Meet your new best friend (who also just happens to be a serial killer).
THIS GIRL’S A KILLER
by Emma C. Wells
Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, September 2024
Cordelia Black loves exactly three things: Her chosen family comprised of her best friend Diane and her goddaughter, her hairdresser (worth every penny plus tip), and killing bad men.
By day she’s a successful pharma rep with her pristine reputation and designer wardrobe, by night she’s culling South Louisiana of unscrupulous men–monsters who always seem to evade justice, until they meet her. It’s a complicated, yet fulfilling life that requires complete and total control- at all times. But when the evening news starts throwing around the word serial killer, suddenly pressure heightens for Cordelia in the South. And it’s only exacerbated when Diane starts dating a man who Cordelia isn’t sure is a good person. Someone who might just unravel everything Cordelia has worked for.
Soon enough Cordelia’s world starts to spiral and she loses control of those tightly held threads that keep her safe. and she has to come face to face with the choices she’s made. The good, the bad, and the murderous. Both her family, and her freedom, depend on it.
Emma C. Wells loves anti-heroes, dark humor, witty banter, and ride-or-die friendships. Twisty relationships are her kryptonite (or catnip—depending on how you look at it) and her favorite characters are often called unlikable (but at least they’re never boring). Emma enjoys camping, yoga, researching spooky folklore, and collecting copies of Wuthering Heights from used bookstores.
Librarian Chloe Sampson has been struggling: to take care of her three younger siblings, to find herself, to make ends meet. She’s just about at the end of her rope when she stumbles across a rare edition of a book from the 1960s at the local flea market. Deciding it’s a sign of her luck turning, she takes it home with her—only to be shocked when her cranky hermit of a neighbor swoops in and offers to buy it for an exorbitant price. Intrigued, Chloe takes a closer look at the book only to find notes scribbled in the margins between two young lovers back when the book was new…one of whom is almost definitely Jasper Holmes, the curmudgeon next door.
The deities you call aren’t always the ones who answer.
Haunted by a childhood spent picking locks, tailing suspects, and helping her hard-boiled PI father solve cases, Dame Polara has spent most of her adult life running from his shady profession and the memories she associates with it. What Dame wants now is simple — her safe job preserving heritage buildings, adequate care for her father’s mounting health complications, and to raise a family of her own. But life doesn’t seem to be going her way.