Triss Stein

"Brooklyn's rich history comes to life in Stein's wonderful descriptions, and Erica is an engaging tour guide."—Booklist Erica Donato, Brooklyn girl, urban history grad student and single mom, is researching the 1930s when Brownsville was the home of the notorious organized criminals the newspapers called Murder Inc. She quickly learns that even in rapidly changing Brooklyn, Brownsville remains much as it was. It is still poor, it is still tough, and it still breeds fighters and gangs. Doing field research, Erica stops in at the landmark local library and meets Savanna, a young woman who is the pride of her mother and her bosses, and headed for an elite college and a future. A few days later, Savanna is found beaten and left for dead. Her anguished mother is everywhere, insisting someone knows something. After a massive, angry demonstration, a young girlfriend of Savanna's is found dead, too. Is there a connection? Did perfect Savanna have a few secrets? Erica's curious. But she's focused on the 1930s and has located a few women who are happy to share memories. Two are childhood friends who disagree on much but guard secrets, too—ones kept for a lifetime. Never one to resist looking deeper than her research requires, Erica keeps encountering an apparent derelict white man, a vengeful rejected girlfriend, the role of boxing as a way out of poverty, and fading evidence of long-ago crimes.

An Erica Donato Mystery

Brooklyn Secrets

Deirdre Verne

Terrie Farley Moran

Catherine Maiorisi

Laura K. Curtis

Cynthia Benjamin

Lina Zeldovich

New York Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime

Clare Toohey

Susan Chalfin

Fran Cox

Eileen Dunbaugh

Lois Karlin

Lynne Lederman

Leigh Neely

Anita Page

Cathi Stoler

Anne-Marie Sutton

Joan Tuohy

Stephanie Wilson-Flaherty

Elizabeth Zelvin

K.J.A. Wishnia

Slices of life beyond the tourist's view. By turns funny, tough, and somber, the twenty-one helpings of New York attitude in Fresh Slices reveal neighborhoods both rich and poor, where old-timers desperately protect their secrets and brand-new arrivals indulge dangerous appetites. There is as much variety in the tones, settings, and approaches as in Gotham itself, and yet each of these crime stories also reflects the city's most infectious and unifying principle, that special combination of adaptability and assertiveness dished out more often than any pizza or street meat. In this, Fresh Slices’ second edition, urban short stories offer action-packed mystery that moves from cozy to noir. The sleuths, police officers and investigators who grapple with crime in these pages are richly drawn and engagingly authentic. Written by local members of the New York / Tri-State chapter of Sisters in Crime the anthology and edited by Agatha nominee Terrie Farley Moran, Fresh Slices is second in the Murder New York series and features tales from the most ethnically diverse and densely populated city in America.

A Mystery Anthology

Fresh Slices

A brutally murdered family man without an enemy in the world. A box full of charming letters home, written a century ago by an unknown female worker at the famed Tiffany studios. Historic Green-Wood cemetery, where a decrepit mausoleum with stunning stained glass windows is now off limits. Suddenly, all of this is part of Erica Donato's life. Erica is a youngish single mother of a teen, an oldish history grad student, and the lowest person on the totem pole of the history museum where she works. Soon secrets begin to emerge in the most unexpected places. An admirable life was not what it seemed, confiding letters conceal their most important story. All set against the background of the splendid old cemetery and the life of modern Brooklyn, the stories of old families and old loves with hidden ties merges with new crimes and the true value of art.

Brooklyn Graves

Triss Stein

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