What I Won't Do for Research ~ Win a copy of Island of Last Resorts by Mary Ellis
Happy Wednesday, readers! I got a big surprise last week....my next installment of Marked for Redemption Mysteries, Island of Last Resorts, (which I thought was coming in late October) released in early September. Island of Last Resorts is set on the fictional island of Elysian, but is loosely based on two real-life islands, namely Sapelo and Cumberland. Both of those islands are partially privately-owned and partially publicly-owned by the US Park Service. Don't you think a remote island off the coast of Georgia would make a great setting for a murder mystery? I thought so too. Many of my characters from Secrets of the South Mysteries return for a company retreat that could have fatal consequences.
Join me for a background research...Sapelo Island contains the community of Hog Hammock, which is the last known Gullah community in America. Many of the full-time inhabitants (estimated at 47) of the Hog Hammock Community are African Americans known as Gullah-Geechees, descendants of enslaved West African people brought to the island in the 1700s and 1800s to work on island plantations. Hog Hammock contains homes, a general store, bar, public library, and a few small businesses including vacation rentals, along with two active churches: St. Luke Baptist Church, founded in 1885, and First African Baptist Church, established in 1866. The residents must bring all supplies from the mainland or purchase them at the one small store. The children of Hog Hammock take the ferry to the mainland and then a bus to school, since the island school closed in 1978. Hog Hammock is also home to the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society, Inc. (SICARS), a non-profit organization to increase awareness of Sapelo’s two-hundred-year-old African community. I was lucky during my trip to Sapelo Island to have Yvonne Grovner as my tour guide, whose husband is a direct descendant of the Gullah-Geechees.
Here's a bit about the story: Kate Weller’s boss, Nate Price, has some exciting news: Julian Frazier, a friend of one of his PI agency’s wealthy clients, has invited the Nate Price Investigations team and their partners on a trip of a lifetime to his home on Elysian Island, an exclusive retreat off the Georgian coast. But there’s a catch. Frazier has written his own murder mystery script, and the PIs must work out whodunnit. As they’re about to discover, though, the murder Frazier wants them to solve is a real cold case, and there's a killer twist that isn't in the script . . . Unable to reach the island and her coworkers, Kate is sure that someone wants her to stay away. Can she reach Elysian Island and stop a savage killer before a deadly game reaches its conclusion?
Island of Last Resorts is available in Kindle or Hardback editions. Get it here!
Please leave me a comment about the most bizarre place you ever visited for an e-book copy of Island of Last Resorts.
Have a great week, readers! Mary Ellis
I can't say I've ever been anywhere bizarre but I have heard of the Gullah community before.
ReplyDeletenstotts@sbcglobal.net
DeleteWhen I was a child I had the opportunity to visit a civil war fort that is underwater today and not accessible .It was kind of spooky. 1cow0993(at)gmail(dot)com.
ReplyDeleteWOW! Sounds fascinating! What a great way to do research to make a living as a writer. EXCITING.
ReplyDeleteWould love to win it. sarahmom335@yahoo.com
ReplyDeleteThe guillotine at the Tower of London. jarning67(at)hotmail(dot)com
ReplyDeleteProbably the most bizarre place I've been is a bone chapel in Portugal. Lack of space in the cemetery led to building a chapel with the walls and ceilings decorated with the bones from the cemetery. It was definitely creepy!
ReplyDeletewhthomas13 at yahoo dot com
Most bizarre place I've ever been? That's a tough one. Maybe ... the insane asylum museum that's part of Colonial Williamsburg. It was creepy in there!
ReplyDeleteamybradsher at gmail dot come
I guess the most bizarre place is the mustard museum in Wisconsin.
ReplyDeletejaneen dot bair at gmail dot com
I don’t recall ever visiting a bizarre place but this book sounds so good. Thanks for a chance to win. Stella dot potts77 at gmail dot com.
ReplyDeletethe old graves near the Vnivesity of Alabama
ReplyDeleteThe most bizarre & fascinating place I've been (hundreds of times) is the Superstition Mountains in AZ. I lived not too far away, and for 7 years, a friend and I would hike all the different trails every weekend. There are too many to count. There are countless secrets buried in these beautiful mountains. You can see old stone homesteads where miners and explorers lived hundreds of years ago right on the trails. Once we hiked off trail where some hikers told us and saw a crashed plane from WWII--most of the main pieces were gone, but there were many laying around. We just took pictures. There are secret caves and caverns hidden everywhere. The biggest mystery is that in the 1848 a Dutch immigrant came to America in search of gold. In 1868 he made his way to these mountains. He actually found and hid huge stashes of gold. He'd come in to Phoenix--the only city--for supplies once a year, laden with gold. No one could successfully follow him. Before he died, he was very sick, staying with two friends in town, and drew a crude map of where he hid his gold. They stayed up drinking and playing cards until he died. Then they organized a search team to find it. But they didn't ask him enough details...and it was never found. People STILL search for the lost gold today! It's a factual story, and the gold is still hidden somewhere... I love those mountains, full of secrets and stories and rich history.
ReplyDeleteYour book sounds like an exciting read to me! PatchesDanny at Yahoo dot com
can't think of any
ReplyDeletebn100candg at hotmail dot com
I guess the most unusual place I visited was the ghost town of Fayette MI. it's such a beautiful location in the Upper Peninsula on the water that I wanted to stay there.
ReplyDeletediannekc8(at)gmail(dot)com
That sounds like a really good book. Thanks for the chance to win a copy.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great read
ReplyDeletemarcus802001(at)yahoo(dot)com
The strangest place is probably the catacombs of Rome Ga
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you would consider it bizarre but when I was a teen, everyone talked about an angel headstone in an abandoned cemetery out in the middle of nowhere. It was rumored that the angel cried real tears but only at night. Of course a group of us had to find out and we all went traipsing across these dark fields to find the cemetery. We did find the angel but did not catch her crying. I cannot believe how stupid that stunt was. It would be so dangerous these days and probably was back then too.
ReplyDeleteLove your books and would love to win!
Sounds interesting! We went to Yellowstone National Park this year for the first time, and were amazed at how bizarre its features were. Very unique. Glad to know the Nate Price mysteries are continuing.
ReplyDeletekjrochon40(at)msn(dot)com
We have several old concrete bunkers around the area we live that were part of old forts. There are some that kids go in and play flash light tag. Kind of creepy. Some say they are haunted.
DeleteUp on a hill in a place we call the heights, there was a place we hung out as teenagers and it was a set of stairs that went nowhere, no buildings around it or anything. We used to call it stair way to heaven.
ReplyDeleteWe took a trip in highschool for our social problems class. Our teacher was a state cop. We went to the insane asylum in Dixon , Illinois. The smell was unique and memorable. There were people in there in padded rooms. One lady got put in there as a child because she had no one and it made her crazy! I remember one child that had a huge head , water on the brain. This was in 1968. We have come a long way in medicine since then!
ReplyDeleteHe also took us to Stateville prison. I went twice. Maybe he was showing us where we surely didn’t want to end up!
Another place I almost visited ( I was pregnant and could not hike into it) was the hidden place out in the jungle of Soichi Yokoi ,the last Japanese Soldier on Guam. My hubby was in the Navy and our Sunday School class hiked to it after he surrendered. This was 1972.
DeleteLooking forward to this book!
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't bizarre but rather unusual...the Winchester Mystery House. That place is pretty cool to see.
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