Author: Patty Bryant
Publisher: iUniverse
Pages: 298
Genre: Mystery
Format: Ebook/Paperback
Purchase at AMAZON
It looks like someone left the door to the nether region open again, and reporter Molly Martindale has got another batch of otherworldly supplicants who need her help.
Not long ago, Molly quite literally went to hell to help secure peace for her friend Dennis, who was born Buddy Parker in the 1920s in her beloved, adopted hometown of Oxbow, Florida. Oxbow has always felt charmed to Molly—that is, if she doesn’t count the ghostly visitors who turn her world upside down or the recent return of her ex-boyfriend Greg Richards, who brings with him the scourge of illicit drugs and a burning need to get even with her.
Molly is working on acquainting her best friend Dana with Dennis’s memory. He is the father Dana has never known but always resented. Molly must tread carefully, all too aware that she could easily lose her best friend in the process. What’s more, things heat up when Dana meets Glenn Morrison, the wheelchair-bound veteran Molly kind of thinks of as “hers.” But soon Molly finds herself threatened from all sides, as residents of hell plead for her help yet again.
In this sequel to Bitter Secrets, only time will tell if she can deal with worldly and supernatural problems as she fights her newest unholy foes—the advent of drugs into her world, decades of lies involving the powerful St. Claire family, and the shadows of her past.
– especially the really good ones – take on a life of their own. They live and
breathe. They have a pulse. They practically think for themselves. The stronger
the character, the more life they have. The writer’s just along for the ride.
strong I can’t see how it could be otherwise.
in my first novel, Bitter Secrets, and continues in the sequel, Full Circle. His character is rough around the edges, in a
warm but hard-bitten way. A life of hardship and loss has beaten him down but has
not cost him his humanity. For me, Buddy may be the quintessential hero.
Nothing slick or pat about this man. No Gregory Peck or Cary Grant would ever
play him on screen. Life has been hard on him and it shows. He’s not the great
guy you’d invite over to dinner or to share a round of golf. Most people cross
the street rather than meet him on the sidewalk. But Buddy’s got character –
deep and unseen. His dog Lil’ Bit and a
bottle have been his only friends for years, but if eyes can see below the
surface, Buddy is a lost soul who’s protected himself from a thoughtless world
by layers of emotional scar tissue. He’s lost his family. Twice. The second
time he made the choice to walk away when he knew he could only deprive them of
a normal life.
characters that reside in my stories, and the reader, will ever know.
with the good things. He’s handsome. Women love him and men respect him – or at
least his stature in life. He has a loving and supportive family, money,
brains, education, a gift for dealing with people.
just never developed it. Other humans are useful to him, they’re in his way or
they’re just window dressing. Each is dealt with accordingly. As a young man he
came up in Chicago, closely associated with the gangsters of the late 1920s and
‘30s. He knows how to make money and how
to use it to his advantage. The family moved to Miami in the early ‘30s where
he perfected his style, then on to little Oxbow about a hundred miles away when
the “heat” in Miami came too close.
out of the way country town just perfect for him to play the role of benefactor
and satisfy his need for social status while staying out of the limelight of
bigger cities.
are complex. They have traveled very different paths. They live in the same
town, but not in the same world.
Sometimes they’re hard to separate.
real world. The good and the bad mesh.
he good or is he bad?
is he?
Patty Brant honed her writing skills as a small-town newspaper reporter and editor in a rural South Florida county. Born in Canton, Ohio, she lives with her husband and daughters in Clewiston, Florida. Her first book, Bitter Secrets, earned a finalist position in the 2013 Indie Excellence Book Awards.