mother insisted I wear sturdy brown oxfords instead of the saddle shoes and Capezios that graced the dainty feet of my peers. Of course, irradiating my toes under the shoe store fluoroscope negated the health benefit of good arch support. Actually, looking at the bare bones in my feet was the closest I ever got to obscenity. My political consciousness peaked at having two parakeets named “Ike” and a German shepherd with the same patriotic appellation. My family was not big on original thought.
There was a saying that went: “Nine out of ten California girls are beautiful and the tenth one goes to Stanford.” I went to Stanford. Now, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t break mirrors, but there were thousands of drop-dead gorgeous women in California, even in high school. I was tall and naturally blonde…well, almost. That brief stint in modeling school had served me well. I had outgrown my awkward pubescent years and could manage a graceful stride when I put my mind to it. Any shortfall I had in the looks department had been well compensated in the brain department. Those top grades paid off. Twenty-two of my classmates also applied to Stanford, but none of the others was admitted. The day my letter of acceptance came in the mail, I had more than a few envious friends. My ego was quickly deflated, however, when I arrived on campus, just another clueless freshman set loose in a seething mass of upperclassmen. I struggled through the maze of registration, jostled by the milling masses at Memorial Auditorium. I fretted as I watched the IBM cards, each printed with one class opening, disappear into the greedy hands of the students ahead of me in line. I breathed a sigh of relief when the precious card for Chemistry for Chem Majors fell into my possession. My relief was short-lived, however. After I collected the rest of my class cards, I realized that two required courses had been assigned to me on the same days at the same hour. I stared in dismay at the placards overhead that forbade any changes to the pre-assigned sections of either Freshman English or Western Civ. 
Dr. Karen Stephen aka Doc Flamingo 