Sophie Littlefield

There isn't much worth living for in Gypsum, Missouri - or Trashtown, as the rich kids call the run-down neighborhood where sixteen-year-old Hailey Tarbell lives. Hailey figures she'll never belong - not with the popular kids at school, not with the rejects, not even with her cruel, sickly grandmother, ... (more)who deals drugs out of their basement. Hailey never knew her dead mother, and she has no idea who her father was, but at least she has her four-year-old foster brother, Chub. Once she turns eighteen, Hailey plans to take Chub far from Gypsum and start a new life where no one can find them. But when a classmate is injured in gym class, Hailey discovers a gift for healing that she never knew she possessed - and that she cannot ignore. Not only can she heal, she can bring the dying back to life. Confused by her powers, Hailey searches for answers but finds only more questions, until a mysterious visitor shows up at Gram's house, claiming to be Hailey's aunt Prairie. There are people who will stop at nothing to keep Hailey in Trashtown, living out a legacy of despair and suffering. But when Prairie saves both Hailey and Chub from armed attackers who invade Gram's house in the middle of the night, Hailey must decide where to place her trust. Will Prairie's past, and the long-buried secret that caused her to leave Gypsum years earlier, ruin them all? Because as Hailey will soon find out, their power to heal is just the beginning. This gripping novel from thriller writer Sophie Littlefield blazes a trail from small-town Missouri to the big city as Hailey battles an evil greater than she ever imagined, while discovering strengths she never knew she had. Sophie Littlefield grew up in central Missouri, daughter of a history professor father and an artist mother. She earned a degree in computer science and made very little use of it. After living in Chicago for ten years, she and her husband packed up the kids and moved to Northern California in 1998. She wrote several novels in a variety of genres before selling her first mystery, A BAD DAY FOR SORRY, about a fiftyish widow who runs a sewing shop but has a side business helping battered women "take care" of their abusive husbands. A Young Adult series is slated for publication beginning in 2010 from Delacorte Books for Young Readers. Sophie's award-winning short stories have been featured in a variety of publications and anthologies.

"Sophie Littlefield romps onto the crime fiction scene with a character so memorable — and so desparately needed — that I don't know how we managed without her before" (Louise Ure). Stella Hardesty dispatched her abusive husband with a wrench shortly before her fiftieth birthday. Now she's juggling ... (more)her sewing machine shop and a series of clients seeking help with their own problem husbands while fighting a powerful attaction to the local Sheriff. We've known Sophie for years and years — so have many of you! — and we couldn't be happier to be celebrating the publication of her first book. Join us for what promises to be a wonderfully fun evening.