Valerie Wilson Wesley

Of Blood and Sorrow
A One World Book; ISBN: 0-345-46807-4

Tamara Hayle can't believe life is so good. The city's most powerful businessman wants to work with her. Her new lover seems caring and supportive as well as stable and successful. And her son Jamal is coping well with teen angst and the aftermath of the shootings that forever changed his world. But as Tamara sardonically observes, "When things stir that easy, there's always something lumpy at the bottom of the pot."

Enter Lilah Love, an old acquaintance who begs Tamara to find her missing child. And Basil Dupre, Tamara's outlaw ex-lover, has strolled into town bring chaos and passion. Suddenly the safe world Tamara has built for herself comes tumbling down, crashing completely when Jamal witnesses a brutal murer and becomes the prime suspect.

HOW TO PURCHASE
Valerie Wilson Wesley's mysteries, novels and children's books can be purchased online at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.

Brown Bookshelf Author Spotlight in February 2008

Visit Brown Bookshelf's 28 Days Later Website to read Valerie Wilson Wesley's interview on February 27, 2008

Review from Publishers Weekly
The desperate search for a missing child makes Newark PI Tamara Hayle's eighth outing (after 2005's Dying in the Dark) a chilling, thought-provoking read. Gold-digging Lilah Love gave Tamara $30,000 years earlier after some shady doings in Jamaica. Now Lilah's sister, Thelma Lee, has Lilah's daughter, Baby Dal, and refuses to give her back. Lilah threatens harm to Tamara's son, Jamal, unless Tamara takes on her case. Tamara doesn't want to help Lilah, who sees Baby Dal as a bargaining chip, so she lets Treyman Barnes II, the child's wealthy, powerful grandfather, hire her instead. Then Thelma Lee disappears with the baby, and Lilah is found murdered in her car with Jamal's backpack in the rear seat. Tamara realizes she must find Lilah's child in order to protect her own. Wesley recounts Tamara's struggles with equal parts irony, compassion and insight. (Jan.)

Valerie Wilson Wesley is the award-winning and bestselling author of mysteries, novels and books for young readers. Her novels for adults include Playing My Mother's Blues and the Blackboard bestsellers Always True to You in My Fashion and Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do for which she received the 2000 award for excellence in adult fiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA). Her internationally acclaimed Tamara Hayle Mysteries include When Death Comes Stealing, Devil's Gonna Get Him, Where Evil Sleeps, No HIding Place, Easier to Kill,The Devil Riding, Dying in the Dark and Of Blood and Sorrow.