KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!

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THE DEAD OF WINTER
The Piper Blackwell Series
BY JEAN RABE

Set in a small town in Indiana, Piper Blackwell is the newly appointed sheriff in this intense mystery thriller series from Faust lifetime achievement winner, Jean Rabe. Narrator Catherine Wenglowski lends her voice to this series of books that will keep you up at night…

DEAD OF WINTER, DEAD OF NIGHT, and now, DEAD OF SUMMER, have been converted into ear candy (or, audiobooks) for your listening enjoyment.

About the Books:

DEAD OF WINTER
In a deceptively peaceful county, a murderer hides in plain sight.
Fifty-eight minutes into her first day on the job, 23-year-old Sheriff Piper Blackwell is faced with a grisly murder, the victim artfully posed amid decorations on his lawn. Drawing on former military training, Piper must prove herself worthy of the sheriff’s badge, and that won’t be easy.
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Length: 8 hr 47 min
Language: English
Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/The-Dead-of-Winter-Jean-Rabe-audiobook/dp/B06ZXTG836

DEAD OF NIGHT
As Sheriff Piper Blackwell rushes to a clandestine meeting with an aging, paranoid veteran who believes spies are trailing his every move, she is caught in a fierce thunderstorm. Pounding rain drums against the bluff, washing away the earth and revealing a grisly secret someone tried to bury a long time ago.
Putting a name to the skeleton on the bluff, and searching for the thief who robbed the old veteran of his life’s earnings, sends Piper delving into the sleepy towns that dot her rural county. Now she’s digging into pasts perhaps best left alone.
Accompanied by Chief Deputy Oren Rosenberg, Piper seeks to expose a truth someone wants to remain forever hidden. The investigation may have started with a thunderstorm, but Piper aims to finish it and find justice. Uncovering fragments of Spencer County’s history could prove more dangerous – and deadlier – than she ever expected.
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Length: 8 hr 32 min
Language: English
Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Night-Piper-Blackwell-Mystery/dp/B08Q9SFKNY/

DEAD OF SUMMER
Shouts of delight turn to screams of terror when a carnival ride goes berserk at the Spencer County Fair. Sheriff Piper Blackwell must contain the chaos and investigate the possible sabotage, even as she tries to solve a local businessman’s horrific murder.
But managing two investigations with at least one killer on the loose pushes the young officer and her tiny staff to their limits. Can Piper catch the murderer, or will the summer’s body count continue to rise?
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Length: 8hr 19 min
Language: English
Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Summer-Piper-Blackwell-Mystery/dp/B094M1NCKF/

Love the Piper Blackwell Series and want to keep up with Jean’s latest works? Sign-up for her newsletter: https://jeanrabe.com/sign-up-for-my-newsletter/ and follow her on Amazon: http://author.to/JeanRabe.​

THE DEAD OF WINTER
The Piper Blackwell Series
BY JEAN RABE

Excerpt

One

5:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct 31st

Teal organza wings embellished with silvery clock gears shimmered strangely beautiful in the setting sun. They were attached to the shoulders of a woman lying face-down in a ditch, a quarrel protruding from her neck, the blood that had streamed from the wound still wet. Another quarrel was lodged in the middle of her back. Sheriff Piper Blackwell guessed the woman was roughly her height, a little over five feet.

The breeze gusted, ruffling the wings just enough that Piper could see the deceased wore skimpy short-shorts covered in green sequins matching the lone sequined tennis shoe on her right foot. The left foot was bare and tangled in coarse fescue.

A Halloween costume, obviously. Piper had spotted several children trick-or-treating on her drive here and had stopped to lecture a pint-sized Superman who’d darted in front of her Explorer.

The farmhouses on this county road sat a half-mile to a mile apart. The woman might have been going to one of them, attending a party perhaps; Piper would check on that in a little while. She wanted to ease the victim over, get a look at her face, find some identification, but she wouldn’t disturb the body until after the coroner arrived.

“Dr. Neufeld said she’d be about twenty minutes,” said Detective Basil Meredith. He had a deep, rich voice. At six-feet-tall with espresso brown skin, Basil didn’t go unnoticed in mostly white Spencer County. “Said she didn’t appreciate being pulled from her cocktail hour.”

Piper edged into the ditch and turned on her body cam. Basil did the same. He clicked away with the department’s camera, a recently purchased Canon Rebel XT that would yield high quality digital photos.

She picked a path around the woman, carefully bending the tall grass, looking for a purse or cell phone. Nothing. Maybe they were under the body. Piper took her time, mindful of the slope, as she was a little off-balance with her left arm still in a sling. She’d badly broken the arm in September on Jerusalem Ridge, and pins and a titanium rod now held it together. Another few weeks or so, the doctor said, before it would be fully healed. Until then she had restricted duty: no pushing, pulling, or lifting.

“Seen a lot of death,” Basil observed.

Piper knew he referred to his years with the Chicago Police Department’s Gang and Narcotics Division. She’d seen a lot of death, too, from her tours in the Middle East.

“But I’ve never seen a fairy killed by arrows, Sheriff Blackwell. A first for me.”

About Author Jean Rabe:
USA Today best-seller, Jean Rabe’s impressive writing career spans decades, starting as a newspaper reporter and bureau chief.

From there she went on to become the director of RPGA, a co-editor with Martin H. Greenberg for DAW books, and, most notably, Rabe is an award-winning author of more than forty science fiction/fantasy and murder mystery thrillers.

She writes mysteries and fantasies, because life is too short to be limited to one genre–and she does it with dogs tangled at her feet, because life is too short not to be covered in fur.
Find out more about her at www.jeanrabe.com

About Narrator Catherine Wenglowski:
Catherine Wenglowski is a New York City based audiobook narrator. With a background in theater and as a classically trained singer, combined with her lifelong love of reading, Catherine uses her trained ear and creativity to add breath and life to characters and to connect with her audience. Visit her website at: https://www.wenglowvo.com/

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Links to Jean’s website, blog, books, #ad etc.:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3PlF98f

Dead of Autumn is book five of the Piper Blackwell Series.
Want to read the series in order? Check it out here: http://mybook.to/PiperBlackwellSeries.

Prefer audio? The Piper Blackwell series is in audio, read by Catherine Wenglowski. Start with book one of the series: mybook.to/DeadofWinterAudio

Sign-up for her newsletter: https://jeanrabe.com/sign-up-for-my-newsletter/ and follow her on Amazon: http://author.to/JeanRabe to keep up with her latest works!

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Special Giveaway: Jean will give away an ebook copy of THE DEAD OF AUTUMN to one lucky reader who comments on her Karen’s Killer Book Bench blog.

Happy Reading!

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Thanks, Jean, for sharing your story with us!

Don’t miss the chance to read this book!