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Is a tragic discovery from the past triggering a number of shocking present-day events?When Hannah loses out on the cottage of her dreams because of an unscrupulous real estate agent, she and her husband, Paul, buy a fixer-upper instead. But contractors restoring the chimney soon make a tragic discovery: the mummified body of an infant.Hannah, already researching the history of her home in the county archives, is searching for clues to the dead infant's identity when more shocking events occur. Suddenly, her access to the courthouse is denied and the records she has been examining are slated for destruction. Someone with money, influence or both is trying to make sure incriminating information stays buried. Can Hannah solve the crimes before the evidence and over one hundred years of county history go up in smoke?



About the Author

Marcia Talley

Marcia Talley is the Agatha and Anthony award-winning author of eighteen Hannah Ives mysteries, including DONE GONE and TANGLED ROOTS. She is editor/author of NAKED CAME THE PHOENIX, a star-studded, tongue-in-cheek collaborative serial novel about murder in a fashionable health spa. A second collaboration, I'D KILL FOR THAT, is set in an upscale gated community. Her short stories appear in more than a dozen collections including "With Love, Marjorie Ann" and "Safety First," both Agatha award nominees, and the multi-award-winning "Too Many Cooks," a humorous retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth from the viewpoint of the three witches, from MUCH ADO ABOUT MURDER, edited by Anne Perry. Her story "Driven to Distraction" won the Agatha Award, was nominated for an Anthony, and selected for reprint in two major collections including The Deadly Bride and 21 of the World's Best Crime and Mystery Stories. Another story, "Can You Hear Me Now," appeared in Two of the Deadliest: New Tales of Lust, Greed and Murder from Outstanding Women of Mystery, edited by Elizabeth George. Marcia is a past national President of Sisters in Crime, Inc., serves on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and is a member of the Authors' Guild. Marcia and her husband, Barry, divide their time between Annapolis, Maryland and a quaint Loyalist cottage on Elbow Cay in the Bahamas.READ MORE: "THE MYSTERIOUS MARCIA TALLEY" from UpStArt MagazineHannah Ives is a reluctant sleuth who lives on Prince George Street in Annapolis and solves mysteries wherever life leads her. In Daughter of Ashes, by Annapolis-based mystery writer Marcia Talley, Ives and husband, Paul, refurbish a cottage on the Eastern Shore, only to discover a mummified toddler in the chimney. That incident - coupled with a murder and near-murder - and Ives' fortuitous work as a researcher of old, moldy, local land records, makes the mystery a page-turner, taking readers on a journey through Chesapeake Country, MD, with Big Chicken, the 1950s color line, and various cover-ups.Talley has led Hannah Ives fans through 16 adventures, and counting. Her foray into mystery writing was a "shameless Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys rip-off" in eighth grade. Despite her English teacher's admonition to "write what you know," she didn't let that stop her. She dove into Alfred Hitchcock films and kept writing crime fiction until full-time work and motherhood meant shelving the stories. Then a breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment alerted her to things she needed to finish, including mysteries to be written.An Oberlin College alumna, Talley majored in education. At the time, women were encouraged to have something to fall back on. She taught elementary and middle school until her first pregnancy; women had to stop teaching when the baby bump became apparent, and the tent dresses worked only for so lon



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