Böcker av Susan Moore Jordan

How I Grew Up is Book One in "The Carousel Trilogy," stories of three friends whose lives were changed by one event when they were high school students."You'll Never Walk Alone." The words from that song in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel held an especially poignant meaning for Melanie Stewart, who went on stage in the leading role of Julie Jordan mere weeks after her parents were victims of a senseless murder, perpetrated by her own sister's troubled husband. She was just eighteen, a high school senior who dreamed of Hollywood stardom and her first real kiss. With the support of her two older sisters, who had problems of their own to deal with in the lingering aftermath of the horror, and her good friends, Mel auditioned for her high school's spring musical the week after her parent's funeral. Rehearsals for the production began almost immediately. In the weeks leading up to the performance, Melanie learning she was stronger than she knew and being involved in the show helped her begin to heal. The story takes place in small-town America in the nineteen fifties.

Cincinnati, October 1967 -- Eugene Geller, the handsome and popular Cantor of Rockdale Temple-located in the racially tense Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati-disappears without a trace during a night of rioting in the "long, hot summer" of 1967. Was Gene a casualty of the riot? Has he run away with one of his paramours? Or has he been the victim of foul play by his long-suffering wife or an angry ex-lover or a jealous husband?Augusta McKee, Chair of the Opera Department at the Conservatory and amateur sleuth, is helping her husband, Chief of Detectives Malcolm Mitchell, unravel this mystery. Augusta is also in the midst of planning the Conservatory's spring opera, Mozart's The Magic Flute, a fairy tale of good and evil. Her wish is the opera's positive message and its multi-ethnic cast will help return hope and calm to her tense city. But her first-time ethnic casting of lead roles causes her to receive anonymous threatening notes-and worse.Malcolm and the police are close to solving the Geller case-but now Augusta's life is in imminent danger. How will they find and stop the person targeting her?

Cincinnati, September 1963: Augusta McKee, former opera singer and current professor of voice on two college campuses, finds herself immersed in mystery from the top of her well-coiffed head to the tip of her beloved stilettos.Augusta's beau, handsome Homicide Detective Malcolm Mitchell, is dealing with a tough case: the murder of a "John Doe"-a victim shot gangland-style and dumped from a car near Parkside Playhouse in lovely Eden Park, not far from a gazebo reputedly haunted by the ghost of a woman murdered decades earlier. And to add to the mystery, a possible eyewitness has vanished into thin air. While Malcolm is busy chasing down leads, Augusta's attention is focused on the student production she is directing, dramatic scenes from opera which feature on-stage ghosts-just in time for Halloween. Offstage, eerie happenings on the Conservatory campus and a menacing ex-student become increasingly troubling distractions, until Augusta begins to wonder: could Malcolm's case and her mysterious spirits somehow be connected? Her search for the answer soon leads our favorite sleuth to the alarming realization that ghosts are the least of her worries.