Valley of Ashes

By Cornelia Read (Hardcover Book, 2012)

Madeline Dare trades New York's gritty streets for the tree-lined avenues of Boulder, Colorado when her husband Dean lands a promising job. Madeline, now a full-time homemaker and mother to beautiful toddler twin girls, has achieved everything she thought she always wanted, but with her husband constantly on the road, she's fighting a losing battle against the Betty Friedan riptide of suburban/maternal exhaustion, angst, and sheer loneliness. A new freelance newspaper gig helps her get her mojo back, but Boulder isn't nearly as tranquil as it seems: there's a serial arsonist at large in the city. As Madeline closes in on the culprit, the fires turn deadly-and the stakes tragically personal. She'll need every ounce of strength and courage she has to keep the flames from reaching her own doorstep, threatening all she holds most dear.

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- Format: Hardcover Book
- Price: $24.99 US/$27.99 CAN
- ISBN-13: 9780446511360
- On Sale Date: 08/14/2012
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
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Formats Available: Hardcover Book, Trade Paperback, Electronic Book, Audiobook, Hardcover Book, Audiobook
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Audiobook Excerpt

Cornelia Read grew up in New York, California, and Hawaii. She is a reformed debutante who currently lives in New York City. To learn more about the author, you can visit her website at www.corneliaread.com.

"The sharpest humor comes with a pinch of suffering, and Madeline Dare suffers big time in Cornelia Read's new mystery about this fugitive socialite from Oyster Bay, Long Island. . . Madeline is funny when she's depressed ('I'm fat, my marriage is tanking, and I want to run away with the circus'), but the only person who appreciates her bleak humor is a friend with domestic issues of her own ('I just want to be a widow. Is that so wrong?')." (The New York Times).
"What makes Read's crime novels unique and difficult to pigeonhole, despite the genre's plethora of subcategories, is the fact that the action doesn't stop-and she doesn't stop writing-when the murder is solved and the criminals are apprehended. Nor is everything tied up in tidy packages after the climax, with one labeled "arson inquiry" and another called "marriage." That's not how real life works. Nor is it how satisfying fiction is supposed to work. It's definitely not how life has ever worked Dare, whose whole world takes such a kick in the head in Valley that it's hard to fathom how she'll get up again. But, as readers of the series know from experience, she most certainly will. Eloquently telling off anyone who gets in her way." (CriminalElement.com).