Part of Series
New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub is back, with a new heart-warming cozy mystery set in the magical village of Lily Dale In the quirky, picturesque lakeside community of Lily Dale, where the residents can talk to the dead, young widow Bella Jordan is the lone skeptic among believers. She doesn't believe in ghosts . . . but after a year in the village, she would admit that her new friends do sometimes seem to know impossible things. Still, when a Black stranger dressed in old-fashioned clothing arrives unexpectedly at Bella's guesthouse at midnight on Juneteenth, only to vanish the next day as if he'd never existed, Bella's sure there has to be a logical explanation. One that has nothing to do with the strange warning Odelia, the medium next door, delivers from the Beware of . . . Barry?! Bella doesn't know a Barry, and she has enough people in her life already, what with her young son Max and their two kitties, handsome vet Drew, a plethora of kind but nosy neighbors and a full house of summer guests. But as the mystery of the missing stranger deepens, she starts to did the Spirits really mean Barry? Or did they mean bury . . . If you're a fan of gentle mysteries filled with quirky but endearing characters, and haven't met Bella and her friends yet, you're in for a real treat! The Stranger Vanishes is the fifth Lily Dale cozy, and it's safe to jump right in.
Author
New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub is the award-winning author of more than ninety novels, best known for the single title psychological suspense novels she writes under her own name. Those books and the women’s fiction written under the pseudonym Wendy Markham have also appeared on the USA Today, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookscan bestseller lists. Her current standalone suspense novel, THE OTHER FAMILY, is about a picture-perfect family that that moves into a picture-perfect house. But not everything is as it seems, and the page-turner concludes “with a wallop of a twist,” according to #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben. Her critically acclaimed Lily Dale traditional mystery series centers around a widowed single mom—and skeptic—who moves to a town populated by spiritualists who talk to the dead. Titles include NINE LIVES; SOMETHING BURIED, SOMETHING BLUE; DEAD OF WINTER; and PROSE AND CONS, with a fifth book under contract. Wendy has written five suspense trilogies for HarperCollins/William Morrow. The most recent, The Foundlings (LITTLE GIRL LOST, DEAD SILENCE, and THE BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER), spans fifty years in the life of a woman left as a newborn in a Harlem church, now an investigative genealogist helping others uncover their biological roots while still searching for her own. Written as Wendy Markham, Wendy’s novel HELLO, IT’S ME was a recent Hallmark television movie starring Kellie Martin. Her short story “Cat Got Your Tongue” appeared in R.L. Stine’s MWA middle grade anthology SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN and her short story “The Elephant in the Room” is included in the Anthony Award-nominated inaugural anthology SHATTERING GLASS. A three-time finalist for the Simon and Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award, she’s won an RWA Rita Award, an RT Award for Career Achievement in Suspense, the 2007 RWA-NYC Golden Apple Award for Lifetime Achievement, and five WLA Washington Irving Prizes for Fiction. She previously published a dozen adult suspense novels with Kensington Books and the critically-acclaimed young adult paranormal series “Lily Dale” (Walker/Bloomsbury). Earlier in her career, she published a broad range of genres under her own name and pseudonyms, and was a co-author/ghostwriter for several celebrities. Raised in Dunkirk, NY, Wendy graduated from SUNY Fredonia and launched a publishing career in New York City. She was Associate Editor at Silhouette Books before selling her first novel in 1992. Married with two sons, she lives in the NYC suburbs. An active supporter of the American Cancer Society, she was a featured speaker at Northern Westchester’s 2015 Relay for Life and 2012 National Spokesperson for the Sandy Rollman Ovarian Cancer Foundation. She has fostered for various animal rescue organizations.
