I am pleased to announce Book 3 of The F.I.G. Mystery Series—THE CLOCK FLOWER—has just been released and is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and all booksellers.

Dara Roux, abandoned when she was seven years old by her mother. Exceptionally gifted in foreign languages. Orphan.  Accepted to Yale University.

Mackenzie Yarborough, no record of her parents or where she was born. Exceptionally gifted in math and problem-solving. Orphan. Accepted to MIT.

Jennifer Torres, both parents killed in an accident when she was sixteen. Exceptionally gifted in music and art. Orphan. Accepted to Juilliard.

In Book 1 of The F.I.G. Mystery Series, THE CADENCE OF GYPSIES, three high-spirited 17 year olds, with intelligent quotients in the genius range, accompany their teacher and mentor, Carolina Lovel, to Frascati, Italy, a few weeks before they are to graduate from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women.  Carolina’s purpose in planning the trip is to remove her gifted, creative students from the Wood Rose campus located in Raleigh, North Carolina, so they can’t cause any more problems (“expressions of creativity”) for the headmaster, faculty, and other students – which they do with regularity.  Carolina also wants to visit the Villa Mondragone where the Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious document in the world, was first discovered and search how it is related to a paper written in the same script she received on her 18th birthday when she was told that she was adopted – a search that will fill in all of the missing pieces of her past and help each of her students to discover something meaningful within themselves.

In THE WISH RIDER, Book 2 in The F.I.G. Mystery Series, the FIGs have just returned from Frascati, Italy. It was there where Carolina discovered that her birth parents were gypsies, and that she had a connection to the Voynich Manuscript, the most mysterious document in the world. Now, with graduation from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women behind them, Dara asks Mackenzie, Jennifer, and Carolina to help her locate her birth mother when she learns that she might be living in New York City.  All the young women have to work with are five addresses, and when Mackenzie prepares a grid showing the location of all five addresses, four of the locations form a square with the fifth in the middle—which is also Grand Central Terminal. Relying on Dara’s gift for speaking and understanding foreign languages, the black and white images that stir musical cadences in Jennifer’s mind, and Mackenzie’s mathematical calculations that normally provide numerical solutions and answers to life’s most difficult questions but now keep showing the number “61”, the determined young women tirelessly go from one address to another in search of Dara’s mother.  Their determination turns to desperation, however, and they ignore caution and the dissonant chords Jennifer frantically scribbles on her eight-stave musical paper as they pursue one final address—the one located in the middle of Mackenzie’s grid. Encountering a dark hidden society and sub culture more dangerous and terrifying than they could have imagined, it is there that Dara learns why she was abandoned as a seven year old in a candy store all those years ago.

Now it is Mackenzie’s turn. In THE CLOCK FLOWER, Book 3 of The F.I. G. Mystery Series, the three FIGs and Carolina return from New York City where they located Dara’s mother. Following graduation from Wood Rose Orphanage and Academy for Young Women, they are going their separate ways for the first time in their lives to further their education and try to exist in a world that doesn’t include the protective stone walls of Wood Rose. Mackenzie also wants to try to locate her parents. Once at MIT, because of her genius at problem-solving, she is personally chosen by a U.S. Senator to get involved in a mysterious, secret research project involving immortality that is being conducted in a small village in China—not too far from where Dara is involved with the archeological site as part of a special Yale University project. Once there, however, Mackenzie finds herself facing a terrifying death from the blood-dripping teeth of an ancient evil dragon. Her best friends, the FIGs and Carolina, rely on their own unique genius and special talents to save her as she discovers the truth of her birth parents.