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Lucky Stiff [#3]
Once again Lillian Byrd is down on her luck, strumming her mandolin for spare quarters alongside Blind Lonnie, Detroit's resident blues guitarist. But a chance encounter with her childhood friend Duane is about to completely turn her life upside-down. One summer night when Lillian was twelve, flames ripped through the Polka Dot, her parents' beloved tavern. Three bodies were found in the ashes: those of her mother, her father, and the barmaid, Trix Hawley. Or so Lillian has always thought. But when Lillian and Duane put their stories together, the past erupts into a wild enigma.
As the two friends travel—accompanied by the tenacious crime writer Minerva LeBlanc—to the underbelly of Las Vegas to find the truth about their parents, Lillian must face the demons of the past in ways she never dreamed possible.
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Easy Street [#4]
Lillian Byrd's battered Caprice is convulsing through the last of its death throes; her pet rabbit, Todd, ails; and as usual she's single—and flat broke. For a few extra bucks she signs on to help an old friend, retired police detective Erma Porrocks, renovate her house, but of course nothing ever goes smoothly in the life of Lillian Byrd. The end of her first day on the job yields a partially demolished wall, a mysterious stash of cash, and a fresh corpse. And Lillian's attentions are diverted by the appearance of a drop-dead gorgeous neighbor.
Nonetheless, Lillian throws herself into chasing down every complex thread, especially after Porrocks is injured in a suspicious accident. The action ranges from Porrocks's Detroit riverfront neighborhood to a nursing home in Cleveland, where Lillian and Todd pose as animal therapy workers to shamelessly coax information from an elderly resident. From there Lillian goes undercover to Boise, Ft. Lauderdale, and points beyond, facing deception and danger the whole way—as well as the bewildering emergence of her own dark side.
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Left Field [#5]
Lillian Byrd has been searching her soul after the gut-wrenching experience of killing someone in self-defense. Scrabbling to make ends meet, she takes a job as a quasi detective, solving life’s little mysteries for a pair of eccentric women in one of Detroit’s last prestigious neighborhoods. When she spots a corpse on the next-door lawn, she jumps back into honest work as an investigative journalist.
Her friend Mercedes reveals that the dead woman, Abby Rawson, played on a women’s softball team she manages and pressures Lillian into taking her spot. Softball turns to hardball when Lillian not only plunges into a love affair with the team’s sought-after pitcher but also goes undercover as an exterminator, a squatter, and a charity worker to investigate Abby’s death and the corrupt medical organization she worked for. No one on the team is above suspicion, and as they get closer to snagging the coveted championship title—and Lillian gets closer to discovering the dark truth behind Abby’s murder—she fights to keep her new love in her life and literally save her own.
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The Rita Farmer Mysteries
The Actress [#1]
Aspiring actress and single mother Rita Farmer has gone from struggling to find work to downright desperate. If she doesn't land a paying job soon—horror movie, soap commercial, anything—she's afraid her ex-husband will use her dire financial straits to take away Petey, her cherished four-year-old son. While she's charming the crowd at storytime at the L.A. public library, a celebrity defense attorney approaches her with an unusual job offer: So long as she's discreet, Rita can rake in a thousand dollars a day preparing his client for her appearance in court.
Easy money? Hardly. His client, Eileen Tenaway, is not only a wealthy heiress and a queen of the tabloids but she's been charged with the murder of her own child. The attorney needs Rita to coach Eileen secretly to help her seem more sympathetic, more human. He needs the jury to believe not only her words but the subtle cues of body language, facial expressions, even vocal style. Rita knows she can do it, but what she doesn't know is how determined she'll become to find out what really happened to Eileen's family—once her own life and Petey's life depend on it.
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The Extra [#2]
Rita Farmer knows what it feels like to be flat broke. Even now, when studying to be a lawyer, Rita is so far in debt that she has to scrounge for acting jobs to keep herself and her son afloat. Decked out in police uniform as an extra on a low-budget movie shoot, she wanders into a rough part of town and is pulled into a vicious assault. Rita chases off the assailants but doesn't escape unscathed, and the boy they attacked isn't out of danger yet. His injuries could last the rest of his life.
Rita's heart goes out to him and his grandmother, Amaryllis B. Cubitt, the director of an urban mission that Rita had turned to for help years ago. But the mission has changed from its unassuming past and is now flush with secret donations and gruff guards posted at the doors. Rita can't but wonder if now Amaryllis is too proud to ask for the help she needs.
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On Location [#3]
Rita Farmer knows exactly how hard it is to break into the movie business. Acting was the big dream that brought her out to L.A. in the first place. And while she never made the red carpet, that big dream did turn into a modest profession that kept her and her son afloat. So from time to time she'll lend her talents as a favor.
Kenner and Lance de Sauvenard, heirs to a timber fortune, don't really need a favor to make their art film, but since Lance is dating Rita's sister, Gina, there's no way for Rita to worm her way out of a read-through. Gina is all for the project—or at least her new boyfriend—and she goes with Lance to scout locations on his family's land holdings in the Northwest. When they don't return as planned and flood waters start to rise, Rita can't help dashing into the wilds to bring her sister home, and when foul play becomes more and more likely, her sometime lover, George Rowe, is right on her heels.
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More Fiction
Crimes in a Second Language
Elnice Coker and her husband Arthur, retired schoolteachers, move from Indiana to the Hollywood Hills in a last-ditch attempt at novelty and happiness. California alone can’t do the trick, but when Elnice befriends her housecleaner, Solita, her life opens up to friendship and intrigue. Elnice teaches Solita English, although Solita’s common-law husband, Luis, is against it. The women build a secret, tentative friendship.
Meanwhile, wannabe novelist Jason M is busy writing faulty information into tech manuals for airplane-making machines at a factory in the Valley. One of a swarm of corporate saboteurs scattered around Los Angeles, he’s bossed by a nameless, exacting mentor. But when he begins to have ethical doubts, he discovers it’s harder to get out than it was to get in.
The lure of easy money casts its spell over everybody, and as Elnice and Solita grow closer, they encounter treachery and danger where they least expect it. The saboteurs intertwine, innocent lives hang in the balance, and as Elnice risks everything to dig deeper, she learns the value of rejecting safety—and living life to the max.
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I am Calico Jones
Four Short Stories
These four short stories are close to Elizabeth’s heart. Love stories? Happy endings? Tough breaks? We got ’em. If you’re a fan of the Lillian Byrd crime novels, you’ll be delighted to finally know what Calico Jones thinks about when she’s tied up, awaiting execution at the hands of geopolitical terrorists. Regrets? She’s had a few. The three other stories explore a range of lesbian experience from wacky to warm, from heartbreak to hilarity. Says a reviewer: “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to go camping.” We might add, you’ll never feel the same standing in front of a bank teller again.
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Go-Go Day
Four Literary Tales with a Dash of DARK
If a story by Flannery O’Connor and a story by Chuck Palahniuk got together and had kids, they would be these intense, bitingly sharp tales. Elizabeth Sims digs into the heart of humanity, wi
th characters who start out knowing what they want, and end up knowing what they need. Their paths are rutted and dangerous. In “Dixon Amiss,” a lithograph pressman gets a visit from a couple of guys with a life-changing message for him. Regina, a routinely shamed student in “The Cashmere Club” has a shitty life, but seizes a chance for a strange yet comforting makeover. The manchild at the center of “West Forkton Days” teaches himself a searing lesson about chance, love, and art. And the heroine of “Go-Go Day” yearns to be doted on, yet seeks ultimate liberation on her own terms. These are stories for readers who love to think—and who love life.
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Elizabeth's Amazon Author Page
For up-to-date everything about Elizabeth Sims and her books, as well as free excerpts and discussion guides, visit:
www.elizabethsims.com
Acknowledgments
Passionate thanks to my family and friends for their ongoing love, support, and belief.
To my readers, thank you for buying or borrowing my books. You're the only thing between me and a wasted life. Equally fervent thanks to all booksellers who sell my work.
For special help given me in the writing of this book I'm indebted to my brother, David Sims, for advice legal; Margaret Baker M.D. for advice medical; Terry McKenzie for advice pharmaceutical and veterinary; and Cindi Forslund for advice Cleveland-ish.
Once again I'm obliged to Angela ‘Sensible’ Brown.
My deepest thanks of all go to my beloved Marcia.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Easy Street: a Lillian Byrd Crime Novel. Copyright © 2005 by Elizabeth Sims. All rights reserved. This book was originally published in trade paperback in 2005 by Alyson Books.
E-book published by Spruce Park Press.
www.elizabethsims.com
ISBN: 978-0-9836639-3-5
Cover design by TreeHouse Studio.
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