Author Biography

Brynn Bonner grew up in Alabama and is a long-time resident of North Carolina. Both her literary fiction and mysteries reflect the landscapes and the genuine people of her southern heritage. Bonner currently pens the Family History Mystery series for Pocket Books. Writing as Ellen Harris, Bonner wrote six books for the Mysteries of Sparrow Island series published by Guidepost Books. Her short stories have been featured in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Now and Then, Crossroads, and other publications

Review

Brynn Bonner ingeniously tosses in clues to keep guesses coming. PICTURE THEM DEAD is grippingly mysterious.----Single Titles on Picture Them Dead
This one is a whole lot of fun from start to finish.----Suspense Magazine on Picture Them Dead

Review Quote

"This one is a whole lot of fun from start to finish."

Excerpt from Book

Picture Them Dead one Thunderstruck. That was my grandmother''s word for when a person is so stunned, it renders her slack-jawed and mute. I haven''t experienced this many times in my life, as I''m a decidedly sanguine person, but at the moment, I was definitely thunderstruck. As a professional genealogist, I''ve seen enough skeletons come dancing out of family closets to get an impressive conga line forming. But they''ve all been metaphorical skeletons. Until today. I stood on a berm of red dirt in our potential new client''s backyard, only a few miles from where I live in Morningside, North Carolina. I stared down into the hole the backhoe had ripped, and even though I''d been warned, I was shocked senseless. There was a skull grinning up at me, and while this was disconcerting enough, what really got me was the casket. It was made of glass in a milky green color and was broken in multiple places, the shards sticking out like spikes. The metal hinges were rusted and twisted and what was left of the lid had slid to the side. Tatters of rotted fabric sprouted from the pile of wreckage like desiccated seaweed. A jagged hole where the backhoe''s scooper had hit left a handy window for our macabre game of peekaboo with the grinning skull. The whole casket had settled wonky. It canted to one side as if the occupant had rolled over in his big sleep and taken the casket with him. "Dear sweet Lord, have mercy," my business partner, Esme Sabatier, whispered. For the first time in weeks, she and I were in total agreement. Esme''s been my cohort in our genealogy research business for several years, but more than that, she''s my housemate, my confidant, and my dearest friend. She''s my family. We''re great partners because we have complementary outlooks and skills. But the sprockets on gears are complementary, too, and if they don''t line up just right, there''s a lot of grinding. We''d been out of alignment lately. This weird casket and its tenant were the most disturbing things Esme and I had witnessed today, but not the only jolt we''d had. We''d been snug in our beds this morning, minding our own business and trying to recover the sleep we''d lost over the past two weeks while on a job for a big Italian family in Maryland. We''d gotten in late last night, so exhausted we''d dumped our suitcases in the front hall and gone straight to bed. A little after 8:00 a.m., which to my sleep-deprived brain was an ungodly hour, someone started mashing on our doorbell. I''d put my pillow over my head, but it didn''t let up. Defeated, I''d hauled out and trudged downstairs, muttering old Sicilian curses I''d recently learned at whoever was leaning on the bell. I threw the door open to find Jennifer Jeffers standing on our front porch. Jennifer is the last person in the entire population of our little town who would pay a social call on Esme and me. She dislikes us--rather intensely--for some reason neither of us can fathom. True, we hadn''t met under the best of circumstances. Three years ago, one of our clients had been murdered, and for a brief time, Esme and I were deemed persons of interest since we''d been among the last to see her alive. Jennifer and her partner, Denny, had been the detectives on the case and had come to question us. We were quickly cleared, so I couldn''t see why Jennifer would still hold that incident against us. Denny certainly hadn''t. As soon as they''d eliminated us as suspects, Esme had become a person of immense interest to Denny. But Jennifer is still so unfriendly toward us. We''ve tried being sweet to her, we''ve tried giving as good as we got from her, and we''ve tried analyzing every interaction with her to see if we could get any insight into the problem. Nothing had gotten us any closer to understanding what we''d done to offend her so much. These days, we did our best to ignore her. Jennifer''s the youngest person ever to make detective in the police department, and quite the overachiever. Her partner, Denton Carlson, is Esme''s boyfriend, though that sounds like a silly term when you know them both. Esme is a beautiful

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