New Orleans and Nancy Drew

Do you like Nancy Drew? Do you like New Orleans? Then, you will love this humorous and PG-rated story that especially targets women baby boomers who grew up reading and loving the Nancy Drew series. Nancy Keene, the teenage sleuth in our story, goes on vacation with her father and friends to the French Quarter. What starts out as a sight-seeing trip changes into a murder/mystery when a docent at Oak Alley Plantation is murdered while they are there. Part travelogue, part ghost story, this book mixes voodoo, ghosts, and bayous into a spicy gumbo of a whodunit. 

It's available at your favorite ebook store for only $2.99!

It's also available in paperback at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.com

Purchase at the links below:

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Murder at the Abbey: A Detective Santy Mystery

I talked my co-writer into going to hear vespers at St. Michael's Abbey. On the way there, we drove by some of the places we remembered from our wild youth and got nostalgic. The result: this murder mystery about a priest getting killed at the abbey after some nasty disputes with anti-developers and eco-terrorists who didn't like the fact that the abbey wants to expand on the diminishing wilderness of Orange County, California. Based on some real events in the news here.

eBook available at most online stores for $2.99

Paperback available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble 

Click here to buy on Amazon

Sometimes our readers ask us, "Where did you get the idea for this story?" Most of our books are about our own experiences and our book "The Stolen Mask: A Nancy Keene Mystery" works on the premise of "What would you do if James Bond was at your hotel?"  This actually happened to us: in 1987, before I retired, we were splurging at a very expensive hotel in London and I just happened to look out at the garden from our upstairs hotel room window--and Lo and Behold, there was James Bond!!  Not really, of course, but it was the actor Timothy Dalton, who played the famous secret agent. He was drinking champagne with some other people and toasts were being made.

It was around this time that Timothy Dalton got the news that he would be "The Next Bond". So, that's where I got the idea to write this story in which I have our teenage sleuth, Nancy Keene, going to London with her father. She plans to go on a Jane Austen pilgrimage and do some sight-seeing while her father is attending business meetings, so this novel is partly a travelogue of England and some of the places my husband and I have been to.  It's also a  "mystery" because Nancy turns "sleuth" and is hot on the trail when someone steals James Bond's (Timothy Dalton's) acting award that looks like a mask.

The Stolen Mask: A Nancy Keene Mystery

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The Tustin Chronicles: A Detective Santy Mystery

This murder mystery, about a daughter's search for the truth behind her father's murder, is an homage to the books of T. Jefferson Parker that describe crime in Orange County, California. Focusing on Tustin in the early 1970's and 1990's, this book brings back the bygone days of tractor showrooms; hippies and head shops in Laguna Beach; and a packing house called "The Sunkist Cathedral" where the Catholic Church once held Mass. It's a world of blimp hangars at the Lighter-Than-Air base; orange groves where virginities are lost; and a restaurant that looks like a train station in South Coast Plaza--all set to the music of Bob Dylan and the Eagles.

eBook available for $2.99 at most online bookstores

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D. H. Lawrence

I wrote a critical essay on The Oedipus Complex in D. H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers and was delighted when my cousin Dominique Van Rentergem told me that I could use one of his paintings for the eBook's cover.

Here's what it looks like:

  

The Oedipus Complex in D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers

by Louise Hathaway

I think the cover perfectly captures the feeling of the book, which is about a mother and son who have a destructive bond that causes a tremendous amount of grief for the son when he grows older and wants to date and love women.  Will his mother ever let him go?

My essay has pictures that my husband took when we went to the famous author's birthplace in Eastwood, England.  If you ever want to see this house and museum, I provide some points of interest around Eastwood and describe a wonderful hotel we stayed in that was nearby.  My husband and I also went New Mexico to see where D. H. Lawrence lived and was the happiest in a three-room rustic cabin near Taos.  The property also has a little chapel where his ashes are buried.

We spent three weeks in England, tracing the footsteps of major British authors. I write about this literary pilgrimage in the eBook below:

England in the Footsteps of Its Literary Giants

by Louise Hathaway

Both are available for only 99 cents at all your favorite online bookstores