Jacqueline T Lynch

Rehearsals grow tense at a summer theater on the Connecticut shore. The lead actress goes missing - or was she murdered? Juliet Van Allen and Elmer Vartanian, the "Double V" duo, are called in on the case, but even with Juliet pretending to be an actress and joining cast, the players are guarding their secrets closely. There are spurned lovers, jealous wives, scene-stealers and heartbreakers, with enough spirit of vengeance to fill up the loge. Will the show go on? Even when a body is found? Murder at the Summer Theater is the fifth book in the Double V Mysteries series set in New England in the early 1950s. If you like the charm of a classic film, this "cozy noir" will return you to an era of soft ocean breezes and a glamorous game of suspicion played between acts. The painted backdrop is the heyday of summer theatre, when greats from the New York stage and Hollywood performed in barns and tents on New England's famed "straw hat circuit." Passionate accusations and grim consequences lurk in the dressing room. Join the nervous producers on the veranda for a champagne cocktail. It's a seaside caper where murder is in the spotlight in the summer of 1951, and Juliet and Elmer are on the verge of a new professional - and personal - partnership.

An incident from Juliet's past comes back to haunt her. A priceless work of art brings her to a secret bunker. An unidentified corpse is found in the river. As if this day weren't bad enough...Juliet is kidnapped Juliet Van Allen, heiress, and ex-con Elmer Vartanian, casual partners in the business of ferreting out murderers, take us to the Berkshires of western Massachusetts in the bleak midwinter of 1951. What happens next is murder. Whitewash in the Berkshires is the fourth book in the Double V Mysteries series set in New England in the late 1940s and early 1950s. If you like the romance and charm of a classic film, this "cozy noir" will remind you of an era when character-driven stories were elegant-unless a car chase in a 1947 Cadillac touring sedan on a mountain road brings us close to the edge of doom.It's murder in the art world, where the paintings aren't all that's being framed.

The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of 12 in Lillian Hellman's WATCH ON THE RHINE, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in MILDRED PIERCE (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Ms. Blyth is a treasure of Hollywood's golden age. This exploration of her career covers in detail her films, television, theatre, and radio performances from a wealth of sources and is illustrated with 281 photographs, some rarely or never before seen.

Hollywood films from the 1930s through the 1950s reflected their era-and sometimes created it.Today, classic films are the moving image scrapbooks of collective memory, but when they were shown long ago in downtown movie palaces or neighborhood second-run movie houses, they were, as much as the newsreels, a catalogue of current events.Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century is a collection of thoughtful, humorous, and insightful essays on three decades of classic films and the culture that made them.If you are a classic film fan who enjoys picking out the minutiae, you may already be aware that the minor actors in The Best Years of Our Lives tell us much more about the three returning veterans than they do themselves. You may already understand the telling significance of the social and political background of the delightful wartime comedy The More the Merrier. You may already be in tune with the message of films that led us into the frightening, fabulous fifties like I Want You (the American home front in the Korean War), Split Second (atomic bomb testing in the Nevada desert), Storm Center (a librarian is a victim of McCarthyism). If not, or if you think Peyton Place and Picnic are only about unhappy teenagers in small towns, then maybe you might enjoy another look at their faces-the stars, the character actors, the bit players.Return to a world of our own making and our own telling. See how much significance these movies have today. Understanding the background is what puts color in a movie, even in a black and white film.

The owner of a wealthy estate is found dead of a heart attack after his morning horseback ride. But his son suspects murder. Is it his young stepmother? His jealous wife? The ne'er do well stable groom? The trusted lawyer? Or did the butler do it?Juliet Van Allen and Elmer Vartanian, casual partners in the business of ferreting out murderers, take us to the cool, green hills of Litchfield, Connecticut, in the summer of 1950. It is the eve of the annual horse show, and with the mansion full of glittering guests at the opening ball, the estate is full of suspects.Dismount and Murder is the third book in the Double V Mysteries series set in New England in the late 1940s and early 1950s.If you like the romance and charm of a classic film, this "cozy noir" will remind you of an era when character-driven stories were elegant, subtle-and where greed rears its ugly head over a silver tray of hors d'oeuvres in a ballroom of intrigue or under a caterer's tent on the lawn, while sipping a champagne cocktail.It's murder among the horsey set as the pace quickens and there's danger in the paddock for sleuths who don't listen to warnings.

The three articles that comprise this book tell different stories about the Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts, which played an important role as an arms manufacturer during the American Civil War. Together, they make up a kind of composite of the Northern Civil War experience in the small, but dynamic, universe of a factory town. We meet Nathan P. Ames and James T. Ames, brothers who founded the firm, the younger burdened with the responsibility to continue the company after the tragic and grisly death of the older brother.We meet two workers in the factory, one of whom, Charles Tracy, was a machinist who left his position to join the army, and came home without a leg-and was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was cared for by Clara Barton, and comforted by President Abraham Lincoln in the hospital ward. The other man, Melzar Mosman, just a boy of nineteen, worked in the foundry department of the factory, forging canon. He also left to join the army, but after the war would become celebrated for forging bronze statuary, including a number of Civil War monuments.

A late 21st century time traveler battles bards, druids, warrior queens, and Roman cohorts for survival during the Celtic rebellion against the Romans in Britannia, 60 AD. Time traveler John Moore's fate is determined by four women: the Celtic warrior queen Boudicca; Tailtu, a gentle slave purchased from another clan; Dr. Eleanor Roberts, a severe, jealous and brilliant woman who spearheads the time travel mission; and enigmatic Dr. Cheyenne L'esperance, herself a time traveler from an even more distant future when the ecological survival of Earth is doomed. Myths of the Modern Man combines history with science fiction, where the savage past is prologue to a bleak future...unless John Moore can survive a whirlpool of revenge that echoes through the centuries, and from which only the women from the past, present, and future can save him. Will he make it back in time?

Four towns...dismantled as an entire valley is prepared to be flooded. The past is being wiped clean, the present threatens, the future belongs to the fearless. Three generations weave a tapestry of isolation and stubborn independence, battling the forces of nature, the Commonwealth, and each other in this family saga. A courageous girl becomes the guardian of her family's heritage, and ultimately, the one to determine what happens next. Beside the Still Waters is based on actual events that displaced four entire towns in central Massachusetts in the 1920s and 1930s for the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir. Families are torn apart, divided between those who protest the construction, those who give up and leave while they can, and those who help to build the dam that will flood the towns. Return to the Swift River Valley, its charm and its pain, its mysteries and its lessons-to a community, a family, and a young woman in a race against time.

Guests arrive to attend a wedding in a snowbound mansion on New Year's Eve. A discovered note warns of danger at midnight. Juliet Van Allen's wealthy widowed father is preparing to marry a much younger woman in the early hours of New Year's Day, but when it appears that one of the guests might carry out a threat, she calls in her friend, ex-con Elmer Vartanian to post as a hired servant to help ferret out the clues and prevent a murder...but midnight is approaching and time is running out. Speak Out Before You Die is the second book in the Double V Mysteries series set in New England in the late 1940s and early 1950s. If you like the romance and charm of a classic film, this "cozy noir" will remind you of an era when dramatic stories were elegant, subtle, and grim family secrets are revealed over a game of charades in evening dress, while sipping a champagne cocktail. Enter a world where the second half of the Twentieth Century begins with a toast, a chorus of Auld Lang Syne...and a promise of revenge.

A whimsical, poignant tale about a practical joke-turned publicity stunt that fires up the small town of Nuthatch, Massachusetts, in a desperate attempt to attract tourists.Christmas tree farmer Everett Campbell proposes turning the clock back to 1904 and reviving the town's cozy past, an idea he gets from watching his young daughter's favorite classic movie, Meet Me in St. Louis. She is thrilled at being allowed to dress up and pretend, but not everyone in town is enchanted with the nostalgic promotion-including Everett's moody teenage son.The media, and the tourists, do come, but the scheme also attracts a large theme park corporation that wants to buy Nuthatch 1904.Everett now stands to lose his town in a way he never imagined, and his neighbors are divided on which alternate future to choose.A local drug dealer, Everett's boyhood enemy, may hold the future of the entire town in his hands unless Everett can pull off one of his most spectacular, and dangerous, practical jokes.

Rose, a tall, bumbling American woman travels to New Zealand to re-establish ties with her late mother's family and begins the adventure of her life. If she can survive it.Armed with old family letters, she retraces her mother's footsteps as a young woman during World War II as a government agricultural worker-or Land Girl-and a war bride when Rose's father landed in New Zealand with the U.S. Marines.The Current Rate of Exchange is a humorous, heartwarming, and poignant tale of what it means to reconnect, to discover, and to forgive.Rose unexpectedly becomes involved in the family problems of her cousin Nora; her sudden romance with the handsome, troubled manager of the family farm wasn't on the agenda, either.If you like the romance of travel, the adventure of unexpected delights-and the delight of unexpected romance-pack up your dreams and follow Rose on her quest for closure. But will she be able to retrace her own steps home without repeating mistakes of the past?

A museum heist, a missing child, a murder, a recent ex-con and an even more recent widow. How many times do we have to pay for our mistakes before life sends us a reprieve? Juliet Van Allen, museum administrator, discovers that her artist husband is having an affair with another woman. Elmer Vartanian, recently released from prison for a museum robbery, is coerced into helping scout her museum for a heist by a gang that has kidnapped his daughter. Juliet's husband is murdered. Did she kill him? She needs an alibi - so does the ex-con. Cadmium Yellow, Blood Red is the first book in the Double V Mysteries series set in New England in the late 1940s and early 1950s.If you like the romance and charm of a classic film, this "cozy noir" will remind you of an era when dramatic stories were elegant, subtle, and even a grim dark alley might lead to the glamour of evening dress and a champagne cocktail. Enter a world where Modern Art meets old-fashioned murder and take a back seat in Juliet's sleek 1949 Lincoln Cosmopolitan for a fast ride to outrun danger - now.