Lynn Slaughter in conversation with Ellen Birkett Morris discussing and signing Deadly Setup and Lost Girls

Saturday, January 28 at 2pm ET

Location: Joseph-Beth Lexington 

Join us for Lynn Slaughter in conversation with Ellen Birkett Morris discussing and signing Deadly Setup and Lost Girls. Optional RSVP is below but not required to attend the event.

Deadly Setup by Lynn Slaughter

Seventeen-year-old Sam, the daughter of a New England heiress, has tried hard to fulfill her father’s dying wish: “Take care of your mother for me.” Not an easy job. When her impulsive, romance-writing mom announces her engagement to a man whose last heiress wife died under suspicious circumstances, Sam tries to dissuade her mother. But her mom is convinced she’ll finally have the “Happily Ever After” she writes about.

And then Sam’s life implodes. Her mom’s fiancé turns up dead, and a mountain of circumstantial evidence points to Sam as the killer. On trial for murder, she fights to prove her innocence with the help of her boyfriend’s dad, an ex-homicide cop.

Just when things are looking especially bleak, Sam uncovers evidence she never expected to find. She faces a tough decision: At what point does the price of loyalty become too high?

Lynn Slaughter is addicted to the arts, chocolate, and her husband’s cooking. Following a long career as a professional dancer and dance educator, she earned her MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She’s the author of four young adult novels: Leisha's Song, an Agatha Nominee for Best Mystery Novel in the MG/YA category, a Moonbeam Children's Book Awards' bronze medalist, and an Imadjinn finalist for best young adult novel; It Should Have Been You, a Silver Falchion finalist; While I Danced an EPIC finalist; and Deadly Setup, a Moonbeam Children's Book Awards' silver medalist. Her short story, “Missed Cue,” appears in Malice Domestic’s 2020 anthology, Murder Most Theatrical. The mother of two grown sons and besotted grandmother of five, she lives in Louisville, Kentucky where she is at work on her next novel and serves as president of Derby Rotten Scoundrels, her local chapter of Sisters in Crime.

Lost Girls by Ellen Birkett Morris

Lost Girls, stories of female resilience, explores women and girls as they grieve, find love, face uncertainty, take a stand, find their future, and say goodbye to the past. A young woman creates a ritual to celebrate the life of a kidnapped girl, an unmarried woman wanders into a breast feeder's support group and stays, a grieving mother finds solace in an unlikely place, a young girl discovers more than she bargained for when she spies on her neighbors. Though they may seem lost, each finds their center as they confront the challenges and expectations of womanhood.
 
 
Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Lost Girls, winner of the Pencraft Award and finalist for the Clara Johnson Award. Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, and South Carolina Review, among other journals. She is a winner of the Bevel Summers Prize for short fiction. Morris is a recipient of an Al Smith Fellowship for her fiction from the Kentucky Arts Council.

Ellen is also the author of Abide and Surrender, poetry chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in The Clackamas Literary Review, Juked, Gastronomica, and Inscape, among other journals.  Morris won top prize in the 2008 Binnacle Ultra-Short Edition and was a finalist for the 2019 and 2020 Rita Dove Poetry Prize. Her poem “Abide” was featured on NPR’s A Way with Words.

Her essays have appeared in AARP’s The Ethel, Oh Reader magazine, and on National Public Radio. You can learn more about Ellen at her website https://ellenbirkettmorris.ink/, and on social media at https://www.instagram.com/ellenbirkettmorris/, and https://twitter.com/birkett_morris.

Ellen holds an MFA in creative writing from Queens University-Charlotte.