Erica Wright

It begins with a bang: Kathleen Stone is watching her friend Dolly and his fellow drag queens from The Pink Parrot perform at the Halloween Parade when their float explodes. Suspecting foul play, The Pink Parrot's owner, Big Mamma, hires Kat to find the culprit.

a novel

The granite moth

Ian Bogost

Christopher Schaberg

Snake

Kathleen Stone’s ability to blend in makes her an ace private investigator, but when a cheating spouse she is tailing ends up dead she fears that someone from her past has seen through her disguises. As a private investigator, Kathleen Stone relies on her ability to blend into the background. With a little help from the best wigmaker on the Atlantic seaboard, Kathleen can take on a variety of personas, from a posh real estate agent to a petulant teenage boy. She was once a valuable undercover cop for the New York City Police Department, but since her early retirement following a botched case, she has gone a little soft. These days, with the assistance of a street-smart drag queen, she mostly catches cheating spouses in flagrante. When one husband ends up not so much adulterous as dead, Kat must tune up her rusty skills to catch a killer. She begins investigating the upper echelons of New York, a city that can swing from glamorous to lethal in an instant. She soon finds herself stepping on the toes of her former best friend, Detective Ellis Dekker, as well as a sadistic kingpin she hoped to never see again. Not only do memories of Salvatore Magrelli’s knife-friendly tendencies give her the heebie-jeebies, but his connection to the case makes Kat a possible suspect, too. She needs to move fast…if she is to avoid becoming the next victim.

The Red Chameleon: A Novel

Poetry. "You don't need psychedelics or hypnosis. You don't need a shaman or any divine intervention. If it's a trip you're looking for, try Erica Wright's ALL THE BAYOU STORIES END WITH DROWNED. This is a book that warps the America we know into a mesmerizing weirdness. It scintillates the ordinary. Wright's lyricism, the fantastic juxtapositions in her diction and imagery all give us an alternate vision of our national moment. Equal parts surreal, sinister, and sincere, this is a place you definitely want to visit. It might just be the kind of place you need to live in."—Jaswinder Bolina

Poems

All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned

From one of the most original writers in crime fiction comes a diabolical mystery wrapped in Hollywood tinsel. When reclusive, retired silver screen actress Barbara Lace dies in her bed, only the young widower of Cedarville suspects a crime. But Samson Delaware has always been something of an outsider, and his wife's death hasn't exactly improved his reputation. In fact, the local gossipmongers think he might be losing his mind. Their bless-your-heart manners can't disguise their distrust, which makes his amateur attempts at an investigation even more difficult. When Lace's assistant is found decidedly murdered, the town starts to change its tune, though, and soon Samson finds himself in the thick of an improbable chase. Hollywood hotshots and small-town law enforcement make strange bedfellows--especially when secrets are getting women killed.

Famous in Cedarville

From one of the most original writers in crime fiction comes a diabolical mystery wrapped in Hollywood tinsel. When reclusive, retired silver screen actress Barbara Lace dies in her bed, only the young widower of Cedarville suspects a crime. But Samson Delaware has always been something of an outsider, and his wife’s death hasn’t exactly improved his reputation. In fact, the local gossipmongers think he might be losing his mind. Their bless-your-heart manners can’t disguise their distrust, which makes his amateur attempts at an investigation even more difficult. When Lace’s assistant is found decidedly murdered, the town starts to change its tune, though, and soon Samson finds himself in the thick of an improbable chase. Hollywood hotshots and small-town law enforcement make strange bedfellows—especially when secrets are getting women killed. When Lace’s assistant is found decidedly murdered, the town starts to change its tune, though, and soon Samson finds himself in the thick of an improbable chase. Hollywood hotshots and small-town law enforcement make strange bedfellows—especially when secrets are getting women killed.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Feared and worshiped in equal measure, snakes have captured the imagination of poets, painters, and philosophers for centuries. From Ice Age cave drawings to Snakes on a Plane, this creature continues to enthrall the public. But what harm has been caused by our mythologizing? While considering the dangers of stigma, Erica Wright moves from art and pop culture to religion, fetish, and ecologic disaster. This book considers how the snake has become more symbol than animal, a metaphor for how we treat whatever scares us the most, whether or not our panic is justified. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.

What happens when a master of disguise tries to be herself for once? If you’re private investigator Kat Stone, trouble seems to find you with or without your favorite wig. Kat knows she’s living on borrowed time, waiting for her violent past to catch up with her. Still, she doesn’t expect men to start falling from the sky. On a desolate morning in Fort Washington Park, Kat discovers the body of her building’s French expat maintenance man atop the Jeffrey’s Hook Lighthouse. The NYPD is quick to dismiss his death as suicide, another lost soul leaping from the bridge overhead. Kat is less than convinced, especially when she learns about his dangerous side hustle, finding jobs for immigrant members of their community. Her investigation turns up unexpected connections to Manhattan’s tony art world, not to mention a host of dark superstitions. When she goes undercover with a deep-sea fishing company, she gets a little too cozy with a colorful cast of characters and a couple of jellyfish. Will she find his killer before her past drags her under? From one of the most acclaimed new mystery writers working today comes a riveting novel of suspense that will have you guessing until the last page is turned.

Erica Wright

Books

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