Delilah Dickinson's literary travel agency is a hit! And now, after an alarmingly lively tour through the Old South of Gone with the Wind, she's ready to embark on a leisurely steamboat trip down the Mississippi, a la Huckleberry Finn. But when one of her passengers winds up dead, Delilah reckons she'll have to get to the bottom of this downright ornery mystery...Ain't no doubt about it: Ben Webster was murdered, broken neck and all. And, as it turns out, he caused quite a ruckus and made a few enemies before he expired by trying to slug a roulette dealer. Delilah knows the steamship's no-nonsense head of security definitely is dirty and low-down and just plain old mean...but could he be a murderer? It's all enough to make her wish she was floating lazily down the Mississippi with Huck and Jim, mainly. But when someone breaks into and searches her cabin, Delilah is fixin' to do some seriously sly sleuthing into all of this foolishness. Pretty soon her list of suspects is longer than the Mississippi is wide...not to mention she's taken quite a shine to Mark Twain himself - or rather Mark Lansing, the handsome actor playing Huck Finn's scribe for the tour. But of course things just ain't never what they seem when Delilah's at the helm, and one tricky murder turns into two and things start to get pretty dicey on yonder steamboat. Thankfully Delilah's sassy daughter Melissa is only a phone call away because she'll need all the help she can get to keep the boat and it's passengers from an ending that could only be described as...explosive.
Under the names Livia J. Washburn and L.J. Washburn, Livia Reasoner has been writing award-winning, critically acclaimed mystery, western, romance, and historical novels for almost thirty years. She began to write in collaboration with her husband, author James Reasoner, and soon branched out into telling her own stories.
In addition to writing, Livia enjoys photography, arts, crafts, and cooking, but she also loves having a pile of lumber, a circular saw, and a building project. An accomplished carpenter, she has framed houses and built more sets of bookshelves than she can remember, some of which have been filled with the books she's written. A good day for her includes having time to create something new in the kitchen, on a story, and in the garage.
Livia lives in the Texas countryside with her husband, and her dogs. Her websites can be found at www.liviawashburn.com, and she blogs when she can find the time at http://liviajwashburn.blogspot.com.
