LIBBY FISCHER HELLMANN'S TOME 'HAVANA LOST'
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BOOKS
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Havana Lost
Havana Lost (The Red Herrings Press) is award-winning author Libby Fischer Hellmann's tenth novel and third stand-alone thriller. On the eve of the Cuban Revolution, headstrong 18-year-old Francesca Pacelli flees from her ruthless Mafia-boss father in Havana to the arms of her lover, a rebel fighting with Fidel Castro. Her father, desperate to send her to safety in the US, resorts to torture and blackmail as he searches the island for her.
So begins the first part of a spellbinding saga that spans three generations of the same family. Decades later the Pacelli family is lured back to Cuba by the promise of untold riches. But pursuing those riches brings danger as well as opportunity, and ultimately, Francesca must confront the lethal consequences of her choices. From the troubled streets of Havana to the mean streets of Chicago, Havana Lost reveals the true cost of chasing power instead of love.
Havana Lost explores how strife and revolution affect the human spirit. All her books are a testament to Hellmann's gift for authentic historical detail as well as her talent for writing compulsively readable thrillers. With ten novels and twenty short stories published, she has also written suspense mysteries, historicals, PI novels, amateur sleuth, police procedurals, and even a cozy mystery. At the core of all her stories, however, is a crime or the possibility of one.
She is a transplant from Washington, D.C., where, she says, "When you're sitting around the dinner table gossiping about the neighbors, you're talking politics.” Armed with a Masters Degree in Film Production from New York University, and a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania, she started her career in broadcast news.
Her first novel, in 2002, was An Eye For Murder, featuring Ellie Foreman, a video producer and single mother. Publishers Weekly called it a "masterful blend of politics, history, and suspense.” That was followed by three more entries in the series. Her second series features hard-boiled Chicago PI Georgia Davis; The Chicago Tribune describes her as "a new no-nonsense detective …. tough and smart enough to give even the legendary V.I. Warshawski a run for her money.” Her 8th novel, Set The Night On Fire, was a standalone thriller short-listed for ForeWord Magazine's Book of 2010 in the suspense/thriller category.
Libby has also edited a highly acclaimed crime fiction anthology and in 2005-2006 she was the National President of Sisters in Crime, a 3,400-plus member organization committed to strengthening the voice of female mystery writers.
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