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Karen Cantwell

Karen Cantwell

About

I have been writing plays and short stories for many years, some of which were published in various college literary magazines.  More recently, my short story “The Recollections of Rosabelle Raines,” was published in the mystery anthology Chesapeake Crimes: They Had it Comin’ available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or directly from the publisher, Wildside Press.

But I had always wanted to write a novel.  I found that more difficult.  Finally, a few years ago I became inspired to write my first novel, Take the Monkeys and Run, a comedy-mystery, inspired, to some degree by a true monkey sighting.   Because I love to laugh as well as make other people laugh, I have the most fun imagineable writing the character Barbara Marr as well as her friends and adversaries.  When I set out to write this book, I knew I wanted to write something that readers would say, “Now that was FUN.”  I HOPE I have achieved that goal.  And if I did, please feel free to drop me a line at and let me know!  I love to hear from readers.  (especially if they LIKE the book!)

These days, I can be found pecking away at my laptop, conjuring the second Barbara Marr novel, Citizen Insane or hanging out with my kids while they're still not embarrassed to be seen with me.

Friends in High Places

Friends in High Places

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Description

<p>FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES<br /><br />At barely nineteen, Angelica Donovan became one of the more successful winners of the T.V. show Our Next Super Model. The world assumed she was destined for a happy, fairy tale life as ‘Angel,’ the beautiful girl who was living the dream; sadly, that wasn’t to be the case. As the years passed, she flashed her million dollar smile to all her fans and fought to stay on top in a profession where you never knew who it was safe to trust while the fashion industry took big bites out of her heart and soul. And trust was a constant challenge for Angel due to the painful childhood secret she guarded as carefully as she did her heart. As a result, she never did find her true love on earth.<br /><br />When she wakes up ‘dead’ from a heart condition a month before her thirty-fifth birthday, Angel is at first relieved to find there is no death, just a change of state, like ice to water, and then she’s scared because her biggest and most important adventure is about to begin.<br /><br />Angelica is chosen to be an angel in training as a spirit guide for three souls on earth! Her assignment is to help two women to gain the courage and confidence to find, recognize and embrace the love that had eluded Angel in life. But her biggest challenge will be to save a very special little girl from the same evil experience that had poisoned Angel’s own earthly happiness and altered the course of her life.<br /><br />Will Angel be able to heal her own shattered soul in the process? And will the three souls she is guiding be able to recognize her, not as a ghostly threat, but as one of those ‘friends in high places’ we all have; the kind who often end up earning their wings.<br /><br /> </p>

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<p class="MsoNormal"><strong><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#000000;">From Publishers Weekly</span></strong><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;color:#000000;"><br /> This fun if light novel’s quippy, hilarious narrator, Barbara Marr, has so much warmth and genuine gumption, you’d certainly want her on your criminal investigative team. The spunky Virginia housewife and mother of three is almost at the end of her rope — her hunky husband, Howard, has left her; it’s her 45th birthday; and she’s just discovered three monkeys living in the trees in front of her house. “Life was pretty sucky” as she puts it. But while investigating the curious case of these monkeys, a bit of unexpected adventure shakes things up just the right amount. In a warm-hearted, deftly observed comic-farce-meets-mobster mystery, Barbara and her friends from her quiet suburban neighborhood, Peggy and Roz, stick their noses into the business of a deserted house down the street and find themselves caught up in some off-the-wall FBI business that hits way closer to home than they could have imagined. Perhaps a bit goofy at times, this is nevertheless an outright treat: diverting, funny and fast-moving. </span></p><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><em>This text refers to the manuscript reviewed as a part of the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.</em></p>