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Tuesday, September 12, 2017

The Flight of Lydia Grimm (Jo Harper No. 9)



by Richard Prosch

In 1979 I was 13 years old, and the Space Age was still all around. The launch of America’s new space shuttle was imminent, and my dad and his friends were excited about the coming of home computers and video tape machines.
My grandpa’s Aunt Rose shared my enthusiasm. When she was 13—in the same year as Jo Harper—the 20th century was just beginning, and technology was beginning to make serious changes to everyday life in the West.
While the German immigrant grown-ups in Nebraska embraced steam powered tractors, then gasoline engines, telephones, electricity and wireless telegraphy, Rose let her imagination soar into the future.
When I was 13, I sat at her table sipping instant coffee and listened to her stories.
She talked about moving pictures projected onto bed sheet view screens in the back of the old mercantile store.
The thrill when she first saw an airplane move through the sky above the Nebraska prairie. 
The excitement of listening to music in her farm kitchen—music pulled straight out of the air.
These stories have stayed with me.
And haunted me for the past couple years.
I always hoped there would be another story for the series that began with Waiting for a Comet.
The first four, gathered together in Finding the Sky, capture Jo’s enthusiasm for the wonders of the nature. The following collection, On Solid Ground, are crime and mystery stories—almost like a young Nancy Drew on the range.
The Flight of Lydia Grimm picks up on that enthusiastic sense of life that is so much a part of Jo and leads off a series of four that combines the qualities of the first two.
This time, influenced by Aunt Rose, Jo’s engaged with man-made wonders even as she thwarts the crime or solves the mystery.
I hope you’ll join Jo, Frog, Abby Drake, and their friends and foes alike as they rush to embrace the future, first in The Flight of Lydia Grimm (now available) and coming soon, Last Wytch Park.

After growing up on a Nebraska farm, Richard Prosch worked as a professional writer, artist, and teacher in Wyoming, South Carolina, and Missouri. His western crime fiction captures the fleeting history and lonely frontier stories of his youth where characters aren’t always what they seem, and the windburned landscapes are filled with swift, deadly danger. In 2016, Richard roped the Spur Award for short fiction given by Western Writers of America. Read more at www.RichardProsch.com

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

New Release -- THE FLIGHT OF LYDIA GRIMM by Richard Prosch

Jo Harper Book 9


Jo Harper and her sidekick, Frog Beemer, are on their way to the movie in small-town Willowby, Wyoming. Beautiful Hollywood heroine, high-flying Lydia Grimm, is Jo’s role model—and she’s sat through Lydia’s latest movie, Wings Aflame! countless times. The only thing that can stop Jo and Frog from sitting through it again is the real thing—wings aflame—right over their heads!

Fantasy becomes a flaming reality on the Wyoming range as a burning airplane falls from the sky, and Jo and Frog grab their horses and ride to the scene of the disaster to help.
But when Frog returns to Willowby for help, Jo is held at gunpoint by the German pilot who has survived the crash!

All bets are off when Jo learns that her captor is involved with the very star she idolizes—Lydia Grimm! Lydia’s in danger, but it’s up to Jo to figure out why—and she’s determined to get to the bottom of this deadly mystery.

Will Frog return with help in time to save Jo? Can Jo unravel the mystery she’s caught up in? With a madman on the loose, Jo has no choice but to join in THE FLIGHT OF LYDIA GRIMM…

EXCERPT:

     “I’d swear that was the sound of a gasoline engine,” said Frog. “Listen! There it is again.”
     “It is a gas engine, but it’s no car,” said Jo, grinning.
     She pointed to the sky.
     “An airplane!” said Frog.
     It was extremely rare to see an airplane in the clear sky above Willowby, but to see one at night, just after she’d been talking about flying, was an exciting change of pace from a typical weekend night. Jo watched the dimly lit shadow putter along the blue horizon. Jo couldn’t help but think how lucky she was to be growing up in such a time as this, when, after centuries of trying, people flew through the air like birds.
     And just like that, something that sounded like a loud firecracker went off above them and the airplane motor started to whine.
     “It’s coming down! The airplane is coming down,” said Jo, pointing at a spark of light falling out of the purple night toward the dark shadows of nearby Autograph Rock. “She’s on fire!”
     “She?”
     “Hurry! Grab a horse and let’s ride!”
GET THE ENTIRE JO HARPER COLLECTION! Books 1-4 are available in the FINDING THE SKY set, and ON SOLID GROUND contains books 5-8! You will want them all!
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