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SUMMER SESSION
The first book in the Harper Jennings series
Severn House Publishers (August 1, 2011)
Life is going well for Iraqi war veteran Harper
Jennings. She has physical scars and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,
but she's a survivor. She's studying Archeology at Cornell where she
works as a teaching assistant. Together with her husband, Geology
professor Hank Jennings, she's renovating an old Victorian-style house.
Things are rosy.
Until the morning that Hank, doing repairs with friend Trent Manning, falls off the roof.
Harper's
flashbacks of war flare up as she watches Hank land on his head. His
injury leaves him with aphasia, a condition which interferes with his
speech. Hoping for a cure, Harper takes him to Cayuga Neurological
Center, and her flashbacks subside.
Until, as she's teaching, a student jumps out the window.
From
then on, Harper's world flips upside-down. She finds experimental
drugs, stolen from the Neurological Center; she is assaulted; her home
is ransacked. Murders occur and the victims have one thing in common:
they all connect to Harper. Hank's doctor offers support--but can she
trust him? Or anyone?
Harper is caught in a web of perils both
past and present, fighting to protect her students, her husband and
herself from an insidious and uncontrollable source, which she alone can
identify...
THE BORROWED AND BLUE MURDERS
The fourth book in the Zoe Hayes series
Minotaur Books; 1st edition (September 16, 2008)
Zoe's got the dress and the flowers; she's even got the groom. Yes, in this fast-paced page-turner, Zoe Hayes is finally about to marry her detective beau, Nick Stiles.
Guests are gathering. Two of Nick's out-of-town, look-alike brothers crash at Zoe's house before the wedding, and, suddenly, Zoe has more on her mind than juggling her roles as mother, puppy-owner, hostess and bride-to-be. A female jogger is found murdered on her patio. It turns out that one of Nick's brothers has bumped into her on the sidewalk that very morning. Who is she? Why has she come into Zoe's back yard?
Not only that, an administrator from the Psychiatric Institute keeps calling even though Zoe is on a leave of absence from work. She assumes he wants to talk about her job, but, after he gets slammed by a car as he tries to speak to her on the street, she finds out that what he wants to discuss is far more frightening and deadlier than she could have imagined.
As the wedding date approaches, the body count grows, Nick's strange elusive third brother appears and vanishes, and dangers from all sides close in on Zoe and her children. People are not who they seem to be, and Zoe must protect her children, her wedding party and herself, even as the wedding guests gather and the family dresses for the nuptials.
THE DEADLY NEIGHBORS
Now available
from St. Martin's Minotaur
A taut, fast-paced suspense novel in the tradition
of Mary Higgins Clark, The Deadly Neighbors again features the
tension-packed storytelling of the talented Merry Jones.
In this third novel featuring art therapist Zoe Hayes, the neighbors are
shocked when a woman's body is discovered in the kitchen of Zoe’s
estranged father, Walter. In fact, they suspect Walter of killing her.
But as Zoe investigates further, it seems that the neighbors are up to
some pretty shocking shenanigans themselves.
As Zoe tries to prove her father’s innocence, she encounters a cruel
ring of organized criminals who specialize in dark and deadly forms of
entertainment. Trying to escape their grasp, Zoe—with her daughter,
Molly, in tow—must solve a series of grisly murders, but in the process,
stumbles into secrets that force her to reconnect with a lost and very
frightening part of her own past….
THE NANNY MURDERS
(Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martins Press, 2005; paperback, 2006)
The first in the Zoe Hayes mystery series, The Nanny Murders is a
mesmerizing page-turner about missing nannies who have disappeared, one
by one, from a close-knit Philadelphia community.
Zoe Hayes, who works as an art therapist in an institute for
seriously deranged patients, is the single mother of an adopted and
adorable little girl named Molly. Zoe gets involved in the missing
nannies case when Molly, playing in the snow, makes a grisly
discovery—She finds a piece of litter that turns out to be a human
finger.
One of Zoe’s neighbors (but which one?) seems to be a serial
killer. Zoe and a mysteriously scarred detective named Nick Stiles team
up to catch the killer when suddenly Zoe becomes the prey….
“A brooding nightmare with twists and turns to the very last page.” FAYE KELLERMAN, author of Street Dreams
“The NANNY MURDERS is a fine debut, fast-paced and full of heart. Merry
Jones maintains a grip on the reader from the first page and doesn’t
let up.” ROBERT FERRIGNO, author of The Wake Up
“Wow. What a zinger of a mystery! Zoe Hayes, like the inner-city block
she lives on, is in perpetual, chaotic transition: a forty-one-year-old
single mom intent on raising an adopted daughter, connecgting with
friends, and making a life that does not include nannynapping and
murder. Zoe is smart, tough, and tender; the mystery is taut, the
settings vivid, the characters authentic. This may be Merry Jones’s
first novel, but she is already an accomplished writer.” SUSAN WITTIG ALBERT, best-selling author of the China Bayles mystery series
“Merry Jones has created her own new brand of riveting suspense in this page-turning series debut.” KAREN HARPER, Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author of DARK ANGEL and the Elizabeth I mysteries
THE RIVER KILLINGS
(Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martins Minotaur, 2006; paperback due winter, 2007)
The sequel to THE NANNY MURDERS, Jones’s suspense novel, THE
RIVER KILLINGS weaves a gripping, fast-paced tale set on Philadelphia’s
famous Boathouse Row. It begins just a few months after the previous
book has ended, involving many of the same characters.
On summer vacation from her art therapy job, Zoe takes a sculling class
for fun with her best friend, Susan Cummings. One evening, while her
daughter waits with Susan’s children at the boathouse on the banks of
the Schuylkill River, Zoe rows off with Susan to practice for an
upcoming regatta. When Susan’s oar catches on some flotsam (which turns
out to be a woman’s dress), the boat flips, and the two find themselves
in deep waters with not just one but an entire throng of floating
bodies.
Someone along Boathouse Row is a multiple murderer, but who? And why?
One night, after Zoe’s boyfriend, Detective Nick Stiles, goes to
the river but doesn’t return, Zoe and Molly go looking for him and,
unexpectedly, Zoe uncovers a sinister plot, far broader and deadlier
than she has anticipated, and far more difficult to escape.
“A page-turning success…Hard to put down." THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
