Showing results by author "Aaron Paul Lazar" in All Categories

Vivian Wood is desperate. After her beloved brother dies of a sudden aneurysm and her mother develops Alzheimer's, she needs a good job and a place to stay. She finds it at The Seacroft, a Cape Cod seaside mansion ruled by a mysterious and demanding woman looking for a personal assistant.

After two years of brutal captivity, Portia Lamont has escaped and returned to her family's Vermont horse farm - only to find her parents gone to New York to try an experimental treatment for her mother's cancer, and her childhood friend Boone Hawke running the farm. The man Boone has become frightens her to near paralysis, but she's too traumatized and physically devastated to put up a fight.

Scout Vanderhorn has lost her mother, her home, and all hope of security. In a desperate bid to escape her abusive stepfather, she travels to a seaside mansion on Cape Cod in search of the real father she never knew - and finds a secret sister who welcomes her into the family, troubles and all. But it's not long before trouble comes looking for Scout.

Life’s gone crazy in East Goodland, New York. When Gus’s country church is hit by a rogue tornado, the bones of a missing parishioner are revealed in a field, shocking the parish and devastating the dead man’s family...Crops are dying. Tempers are short. Forest fires threaten. To top it off, the new mine lies directly over ancient Indian burial grounds, bringing anguish to local tribes and inciting riots at the mine site. Join Gus as he’s lured into a bizarre network of underground tunnels to expose the most shocking discovery ever to rock the Genesee Valley.

They say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Finn McGraw disagrees. He was just 17 when he had a torrid summer affair with the girl who stole his heart - and then turned on him. Now, 10 years later, he's got more than his lost love to worry about. A horrific accident turns his life upside down, resurrecting the ghosts of his long-dead family and taking the lives of the few people he has left. Finn always believed his estranged brother was responsible for the fire that killed their family - but an unexpected inheritance throws everything he knows into doubt.

In volume three of Write Like the Wind, Lazar offers examples and advice on dialog tags, including how to replace them with "beats". You'll learn what a preface is, and when to write it. These practical skills are complemented by marketing tips, such as real life feedback on how freebies can actually help you sell more books. Join award-winning mystery author Aaron Paul Lazar as he shares the cream of the crop from seven years of writing blogs in this fresh and unique offering of advice for fellow scribes.

Music professor Gus LeGarde and his wife, Camille, are looking forward to a relaxing vacation at Paines Creek Beach on beautiful Cape Cod. But Gus barely has a chance to feel the sand between his toes before a near-miss car accident drags him right into the middle of a local family feud - and a centuries-old mystery that's begging to be solved. As Gus is drawn further into the conflict between the Cooks and the McNabbs - two families with a grudge going all the way back to colonial times - he and Camille keep uncovering more questions than answers.

Summer, 1966: For 13-year-old Gus LeGarde, summertime always means Loon Harbor, his grandparents' idyllic fishing resort on Great Pond. The season is a grand tradition of swimming, boating, and new adventures with his best friends, twins Siegfried and Elsbeth. But this summer, everything changes when a new lodge down the shore threatens the resort - and triggers a chain of events that will transform Gus and his friends forever.

Gus LeGarde's life essentially ended four years ago, when his beloved wife, Elsbeth, leapt from the Letchworth Gorge cliffs. These days, the music professor plays endless Chopin etudes on his antique piano and lavishes love on his family and dog - but nothing buries the pain or answers his burning questions. What made her jump? Why didn't she say goodbye? And how will he be able to live without her?

Grace may have problems, but Anderson Rockwell loves his sassy, spicy, and slightly unfaithful wife. A recovered heroin addict who's now struggling with sex addiction, Grace tries her best to control her inner demons. She's relapsing less often. And when she does, she always calls. Always comes back home. Until this time.

Summer 1964: Beatlemania hits the States, and the world mourns the loss of JFK. For 11-year-old Gus LeGarde, the powerful events that rocked the nation serve as a backdrop for the most challenging summer of his life.

Marcella Hollister realized a lifetime of hopes and dreams when she was given custody of a child. A cousin of her half-Seneca husband, Quinn, the baby's mother was murdered in a political plot - and Marcella, who's never been able to have children of her own, formed an instant bond with little Kimi. Then a distant relative comes forward to claim Kimi - and Quinn, who Marcella thought understood her pain better than anyone, allows them to take the baby without a fight.

Fifty years ago, Sam Moore's little brother, Billy, vanished without a trace - leaving Sam with guilt that haunts him to this day. Fifty years with no body, no leads, and no answers. Until now. When Sam unearths a mysterious green marble buried in his garden, he's shocked to find himself transported back in time - to Billy.

The safest place they know is about to become the most dangerous… Marcella's husband, Quinn "Black Eagle" Hollister, severed ties to his family and friends on the Seneca reservation years ago. He rarely mentions his past-until his young cousin Kitty collapses on the couple's doorstep in the dead of a rainswept night. After two Seneca men break into their home with intent to kill, the Hollisters flee with the mute and injured girl to Tall Pines, their cabin in the Adirondacks.

When retired family doctor Sam Moore's old girlfriend is murdered in a local hotel, the police suspect his involvement. The coroner, a former med school colleague whose husband is about to desert her, reveals that she had a crush on Sam in med school. When she is strangled the next day in her own morgue, Sam is once again in the hot seat. Sam's world falls apart when he returns home to find a family member killed in the laundry room, stabbed with his own garden shears.

Music professor Gus LeGarde is about to embark on a European honeymoon with his new wife, Camille, when his socially challenged brother-in-law receives a mysterious invitation to visit an ailing relative in Germany. Siegfried can't travel alone, but the newlyweds have no qualms over bringing him along. Unfortunately, their idyllic vacation takes a dark turn at the first stop in Paris, when Gus and Siegfried are caught in a bloody street brawl with a group of neo-Nazis.

When Gus LeGarde agrees to play piano for the high school drama club's production of "Spirit Me Away", a '60s-style musical he wrote in college, he doesn't expect to face a barrage of menacing pranks played on his fiancée, Camille, and the drama club. Who's sabotaging the show? And what do they have against Camille? Is it sex-crazed Armand, the Latino teen infatuated with her? Something happened last year that Camille won't talk about, and it has to do with Armand. Gus wants to know what happened, but she's not talking.

Past and present collide when an Alzheimer's patient's fragile memory holds the key to solving mysteries dating back to World War II-including a long lost secret love affair. Music professor Gus LeGarde is just doing a favor for a friend when he agrees to play piano for church services at a local nursing home. He doesn't expect to be drawn into a new friendship with an elderly Alzheimer's patient dubbed "the music man" or to stumble across a decades-old mystery locked inside the man's mind.

Boston, Massachusetts: It's the summer of '69-the parks are flooded with flower children and a hot new band called Led Zeppelin is set to appear at the Boston Tea Party. But for one newlywed couple just beginning their lives together, there will be no peace.In the cradle of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, Gus and Elsbeth LeGarde are music students attending the New England Conservatory of Music, after a wedding kept secret from their families.

When young Gus LeGarde befriends a cranky old hermit in the woods who speaks to an Oneida Indian spirit named Penaki, he wonders if the man is nuts. But when Penni rattles tin cups, draws on dusty mirrors, and flips book pages, pestering them to find evidence to avenge her past and free her from earthly bondage, things change.