My BOOKS
Do Unto Others
Newest Book!
Cate Harlow’s best ex-husband and the love of her life, NYC Detective Will Benigni has been shot and is in a dangerous dance with life-and-death at Lenox Hospital.
His captain tells Cate that this was no random act of violence. This was an outright murder attempt on Will’s life. Whoever shot him wanted him dead.
Unrepentant
CATE HARLOW'S best friend, the lovely "lady of the New York City evening" Melissa Aubrincourt asks Cate and Cate's ex-husband, NYPD Detective Will Benigni to come to New Orleans. Her beloved Tante Anjali, the woman who raised Melissa, has been arrested for murder.
What she doesn't tell Cate is that she needs her to conduct a private investigation into this murder of a notorious voodoo priestess who had been accused of kidnapping girls for a sex trade.
Grave Misgivings
PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR Cate Harlow has a terrified new client. A woman named Jennifer Brooks-Warren has come to Catherine Harlow, Private Investigations in desperate need of help; a contract has been put out on her life. Her request is for Cate Harlow to find the professional assassin who has been hired to kill her before he fulfills his contract, something he seems more than able to do considering that he is "a ghost,"the best and most elusive professional eliminator in the world and is off the radar as far as contact goes. Read More
Sins of the Fathers
Private investigator Cate Harlow finds herself involved in two cases that seemingly have nothing to do with each other; she soon discovers they may be bizarrely connected. While working the cold case of a boy who went missing ten years ago, she receives an early morning call from her ex-husband, a homicide detective, informing her about a recent murder; the horribly mutilated body of a priest, wearing only a clerical collar has just been found off of Interstate 95 in New York. ... Read More
Welcome to Hell
Teddy Jameson awakens nude and confused in what appears to be a tropical paradise. His guide looks like Brad Pitt and the grounds look like a Sandals Resort. Nice, right? The only problem is that his guide has greeted him with these solemn words, "Mr. Theodore Carter Hugh Jameson, may I be the first to welcome you to Hell." Hell? That Hell seems to be an upscale and very expensive Caribbean resort and the man his guide introduces as the Devil appears to be a genial blonde-haired host in white shorts, polo shirt and sneakers with a passion for tennis, certainly adds to Teddy's confusion. Where's the fire and brimstone? Where are the horns and long pointed tail usually associated with the Devil? If this is Hell, it has certainly had a makeover. Unfortunately, a certain degree of panic is setting in fast. In less than 24 hours Teddy, in line for a full professorship, is meeting with the chairperson of his department who can make or break his career. And as Teddy informs his guide, "I want my career as well-made as a French whore's silk-sheeted bed!" His whole career is in danger of being lost if he misses that important meeting. What the hell is going on?
"The impact of this little novel stays with you long after you turn the last page. You can enjoy the dark humor and cleverness of the storyline and leave it at that, or you can allow the deeper philosophy to simmer around in your head long afterward, as it did with me. It wouldn't be nice to reveal more, but at the very least, Welcome to Hell is an entertaining read and a lively conversation starter."
Reviewed by Karen Bartlett of Gulfshore Life Magazine
The Anchoress
Two young lovers may see their new life together torn apart when the bride discovers the horrifying secret her family has been keeping for generations. Ceci and Reynard live in small town in France and are childhood acquaintances with vastly different lifestyles. Reynard's family suffers the inevitable curse of the poor; lack of food and a decent place to live, fatal childhood diseases, and a beloved mother dying slowly of consumption....
No Woman Diet Alone
"A funny, irreverent romp through marital misadventures told completely tongue-in-cheek by Kristen Houghton, the best new humor writer we've read in a long time! Fresh and charmingly funny! Houghton takes relationships to a new level of hilarity." Since being launched on December 1, 2011, it has stayed in the top 50 books of the new year.
Remember Hetty?
This is a sweet, poignant story of two sisters, their interwoven lives, their longings and regrets, but most of all, a story of remembering. The desire to have someone share memories and past moments of our lives with us is a powerful need. Life is made up of remembrances both mundane and life-changing.
Kirkus Review says:"Hetty and Deidre will win your hearts in this short story by phenomenal new writer of the supernatural, Kristen Houghton.
Winner of the Writers Guild Review Best New Young Adult Fiction award.
And Then I'll Be Happy
This book is for anyone who has ever sacrificed her own happiness trying to make someone else happy who has assigned her happiness, one more time, to some future date in a galaxy far, far away. It is no big deal, right? Your happiness can wait. And-guess what?!-it does.
Stolen Property
The stories in STOLEN PROPERTY have twists and turns that keep the reader delightfully surprised and endings that make us satisfyingly scared. The short stories Funeral Meats and Stolen Property are delightfully ghoulish and Publish Me should be a favorite of every author who has ever thought of getting their work published by any means available to them.
The book has two previously published award-winning stories, Beware the Christmas Angels, a frightening modern take on Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Remember, Hetty? a gentle supernatural story on remembrance and love.