FINDING ALAN          Summer 2010
The long-awaited sequel to THE DESK
 

Finding Alan, the long-awaited sequel to The Desk, continues where The Desk left off. Jeagan Christensen, having solved the mystery of the 50-year-old murder that was committed in Memphis's Court Square Park, now begins a second journey of discovery. This time she and her P.I. partner, Roger Sanderlin, are commissioned to find Isabel's son¾who was stolen the day he was born and sold to a Seattle attorney.

Finding Alan takes Jeagan from her condo in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, where she is recovering from her close brush with death in Oxford, Mississippi, to Seattle, Washington and Victoria, British Columbia. There Jeagan begins her search for Alan with very little evidence to go on: a 50-year-old letter from a Seattle attorney that references a $10,000 payment for the baby Alan. The search takes on a critical element when Isabel is rushed to a Memphis hospital after suffering a heart attack. Jeagan must find Alan before Isabel's heart gives out completely. A race against time, a race against death with those who don't want the stolen son found.

A vicious attack, a kidnapping, blood-red roses with threatening messages, documents that refuse to be found, guarded secrets that keep themselves hidden. Who can Jeagan trust when everyone appears to be hiding behind a mask of civility? Her sheer will and tenacity must keep her safe while she attempts to unravel the 50-year-old mystery and reunite the long-lost Alan with his family.

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THE DESK     
A Fifty-Year-Old Memphis Murder that Refuses to Remain Covered Up!
 

The Desk¾a story of bigotry, greed, kidnapping, and murder¾begins in Denver, Colorado, 1994.  The story tracks the actions of a young woman who is wracked by haunting flashbacks of scenes from a murder that she is convinced was committed in Memphis, Tennessee¾five decades in the past.

Jeagan Christensen is an accomplished and successful technical writer in the Denver Tech Center.  Her strong sense of self-confidence is shattered and her sanity comes into question when she experiences fleeting and fragmentary visions of a murder committed in 1944 in Memphis’s Court Square Park. The visions come to her when she is seated at an old-fashioned writing desk that she bought in a Denver antique shop. Successive visions reveal a telling story of a distraught and lovelorn young girl, the daughter of a self-righteous, domineering businessman who is set on preventing his daughter from marrying her lover. It is the girl’s lover, a young naval officer and the son of an Arkansas farmer, whom Jeagan envisions as murdered by the girl’s father. 

Unable to eat or sleep, Jeagan knows she must learn the truth.  Her self-absorbed, widowed father and her manipulative fiancé believe she is simply overworked and imagining her visions.  They insist she stop her silly nonsense and return the desk to the antique store.  Jeagan refuses.  She suspects the desk came from a room in the hotel where the young girl stayed with her family at the time of the murderthe historic and elegant Peabody Hotel.  Determined to learn the truth, Jeagan takes a leave of absence from her job, rushes to Memphis, and checks into the Peabody. As she peels back the layers of mystery surrounding the murder, she encounters those involved in the cover-up who intend to keep their dark secrets buried in the closet—next to the skeletons.


NEW PICTURES OF AN OLD MURDER 
Murder and Mayhem in Highlands Ranch, Colorado                    
      

Check out the review in the November 2009 issue of Colorado Country Living Magazine or online at:
http://www.coloradocountrylife.coop/index.php/book-reviews/14-book-reviews-category/104-new-pictures-of-an-old-murder-a-highlands-ranch.html

New Pictures of an Old Murder is the first novel in a series of Highlands Ranch, Colorado mysteries featuring amateur- sleuth Val Atwell, the wife of a minister, who is usually away building homes with Habitat for Humanity and former President Jimmy Carter. Besides her always-absent husband, Val has five children, two mares named Burt and Ernie, and a golden retriever named George.

To add to this, Val inherited an old ranch house¾in need of much updating¾and an Erma Bombeck sense of humor. Her morning starts much as any other in the waning days of a Colorado summer when Lindsey, her teenaged daughter, finds the camera that belonged to Val’s dead sister. The camera brings back all the anguish of Val's sister’s death in a fiery automobile accident three years earlier.

Lindsey discovers a mud-caked roll of film along with the camera. When the film is developed, scenes of what appear to be a murder unfold at a construction site in fast-growing Highlands Ranch. Val¾curious and concerned¾investigates. Her investigation soon alienates her family, her husband and his congregation, and everyone else except an elderly friend who lives in an upscale nursing home.

Determined to find out if a murder actually occurred three years earlier and if her sister’s death was linked to it, Val presses on to find out the truth.  The truth does not always set you free, as Val soon discovers. Sometimes it can get you killed!


THE OTHER SIDE OF TIME 
A Love Story that Spans Four Decades

When Agatha Windham, a recently widowed, 60-year-old librarian, buys a stained-glass window at an auction in Boston, her quiet life takes a twist for the worst...and for the better. Her research into the history of the centuries-old window immediately puts her life in jeopardy.  The reason, the criminal elements who brought the stolen window into the country believe she knows about their smuggling operation...and want to eliminate her.

But, before they can find her, Agatha stumbles onto the time-travel powers of the window and astonishingly finds herself in 1942 Nazi Germany. She soon realizes that not only has she traveled through time, but the years have faded away and she is once again a young and beautiful woman. In the midst of World War II, she meets and falls in love with a young minister¾part of an underground resistance group¾who is planning a daring mission to free prisoners from Dachau Concentration Camp. To help him, Agatha returns to 1982 Cape Cod to gather historical information on the war and much-needed food and medical supplies for the minister and Jewish refugees.

Now Agatha is faced with a tough decision, stay in 1982 Cape Cod with her family¾ and the men who want to kill her¾or return to Nazi Germany and the man she loves to help him with his noble plan. 


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 Copyright 2010, Jonna Turner - All Rights Reserved