Miranda Corbie Mystery

June, 1940. For the United States, war is on the horizon. For Miranda Corbie, private investigator and erstwhile escort, there are debts to be paid and memories long-suppressed and willfully forgotten-to be resurrected. Enter the U.S. State Department and the man who helped Miranda get her PI license. A man she owes. A man who asks her to track a chemistry professor here in San Francisco whom he suspects is a spy for the Nazis. Playing along may get Miranda a ticket to Blitz-bombed England and answers about her past...if she survives. Through sordid back alleys and art gallery halls, from drag dress nightclubs to a Nazi costume ball, Miranda's journey into fear takes her on the famed City of San Francisco streamliner and to Reno, Nevada, the Biggest Little City in the World...where she finds herself framed for a murder she never anticipated. Forced to go underground, Miranda soldiers on alone, determined to find the truth about a murder, a Nazi spy, and her own troubling past. But, Miranda will have to learn the difference between reality and illusion, from despair to deceit and factual to fake, as she tries to get her life back...and navigates a City of Ghosts. Miranda Corbie's back. Noir will never be the same.

San Francisco, 1939. The Golden Gate International Exposition has captured the imagination of the country. The fair is a spectacular blend of mankind's newest innovations and basest urges, and Miranda Corbie is smack in the middle of it, working security at Sally Rand's. A former Spanish Civil War nurse and escort and now a private investigator, she has seen more than her share of the glitter and the grit, not to mention the people looking to make a quick buck off of them. Virginia MacAvoy's grandmother seems to be one of the unfortunate innocents. Mrs. MacAvoy came to the fair to give her granddaughters the inheritance that she had been saving for them, but it was stolen. It consisted of $500, four gold coins, and a memory book-a scrapbook where she has been saving family memories. While Virginia is convinced that Miranda will be able to track them down, her grandmother isn't and only hires Miranda to convince her granddaughters of how there is nothing to be done. Mrs. MacAvoy makes a good point, but Miranda can't understand why she's so quick to give up, and it isn't long before she's looking for more than a stolen bag but for answers as well. With Memory Book, Kelli Stanley takes readers to a time and place where the sordid and the sublime come together, making for a stunning prequel story to her to acclaimed historical series.