Trouble Island

(Hardback, Large Print Edition)

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A gripping new novel inspired by a real place and events from the authors family, Trouble Island is the standalone suspense debut from historical mystery writer Sharon Short.

Many miles from anywhere in the middle of Lake Erie, Trouble Island serves as a stop-off for gangsters as they run between America and Canada. The remote isle is also the permanent home to two women: Aurelia Escalante, who serves as a maid to Rosita, lady of the mansion and wife to the notorious prohibition gangster, Eddie McGee. In the freezing winter of 1932, the women anticipate the arrival of Eddie and his strange coterie: his right-hand man, a doctor, a cousin, a famous actor, and a rival gangster who Rosita believes murdered their only son.

Aurelia wants nothing more than to escape Trouble Island, but she is hiding a secret of her own. She is in fact not a maid, but a gangsters wife in hiding, as she runs from the murder she committed five years ago. Her friend Rosita took her in under this guise, but it has become clear that Rosita wants to keep Aurelia right where she is.

Shortly after the group of criminals, celebrities, and scoundrels arrive, Rosita suddenly disappears. Aurelia plans her getaway, going to the shore to retrieve her box of hidden treasures, but instead finds Rositas body in the water. Someone has made sure Aurelia was the one to find her. An ice storm makes unexpected landfall, cutting Trouble Island off from both mainlands, and with more than one murderer among them.

Both a gripping locked room mystery, and a transporting, evocative portrait of a woman in crisis, Trouble Island marks the enthralling standalone suspense debut from Sharon Short, promising to be her breakout novel, inspired by a real island in Lake Erie, and true events from her own rich family history.

Reviews

Oh, what tangled webs Short weaves in Trouble Island . . . Short, in her first stand-alone novel, handles every element with aplomb, showing how losing a loved one can corrode the brain like nothing else.New York Times

Deliciously twisty . . . Aurelias urgent first-person narration bestows the narrative with plenty of tension, which Short supplements with well-drawn supporting characters and several devilish reversals. Readers will have little trouble finishing this in a single sitting.Publishers Weekly

Trouble Island is a simmering cauldron of intrigue that bubbles into quite a batch of red herring stew.Dayton Daily News

Author Bio

SHARON SHORT is the author of fifteen published books. Her newest, Trouble Island, is historical suspense inspired by bootlegging and family history. Sharon is a contributing editor to Writers Digest, for which she writes the column, Level Up Your Writing (Life) and teaches for Writers Digest University. She is also a three-time recipient of the Individual Excellence Award in Literary Arts from Ohio Arts Council and has been a John E. Nance Writer in Residence at Thurber House (Columbus, Ohio).