On a drizzly, windy, winter day, Julia Stewart loses someone in the middle of Melbourne - her banker husband, Michael. Or has she? In a desperate phone call to her long-time counsellor, psychiatrist Dr. Sadhu Singh, Julia pleads for help. When Julia reports her fears to the police, Detective Taylor Franke joins the hunt for the missing Michael. As far as family friends and Michael's co-workers know, the relationship has been a relatively happy one, raising daughter Michelle, spending time sailing, planning a trip to visit Michael's family in Scotland. Of course, there was Julia's breakdown a few years earlier, as well as Michael's mysterious 'men's business' meetings upstairs at The Anchor Cafe, his long unexplained mid-week lunches, and the stash of unlikely garments locked in his office file cabinet. Could he have run off with Michelle's trust account? Did he have a lover? What about the refuelled family boat in the harbour? No one in their circle has seen him for a week. That doesn't match Julia's fuzzy stories - at all. Over the course of the next five days, Dr. Singh and Detective Franke work to answer the question Julia needs answered: Where's Michael? What they eventually find, they could not have imagined.
JJ Kirsten is a pen name for three Australian co-authors. Putting their range of backgrounds together - keen mystery reader, single mum, and counsellor - they have told the tale of a frightened young mother, who has misplaced her husband. JL Whitaker is an American Australian author who lets her characters tell their stories their way, setting them loose in places from metro Melbourne to small town USA to reach 'The End'. Whether men or women, young or old, her main characters are in transition, often in helping professions, and even sometimes cloned for space exploration. She writes in several genres including women's fiction, mystery, YA and speculative fiction. It's much more fun that way. Besides writing, JL also volunteers for a local computer user group, and as President and long time member of a local women's club, raising funds for disadvantaged students. www.janwhitaker.com Taran Roberts is a single mum and part-time library assistant at a local high school. An Australian from Victoria she has a beloved uncle who lived where the story is set, who has always told the funniest stories. Taran often immerses herself in the world of books, computer games or letting her imagination take her for a ride for a while. Having always written in one form or another since childhood there are a couple of works on her back-burner. Her nearly complete project is an-upcoming independent work, an anthology of short stories with a dark-humoured look at trying to get back at all those useless guys we landed ourselves with. Born and educated in Scotland, extensively travelled and now living in Melbourne, Australia, Justus H Lewis, PhD, is a counsellor, teacher and writer. She teaches and practises the EMF Balancing Technique(R) and writes about clean eating, life and the universe. http: //www.emfmelb.com http: //www.cleaneatingexplained.com
