Skip to main content

Kate Ayers

Biography

Kate Ayers


Kate Ayers retired from a career as a court reporter in the Pacific Northwest, and she now enjoys the bulk of her time traveling and writing. She has completed novels in her Mysteries With a Wine List series, two in her Eyes & Ears series, and is currently working on another. The rest of her time is taken up with book promotions, a gourmet cooking club, a book club (naturally) and daily entertainment of her slightly loony Shar Pei. And, last but not least, playing with her other best friend, her husband of many years.

Kate Ayers

Reviews by Kate Ayers

by Kaira Rouda - Domestic Thriller, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

If you ask Jill Tingley, she’ll tell you that she and her husband, Jack, are college sweethearts living the dream in Southern California. Theirs is an enviable life, though they’ve grown distant in recent years. With their daughter, Maggie, away at college, Jill suggests a road trip to reconnect. Jack would rather do anything else than drive to Utah with his wife. He’s only stayed in this marriage because of a shared secret, a tragedy in the past that he wanted to keep buried. And for his daughter’s sake. But Jack is finished with the charade of his marriage. He’s filing for divorce as soon as they return, no matter what. But he doesn’t realize what else Jill is hiding. So begins a cat-and-mouse road trip as a cunning wife and a reluctant husband match wits and drive each other to the edge.

by Will Leitch - Fiction, Humor

Lloyd McNeil has just learned he has months to live. He also learns that his 20 years as a beat cop in Atlanta haven’t earned him enough money to take care of his teenage son, Bishop, after he’s gone. But when Lloyd discovers his police benefits will increase exponentially if he dies in the line of duty, he comes up with a plan. Lloyd begins to throw himself into one life-threatening situation after another to try to get himself killed and to provide for his son…but he keeps failing --- and surviving. To his shock, his accidental heroics make him an inspirational icon in the community. But time is still running out for Lloyd to get his affairs in order, to teach Bishop the lessons he needs to be a good person, and to say goodbye.

by Mary Morris - Fiction

Thirty years ago, Laura’s mother, Viola, went missing. She left behind her purse, her keys, and her mysterious paintings of a red house. Laura, an artist herself, held on to the paintings. On the back of each work, her mother scrawled in Italian, “I will not be here forever.” The family never understood what Viola meant. Decades later, Laura returns to Italy, where her parents met after World War II. Laura spent the earliest years of her childhood there before the family moved to New Jersey and settled into an American dream that eventually became a nightmare. Viola, who claimed to be an orphan, staunchly refused to speak of her life before marriage. In Italy, Laura finds herself on a strange scavenger hunt to solve the puzzle of her mother’s lost years.

by Heather Graham - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

This state-of-the-art smart home has everything: a next-generation entertainment system, an ultramodern kitchen where every appliance is online, and even a personal AI to control it all. Standing above its owner's lifeless body, FBI agent Jude Mackenzie is faced with the daunting task of discovering how the woman was killed by her own home. How do you catch a murderer that doesn't leave any fingerprints? Enter Special Agent Victoria Tennant, whose familiarity with cybercrime reveals the stark truth: a machine can only do what it's been directed to do. As the number of grisly "accidents" begins to rise, the pair must race to uncover the perpetrator, even as they find themselves caught in their digital crosshairs.

by Nita Prose - Fiction, Mystery

As the esteemed Head Maid and Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, two good things are just around the corner for Molly Gray --- a taping of the hit antiquities TV show “Hidden Treasures” and her wedding to Juan Manuel. When Molly brings in some old trinkets to be appraised on the show, one item is revealed to be a rare and coveted artifact worth millions. Molly becomes a rags-to-riches sensation, and a media frenzy swirls as she prepares to sell her priceless treasure. Then, on auction day, the treasure suddenly vanishes, and Molly and her friends find themselves at the center of the boldest art heist in recent memory. But the key to this mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s Gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about her grandmother’s secrets. As fate would have it, Gran’s greatest love was someone Molly knows quite well.

by Lisa Harding - Fiction

Jessica and Linda have been best friends since the first day of school. Now 18, they have come to Wilde --- an elite university in the heart of Dublin, far away from their troubled childhoods. Jessica thrives immediately; with the faithful Linda at her side, she finds herself at the heart of a new circle of friends. But then Mark enters the picture. A philosophy student a few years older than them, he has strange and compelling ideas about self-discovery. When Linda and Mark start dating, Jessica is disturbed by the change in her friend --- and how quickly she seems to have fallen under the charismatic man’s control. It turns out that Mark’s influence is not limited to Linda alone, and Jessica soon finds out that her whole group of friends are keeping secrets for him. It will culminate in ways that will change their lives forever.

by Emma Donoghue - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Based on an 1895 disaster that went down in history when it was captured in a series of surreal, extraordinary photographs, THE PARIS EXPRESS is set on a train packed with a fascinating cast of characters who hail from as close as Brittany and as far as Russia, Ireland, Algeria, Pennsylvania and Cambodia. Members of parliament hurry back to Paris to vote; a medical student suspects a girl may be dying; a secretary tries to convince her boss of the potential of moving pictures; two of the train’s crew build a life away from their wives; a young anarchist makes a terrifying plan, and much more.

by Brianna Labuskes - Fiction, Historical Fiction

When Works Progress Administration editor Millie Lang finds herself on the wrong end of a potential political scandal, she’s shipped off to Montana to work on the state’s American Guide Series --- travel books intended to put the nation’s destitute writers to work. Millie arrives to an eclectic staff claiming their missed deadlines are due to sabotage, possibly from the state’s powerful Copper Kings, who don’t want their long and bloody history with union organizers aired for the rest of the country to read. More than a decade earlier, Alice Monroe created the Boxcar Library in order to deliver books to isolated mining towns. She thought she found the perfect librarian to staff the train car in Colette Durand. Now, no one in Missoula will tell Millie why both Alice and Colette went out on the inaugural journey of the Boxcar Library, but only Alice returned.

by William Boyle - Fiction

Gravesend, Brooklyn, 1986: Risa Franzone lives in a ground-floor apartment on Saint of the Narrows Street with her bad-seed husband, Saverio, and their eight-month-old baby, Fabrizio. On the night Risa's younger sister, Giulia, moves in to recover from a bad breakup, a fateful accident occurs: Risa strikes a drunk, erratic Sav with a cast-iron pan, killing him on the spot. The sisters are left with a choice: notify the authorities and make a case for self-defense, or bury the man's body and go on with their lives as best they can. In a moment of panic, they call upon Sav's childhood friend, Christopher "Chooch" Gardini, to help them. Over the vast expanse of the next 18 years, life goes on in the working-class Italian neighborhood of Gravesend as Risa, Giulia, Chooch and eventually Fabrizio grapple with what happened that night.

by Virginia Feito - Fiction, Gothic, Horror, Humor

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess. She’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family. Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House.