LeGarde Mysteries
by Aaron Paul Lazar
Available Rights from Aaron Paul Lazar:
In addition to the already contracted Double Forté, Upstaged, Tremolo, and Mazurka, I've completed five more books in the LeGarde series and have started another series featuring Sam and Rachel Moore. The first of these, Healey's Cave, will be released by Twilight Times Book in June 2008. I just finished the ninth in the series, tentatively entitled Lady Blues: forget-me-not and have started writing the third Sam Moore mystery, entitled, For Keeps.
The following works are available and seek homes in a well-established publishing community:
Contact the author at: aaron.lazar@yahoo.com
Synopsis for Lady Blues: forget-me-not
by Aaron Paul Lazar
What do an abused Korean seamstress and a sultry WWII blues singer with a voice like velvet have in common? Deep, intense love –found, then lost– in a flash of unfair circumstances.
Meet Lida Kim, forty-two year old prisoner in a tailor shop in Upstate NY. Isolated from American society by an iron-fisted older brother, Lida knows no English and is virtually chained to her sewing machine.
When Gus LeGarde and his brother-in-law Siegfried notice smoke pouring from the top floor of the establishment, they race to the rescue. Thom Kim, badly burned, is whisked to the hospital, leaving Lida homeless. Siegfried, a gentle giant mildly brain damaged in a childhood accident, falls hard for Lida, the first potential love of his life. Introduced to an unfamiliar world of television and independent women, Lida begins to unfold, but her new feelings of worthiness are fleeting.
Now, meet Bella DuBois, blues crooner of Harlem Jazz clubs, ingénue singer shot to fame in WWII. Bella falls for a young jazz pianist before he signs up for the war. Problem is, the biracial couple must quench their passion in private, to avoid the bigots. On a foggy night in 1946, the lovers are torn apart when her pianist disappears overseas.
While dealing with Lida and Siegfried’s troubled affair at home, Gus is drafted to play organ for church services at a local memory center. There, he meets Kip Sterling, a patient with a mysterious past. Gus connects with the octogenarian through music. Shuffled through the system for sixty-five years, Kip speaks in complex musical terms and conducts symphonies of birds through his window, while incessantly asking for “his Bella.” When a new Alzheimer’s drug, Memorphyl, starts to work, Gus digs into Kip’s past to peel back the layers, revealing a possible connection to a mystery linked to the unsolved disappearance of Glenn Miller and his plane on December 14th, 1946.
Gus becomes obsessed with Kip’s history and searches for clues leading to Bella. Instead, he discovers Clarence DuBois, Kip’s illegitimate son. Clarence shares a revelation: Bella is still alive. Now the lovers will be reunited. But the drug company Novacom discovers Memorphyl works too well, cutting into the profits of the circle of nursing homes they secretly own, and a “new” formula sends recovering patients—including Kip—back to the gloom of Alzheimer’s disease.
Meanwhile, Lida discovers at her brother’s deathbed that her father murdered her mother due to intense family shame – Lida’s mother had an affair with a family friend, producing the illegitimate Lida. Brother Thom was forced to participate in the murder for the sake of family “honor,” but in a sudden rage, he turned on his father in traumatized fury. After moving Lida to America, Thom’s wrath turned to alcoholism, and Lida became the unwelcome recipient of repeated thrashings.
At her brother’s revelation, Lida flees in shame and nearly succeeds in committing suicide when she jumps into a deep ravine. She is rescued by her beloved Siegfried, in a daring cliff-side descent.
At the same time, Kip’s nurse Debbie “kidnaps” him to save him from the Novacom agents, and then disappears with no trace. Gus pairs up with Debbie’s sister, Lucy Sedgewick, an ex-FBI agent turned woodworker. The unlikely duo must race against time to stop Novacom’s thugs from silencing the witnesses to Memorphyl’s success, so that the ill-fated lovers may be reunited.
In a drenching rainstorm near a remote lodge in the Finger Lakes of Upstate NY, Gus and Lucy face the thugs, finally subduing them. Kip is reunited with Bella and reveals that he was on the icy winged plane that crashed near the French shore with Glenn Miller, tying together the threads of his own past and its link to the infamous Glenn Miller mystery.
And thus, Gus resolves the twin mysteries of Lida’s past and Kip’s future.
5647 Groveland Hill Road • Geneseo, NY • 14454
Phone: (585) 243-4689 • Cell: (585) 733-7357
WEB SITES: www.legardemysteries.com, www.mooremysteries.com
BLOG: www.aaronlazar.blogspot.com
Firesong: an unholy grave, number four, pits Gus and Camille against drug lords with a backdrop of a tornado, a forest fire, a collapsing salt mine, and the discovery of a fantastic local link to the Underground Railroad. The entire town is threatened as Gus and Camille unravel the truth behind reprehensible dealings in their country church and the scandal of a missing town supervisor.
Virtuoso, number six, spirits Gus into the world of art forgeries, teenage traumas, a deadly but talented tenor, and to New York City for a near-death escape at the Met and a chase through Central Park. In this story, Gus reconnects with an old friend who shares a stunning secret as he struggles to recover from the loss of a long time companion. Gus and Camille discover a link to his past via his great, great aunt, Emma Cunningham.
Portamento, the seventh in the series, occurs in 1969 when Elsbeth and Gus were students at the Boston Conservatory. White slave rings, an engaging flower child, the Boston Rock scene, and the titillating reckless abandon of the sixties set the stage for Gus's sudden need to grow up fast for the sake of his grief-stricken father and impending fatherhood.
In Counterpoint, the eighth book in the series, Shelby tries to grow up too soon - her teen hormones kick into overdrive. Camille's abusive ex-husband is released from prison, stewing in hot revenge. Joe Russell falls apart with agoraphobia and guilt-induced anxiety. Wedding bells are chiming for a certain young couple. And someone nearly drowns beneath the ice on Keuka Lake.
Status:
Lady Blues: forget-me-not Just completed, starting to submit to literary agents May 2007
Firesong: an unholy grave Completed, available
Virtuoso: Completed, available
Portamento: Completed, available
Counterpoint: Completed, available
Contact the author at: aaron.lazar@yahoo.com
Check out the author's new paranormal mystery series, Moore Mysteries featuring Healey's Cave, One Potato, Blue Potato, and For Keeps.