An ancient cursed statue. Suspicious deaths.
One PI determined to find out why someone is willing to kill to hide the truth.
PI Jorja Knight knows firsthand what it’s like to be tormented by lingering questions after the death of a loved one. When the daughter of a former police officer asks Jorja to look into her father’s death, deemed an accident, Jorja is determined to find her the answers she’s looking for. As Jorja digs into the case, she discovers another suspicious death and links to a cursed, missing pre-Columbian artifact.
With rising doubts about the way police handled the men’s deaths, Jorja puts her own relationship with the head of Special Crimes on the line as she reconstructs the dead men’s last movements. But she isn’t the only one bird-dogging their footsteps. As her investigation heats up, Jorja is drawn deep into the heart of Alberta’s badlands. What she finds turns the investigation on its head and throws her into the path of a brazen killer.
If you like gutsy heroines, modern day mysteries with a touch of humour and romance, you’ll love the highly addictive Jorja Knight mystery thriller series.
All About Alice Bienia
They say we find our happiness by following our unique talents and passions. As a child, my passions were reading to escape the monotony of childhood in a small town, skipping rope, eating peas from my mother’s garden and trying to get my brothers to laugh so hard they’d spit their milk out at dinner.
Later I developed a passion for nature, photography, motorcycles, and coffee. I went to university and emerged with a Bachelor of Science in geology. After graduation, I happily investigated the earth’s nooks and crannies, solving the mystery of where earth’s elusive but treasured deposits were buried. My work in remote regions of Canada honed my insatiable curiosity, fueled my imagination and deepened my desire to learn.
Then came technology, and enhanced opportunities to problem solve, innovate, automate, and create effective and highly productive ways of doing things. I spoke at conferences, wrote all manner of technical reports, developed training material and web content. The need to explore, learn and create continued to burn.
I now write full time. Still passionate about reading, photography, motorcycles, fresh peas and coffee, I apply my creativity, imagination and the all important, ‘head down, butt in chair,’ skill I’ve acquired along the way to create challenging crimes for my protagonist to investigate and solve – while throwing her crappy little life obstacles to overcome, just to keep it real. Best of all, I’m still learning and exploring. After all, that’s what writing fiction is all about – going places where I’ve never been before and returning to tell the tale.
Read more about Alice on her website: www.alicebienia.com
'Ticket to Ride' is the continuation of the story that began in Winona's last thrilling mystery 'Lost Time'.
In 1974, top UK band Figgis Green was riding high in the charts with their blend of traditional Celtic ballads mixed with catchy, folky pop. One of their biggest fans was sixteen-year old Pippa Gladstone, who mysteriously vanished while she was on holiday with her parents in Spain in March that same year.
Now it's 2018, and founding member Mandy Green has reunited the Figs for their last-ever Lost Time Tour. Her partner, Tony Figgis, passed away in 1995, so his place has been taken by their son, professional jazz guitarist (and amateur sleuth) Jason Davey.
As the band meets in a small village on the south coast of England for pre-tour rehearsals, Jason's approached by Duncan Stopher, a diehard Figs fan, who brings him a photo of the band performing at the Wiltshire Folk Festival. Standing in the foreground is Pippa Gladstone. The only problem is the Wiltshire Folk Festival was held in August 1974, five months after Pippa disappeared.
But nothing can prepare Jason for the truth about Pippa, which he discovers just as Figgis Green is about to take to the stage on opening night—with or without him.
So 'Ticket to Ride' continues the story.
In Lost Time, professional musician/amateur sleuth Jason Davey was rehearsing for Figgis Green's 50th Anniversary Tour of England. Now they're on the road.
But when a fortune-teller in Sheffield warns them of impending danger, the band is suddenly plagued by a series of seemingly-unrelated mishaps. After Jason is attacked and nearly killed in Cambridge, it becomes clear they're being targeted by someone with a serious grudge. And when Figgis Green plays a gig at a private estate in Tunbridge Wells, that person finally makes their deadly intentions known. Jason must rely on his instincts, his Instagram "guardian angel", and a wartime ghost, in order to survive
Visit the Figgis Green website and discover a lot more about their 50th Anniversary Tour!
'Ticket to Ride' - Published 26th March 2022!
All About Winona Kent
Winona Kent is an award-winning author who was born in London, England and grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, where she completed her BA in English at the University of Regina. After moving to Vancouver, she graduated from UBC with an MFA in Creative Writing. More recently, she received her diploma in Writing for Screen and TV from Vancouver Film School.
Winona's writing breakthrough came many years ago when she won First Prize in the Flare Magazine Fiction Contest with her short story about an all-night radio newsman, Tower of Power.
Her short story Dietrich's Ash was an Okanagan Short Fiction Award winner and was published in Canadian Author & Bookman, anthologized in Pure Fiction (Fitzhenry & Whiteside) and broadcast on the CBC Radio program Ambience.
Her short story Creatures from Greek Mythology was a Second Prize Winner and WQ Editors Prize and was published in Cross-Canada Writers Quarterly.
Her spy novel Skywatcher was a finalist in the Seal Books First Novel Competition and was published in 1989. This was followed by a sequel, The Cilla Rose Affair, and her first mystery, Cold Play, set aboard a cruise ship in Alaska.
After three time-travel romances (Persistence of Memory, In Loving Memory and Marianne's Memory), Winona returned to mysteries with Disturbing the Peace, a novella, in 2017 and the novel Notes on a Missing G-String in 2019, both featuring the character she first introduced in Cold Play, jazz musician / amateur sleuth Jason Davey. Then followed more of Jason Davey in Lost Time in 2020, and Ticket to Ride in 2022
Winona has been a temporary secretary, a travel agent and the Managing Editor of a literary magazine. She recently retired from her full-time job as a Program Assistant at UBC's School of Population and Public Health. She's currently the BC/YT/NWT rep for the Crime Writers of Canada and lives in New Westminster, BC, where she is happily embracing life as a full-time author.
More about Winona Kent and her writing can be found on her website:
A body washes up on the shores of Lake Templeton, a small town on the coast of Vancouver Island. Sharon Reese, the victim, was a dedicated government employee. Everyone liked her, but no one knew much about her. Was she hiding something? Maybe a questionable past riddled with scandal. And did it lead to her plunge to death, in a drunken stupor, off the dock outside her secluded lakefront lodge?
Was it an accident? A suicide? Or cold-blooded murder? Private Investigator, Fati Rizvi, is determined to find out.
Fati arrives in Lake Templeton to find secrets that run as deep as the City’s sewers. Everyone is hiding something and nothing is as it seems. A cult escapee. A corrupt politician. A struggling airline. A multi-million dollar public-private project to revitalize the Lake Templeton waterfront. How are they all connected?
As Fati valiantly unravels the knots, another body is found on the shore. Is it the same killer? And can Fati stop them before they strike again?
My passion for books started when I was a young child, growing up in a restrictive, patriarchal society in Karachi, Pakistan. I escaped to colorful worlds through books. As a teenager, some of my favorite works were by authors such as Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, and Jeffrey Archer.
In my teenage years, I attempted my first written work, a series written in longhand which featured bold characters based on me and my friends, living glamorous, jet set lives. The notebooks were passed around between all the girls at school until they were dogeared.
In college, I decided to pursue an undergraduate degree in Creative Writing, where I completed an Honours Thesis, a collection of short stories. After college, real life took over, and my unpublished manuscript was locked away in a drawer. I got a job, went all in on building an exciting banking career, with late nights, lots of hobnobbing, and promotions every few years. Writing went on the backburner. Until I rediscovered my passion through blogging on Medium.
It was during the pandemic in 2020 that I set out to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. I chose the mystery genre because it is the perfect blend of analytical and creative. I can use my logical thinking skills, honed through a 15-year banking career, to create a plot with a clue trail that makes sense. And I get to flex my creative muscle by building dynamic, multi-faceted characters. I endeavour to write the kind of story that keeps my reader turning the page, unable to put the book down because they are desperate to find out what happens next. The type of book that I have always loved reading.
My books are set in the beautiful, coastal province of British Columbia in the Canadian Pacific Northwest, which I am proud to call home. As an immigrant Canadian, I am committed to writing novels that feature the cultural tapestry of my homeland, with well-rounded, diverse characters. The Lake Templeton Murders is my debut novel but I have many more up my sleeve, featuring the indomitable Private Investigator, Fati Rizvi.
Learn more about my on my website: www.hsburney.com
To stay up-to-date on my upcoming projects, please join my Email List.
Some lies can haunt you forever.
PI Jorja Knight’s last case thrust her into the limelight and brought out more than one would-be client seeking to share the spotlight. Yet when she’s approached by a psychic clairvoyant who has foretold her own murder, she’s sufficiently intrigued to take on the case. But just as Jorja begins her hunt for the predicted killer, her client’s lookalike is found dead. Jorja’s client starts to unravel, her premonitions amplify, she insists the killer will strike again.
Diving into her client’s past to flush out suspects, Jorja learns she is keeping secrets from her. Jorja becomes suspicious of her intended role in the investigation when the psychic’s premonitions begin to manifest in her own world. And as the physical threats escalate, Jorja fears that buried secrets could cost both their lives.
All About Alice Bienia
They say we find our happiness by following our unique talents and passions. As a child, my passions were reading to escape the monotony of childhood in a small town, skipping rope, eating peas from my mother’s garden and trying to get my brothers to laugh so hard they’d spit their milk out at dinner.
Later I developed a passion for nature, photography, motorcycles, and coffee. I went to university and emerged with a Bachelor of Science in geology. After graduation, I happily investigated the earth’s nooks and crannies, solving the mystery of where earth’s elusive but treasured deposits were buried. My work in remote regions of Canada honed my insatiable curiosity, fueled my imagination and deepened my desire to learn.
Then came technology, and enhanced opportunities to problem solve, innovate, automate, and create effective and highly productive ways of doing things. I spoke at conferences, wrote all manner of technical reports, developed training material and web content. The need to explore, learn and create continued to burn.
I now write full time. Still passionate about reading, photography, motorcycles, fresh peas and coffee, I apply my creativity, imagination and the all important, ‘head down, butt in chair,’ skill I’ve acquired along the way to create challenging crimes for my protagonist to investigate and solve – while throwing her crappy little life obstacles to overcome, just to keep it real. Best of all, I’m still learning and exploring. After all, that’s what writing fiction is all about – going places where I’ve never been before and returning to tell the tale.
Read more about Alice on her website: www.alicebienia.com
“First I will destroy you, then I will hurt the ones you love, then you’ll beg me for mercy.”
Does opium have an expiration date? Jade Thyme must delve into her mother’s free-spirited past if she wants to prove her father was murdered and hadn’t died from a fentanyl overdose.
Legislative Clerk Adam Younghusband drops on Jade’s desk damning evidence regarding the island’s once feared drug dealer, Oscar Cooper. Immediately Jade and Sage are targets. They hide from an arsonist determined to destroy them. Is it all connected? 1968 clashes with the present as Jade uncovers a deadly secret while trying to stay one step ahead of a murderer hell bent on revenge.
All About Joanna Vander Vlugt
Joanna Vander Vlugt is an author and illustrator. As a teenager, she drew charcoal portraits and wrote mysteries. Some years later, she would draw again.
Joanna became a fitness instructor and personal trainer. During this time, under the pseudonym J.C. Szasz, her short mysteries Egyptian Queen and The Parrot and Wild Mushroom Stuffing were published in the Crime Writers of Canada mystery anthologies.
Her personal essay, No Beatles Reunion was published in the Dropped Threads 3:Beyond the Small Circle anthology.
The Unravelling, her debut novel, was a Canadian Book Club Awards finalist.
She is proud of her podcast JCVArtStudio - From the Dressing Room which discusses writing, books, art and the artist’s journey.
Follow this link to connect with the JCVArtStudio!
Joanna's artwork was also featured in ArtHabens.
Previous Publications:
My short story The Parrot and Wild Mushroom Stuffing was included in this Crime Writers of Canada anthology.
My pseudonym then was J.C. Szasz
Published in 2007
My personal essay, No Beatles Reunion was published in this anthology.
Pseudonym was J.C. Szasz.
Published in 2006
My short story Egyptian Queen was published in this Crime Writers of Canada anthology.
Pseudonym of Joanna C. Szasz.
Published in 2006
