After losing her job and her lover, Tess Parnell hopes her luck has changed when she is contacted about a surprise Louisiana inheritance. Excitement turns to shock, however, when she realizes her family has hidden their New Orleans history, including her grandfather's murder and a possible link to her mother’s suicide. Tess heads to New Orleans to cash in on her inheritance, explore her newfound roots, and learn the reasons for her family's lies. Sifting through memories and legends, she begins to trace her Creole heritage from a haunted plantation to bayou tragedies and bitter vendettas. Tess is determined to uncover the family secrets that may have warped her mother's life and her own childhood. When Tess unwittingly rouses vengeful forces from a dark New Orleans past, her fight for the truth suddenly becomes a fight for her life.
At the conclusion of Lies Agreed Upon, protagonist Tess Parnell had come a long way in her personal development. In my next mystery, The Cruelest Lies, Tess is in a committed relationship but her boyfriend has temporarily left New Orleans for Washington, D.C. She joins him for a brief reunion that she hopes will keep their long-distance romance on track. Without work to keep her busy during her visit, Tess has time to observe the neighborhood from the eerie old Victorian house that her boyfriend has rented in a Virginia suburb. As Halloween approaches and families decorate with fake horror, Tess is concerned by unsettling local history and recent disturbing incidents. Then the little girl next door vanishes while trick-or-treating, and it's not the first time a local child has gone missing; a little girl living in Tess's gloomy VIctorian disappeared decades earlier. Tess begins to suspect that the worst monsters lie close to home.
For Lies Agreed Upon