Patience McKenna Books

Murder, mayhem, and other unladylike behavior erupt at the Third Annual Conference of American Writers of Romance where author Patience McKenna finds herself caught in an intrigue that would horrify her most devoted readers. Complete with a crime-solving cat, this Edgar-nominated whodunit is a clever behind-the-scenes look at the romance business-authors, agents, editors, publishers, and fans.

Alida Brookfield, the magazine's owner-publisher, considered the financially exciting possibilities of her readership. There would always be people who couldn't write but wanted to be writers. There would always be people whose personal get-rich-quick fantasy was to produce the next sex-and-sin bestseller in their sleep. There would always be people who didn't know the score. McKenna knew the score, harbored no illusions. When she went to work for Writing Enterprises, she fully expected to uncover skeletons in closets. What she didn't expect to find, especially on her first day, was a dead body.

Midlist mystery and romance writers are outraged when quite a few romance authors, in a declining market for their own genre, turn to the new hybrid of Romantic Suspense-a move that takes the New York literary world by storm and sends mystery and romance sales plummeting. Is this grounds for murder? When the newly minted romantic suspense writer Verna Train lands on the subway tracks just ahead of the Lexington Avenue Local, Patience McKenna, romance novelist-turned-true crime writer, is in the ideal field to investigate.

Novelist Pay McKenna's book tour offers her a perfect escape from the threatening letters she is receiving, but the letters follow her and turn from threats to deadly challenges

Arriving at her mother's Connecticut estate to make plans for her forthcoming wedding, romance novelist and amateur sleuth Pay McKenna stumbles into a murder in which her eccentric relatives are the prime suspects