The Mean Bone in Her Body (The New Royal Mysteries) - Softcover

Scott, Laura Ellen

4.3

37 ratings by Goodreads

9781945502255: The Mean Bone in Her Body (The New Royal Mysteries)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1945502258 ISBN 13: 9781945502255

Publisher: Pandamoon Publishing, 2016

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Jeaneane Lewis is a disturbed graduate student in a crime writing program who makes a grisly discovery: in the heart of the college/prison town of New Royal, Ohio, a military widow and her two small children lay dead in a frigid garden pond, watched over by a shivering, ex-cadaver dog named Daddy. The murders go unsolved, but Lewis manages to publish a vivid account of her experience before she falls prey to years of writer’s block and drug addiction that make her a terrible student but an acceptable assistant to the most unpopular professor in the program, Elizabeth Murgatroyd.

Just before Lewis is kicked out of NRU, Murgatroyd's one-night stand with a stranger yields a shocking revelation--not only is he the killer, but Lewis' story is a complete fabrication. Though shaken by the encounter, Murgatroyd means to keep the killer's secret until she can write an article of her own. With the help of an ex-con named Crocus, the Professor takes a closer look at the murders that have come to define New Royal, though first she must explore the twists and turns of Lewis' grim past.

New Royal is the place to be for lovers of great crime and mysteries...

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About the Author:

Laura Ellen Scott's mother claims that she saw her daughter struggling to copy letters and words from a dictionary before she could even read. When asked what she was doing, Laura explained, "I'm writing a book," marking the first and last time she would be eligible for The New Yorker's Writers Under 40 list. Raised in the tiny Northern Ohio township of Brimfield, she was suspended twice for ditching high school so she could hang out at nearby Kent State University's twelve-story library, but despite her poor performance as a student, Laura was allowed to graduate in her junior year to start at KSU where she excelled at writing and playing cards. It took her more than five years to complete her BA, so only by marrying very well did she manage to weasel her way into graduate school in Louisiana and later Northern Virginia, and immediately upon graduation she was offered her first and only full time job. She is now a Term Full Professor in the English Department of George Mason University, where she has taught creative writing since 1993. For decades Laura wrote short stories that were published in places like Ploughshares, Pank, Mississippi Review, and Wigleaf, but it wasn't until she received an out-of-the-blue email from the great Dorothy Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina) that she started writing novels. That email said, among other things: "Damn you are good. You are just seriously satisfyingly good." Eventually Allison would blurb Laura's first novel, Death Wishing, a comic fantasy set in post-Katrina New Orleans, launching her debut at a time when other writers would be considered "mid-career." For Laura, writing novels offers her the chance to revisit the places that have affected her most deeply. For example, Death Wishing is about her favorite city. Her second novel, The Juliet, is a western about the search for a cursed emerald in Death Valley during the great wildflower bloom of 2005, and it seems especially fortuitous that the book's publication occurs during the midst of another great bloom. The New Royal Mysteries series is set in a fictional college/prison town in Ohio, a sort of fusion between her hometown of Brimfield and Athens, Ohio, where she and her husband spent the early years of their marriage while he attended graduate school.

Review:

"In The New Royal Mysteries series, ex-con and creative-writing student Crocus welcomes us to New Royal, Ohio, to a college in a prison town, a place of back-biting, head-games and dog-eat-dog. And that's just the professors. Scott has a truly original voice - warm with a sharp edge - and Crocus is as beguiling a heroine as you're likely to meet."--Catriona McPherson, Edgar/Macavity/Agatha/Anthony nominated author of The Child Garden and Quiet Neighbors

"A dark and seductive mystery. Laura Ellen Scott's prose will haunt you long after the final page."--Kerry Carter, Editor of
Mystery Weekly Magazine

"Dark, disturbing, often unnerving, Laura Ellen Scott's broken characters strike a haunting chord of realism. THE MEAN BONE IN HER BODY challenges and twists, not letting you go until the very end." -Rochelle Staab, bestselling author of The Mind for Murder Mysteries

"Laura Ellen Scott writes like...well, like Laura Ellen Scott and nobody else. Get ready for a ride through one of the weirdest minds in all contemporary literature."-Amber Sparks, author of The Unfinished World, The Desert Places, and May We Shed These Human Bodies

"Gone Girl fans rejoice! Laura Ellen Scott has whipped up a doozy with her latest novel. Part chilling mystery, part psychological thriller, The Mean Bone in Her Body weaves together a story that will leave you gasping at the end."
-- Robert Swartwood, USA Today bestselling author of The Serial Killer's Wife and Abducted

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