Rob Levandoski Books In Order

Morgue Mama Mysteries Books In Order

  1. Morgue Mama (2003)
  2. Dig (2005)
  3. The Unraveling of Violeta Bell (2008)

Novels

  1. Going to Chicago (1997)
  2. Serendipity Green (2000)
  3. Fresh Eggs (2002)

Morgue Mama Mysteries Book Covers

Novels Book Covers

Rob Levandoski Books Overview

Morgue Mama

The morgue is that cold and sterile facility where medical examiners do their necessary but, to many of us, dreadful work. Less familiar is its dry and dusty version, usually housed in the bowels of newspaper buildings, where old story clippings are filed away. Dolly Madison Sprowls has been in charge of the Hannawa Herald Union’s morgue for more than 40 years. She is gruff and salty, well past the age of retirement, the unchalleneged queen of her ink stained domain. Reporters call her Morgue Mama but only behind her back. Maddy Sprowls’ well ordered world gets turned upside down when the paper hires 24 year old Aubrey McGinty for its police beat. Aubrey loses no time in questioning the conviction of Sissy James for the murder of TV evangelist Buddy Wing. Yes, Sissy had quickly confessed to poisoning the famous preacher live on television and the evidence does seem overwhelming but the ambitious young reporter doesn’t believe Sissy is guilty. Why, then, her claim? Aubrey enlists Morgue Mama‘s help and together they begin a harrowing search for the truth. Digging into the morgue’s file, they soon, and dangerously, uncover enough suspects to fill a church with those who do the devil’s work…
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Dig

Maddy Sprowls gets to The Hannawa Herald Union right at nine. She makes her first mug of Darjeeling tea and settles down at her desk to read the obituaries. The obits are the best part of her day, she admits. But not today. First she reads that her old college friend Gordon Sweet is dead. Then she learns he was murderedat the abandoned landfill where the eccentric archaeology professor was conducting his latest dig. And just like that, the cranky 68 year old newspaper librarian finds herself investigating another murder. No, two murders! Gordon’s death just might be linked to the grisly bludgeoning of state wrestling champ David Delarosa fifty years earlier. And so begins a harrowing, and hilarious, trek back to Maddy’s old beatnik days, when she was a member of the Meriwether Square Baked Bean Existentialist Society. There’s a coffee house full of quirky suspects to consider: Poet Chick Glass, saxophonist Shaka Bop, free thinking Effie Fredmansky, snooty Gwen Moffitt Stumpf, and toxic waste dumper Kenneth Kingzette, just to name a few. And, oh yes, the legendary beat writer Jack Kerouac figures into this satisfying caper, too. There’s a reason why reporters call Maddy ‘Morgue Mama’ behind her back. And why cops and criminals alike get the jitters when she pulls up in her old Dodge Shadow. She is tough, tenacious, and as readers of C.R. Corwin’s Morgue Mama: The Cross Kisses Back discovered, tricky as the dickens.

The Unraveling of Violeta Bell

Newspaper librarian Maddy Sprowls never gives story ideas to the editors at The Hannawa Herald Union. She prefers to stay in the morgue and do her job, and hopes the editors stay in the newsroom and do theirs. Then one Saturday she sees four elderly women get out of a taxicab at a garage sale. Those women must hire that cabby every week, she figures, to drive them from garage sale to garage sale while they search for treasure. And wouldn t that make a great feature story for the paper? Monday morning she runs straight to the newsroom with her idea. Shortly after the story runs, one of the four women is murdered?retired antique dealer Violeta Bell. Maddy wants no part of the investigation. But before she knows it she’s on another of her infamous snoopathons. And, good gravy, enjoying every minute of it. Was Violeta Bell murdered by one of the other garage sale ladies? Former striptease artist Kay Hausenfelter perhaps? Or real estate agent Gloria McPhee? Or eccentric philanthropist Ariel Wilburger Gowdy? Or was it Eddie French, the scruffy cabby with a police record as long as his arm? And what about Violeta s claim that she was the rightful queen of Romania? Any truth to that? Readers who loved C.R. Corwin s first two Morgue Mama mysteries The Cross Kisses Back and Dig will be happy to see that Maddy is as crafty and cantankerous as ever. If not more so!

Fresh Eggs

Fresh off the success of his hilarious small town lampoon, Serendipity Green, Rob Levandoski is back with a provocative father/daughter tale guaranteed to deliver as many tears as chuckles. It will also make you think long and hard about modern man’s shaky relationship with the animal world. The setting for Fresh Eggs is Levandoski’s fictional Tuttwyler, Ohio. The family is the Cassowarys, a clan of hard working, guilt ridden Protestants ready to do whatever it takes to keep their farm in the family for one more generation. And now it’s young Calvin Cassowary’s turn. Calvin decides to specialize in chickens. Soon he’s got a million hens laying eggs for Gallinipper Foods. But no matter how many new hen houses he adds, his financial troubles only worsen. If things aren’t tough enough, Calvin’s little daughter, Rhea, starts growing feathers. He takes her to one specialist after another. No one has a clue. Only Dr. Pirooz Aram, the pesky Persian American psychiatrist first introduced in Serendipity Green, has an answer: Rhea’s feathers are a ‘stigmatic response’ to the horrible way her father’s ‘egg machines’ are treated. Levandoski’s expos of modern factory farming is chilling, and his exploration of the uneasy relationship between fathers and daughters is right from the heart. Fresh Eggs challenges us to rethink our treatment of creatures more vulnerable than ourselves, including those most precious of creatures, our children.

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