The Mystery of the Ming Connection, First of the SANDRA TROUX MYSTERIES Cooked Up at the Char-Broil Restaurant in Upper Montclair
MONTCLAIR, NJ (February 28, 2012) -- Montclairians Virginia Cornue and Linda Lombri have published their first e-book. The Mystery of the Ming Connection – Book One of the SANDRA TROUX MYSTERIES – had its origins at a local Upper Montclair eatery. Who says the only thing that gets fed at the Char-Broil Restaurant is your stomach? The two Montclair writers, out for a rare “night on the town” in the fall of 2010 (both are single moms of teen daughters), were creatively nourished there as well. Nancy Drew fans as girls, Virginia and Linda talked about their dreams of growing up to be Nancy or write mysteries like that series’ “author,” Carolyn Keene. Instead, now in their early 60s, the two cooked up a new series, SANDRA TROUX MYSTERIES, about a trio of Boomer sheroes, themselves childhood fans of Nancy Drew. On December 15, 2011 – a year and a few weeks after the original idea was conceived – The Mystery of the Ming Connection was published as an e-book on key e-reader platforms – Kindle, iPad, Nook, and Sony Reader. The e-book will soon debut on five more platforms: Baker & Taylor, Copia, eBookPie, Gardners, and Kobo, expanding its international reach. Virginia and Linda are both China adoptive moms whose teen daughters are Montclair High School students. Surprisingly, they didn’t meet in Montclair where they both live. They were introduced to each other in Shanghai, China in 2006 when both were traveling with their then middle school daughters on a return visit to the girls’ birth country. Like their mystery seeking sleuths Sandy, Bobbi and Lizbet, both have reinvented themselves after years of pursuing their initial careers. Now mystery fiction writers, they are busy cooking up Book Two: Masquerade on the Net. Virginia teaches Cultural Anthropology part time at Rutgers University. She is the author of The Dragon’s Daughters Return and Draw on Culture: China, and is co-editing So Much Blood: The Civil War Letters of CSA Private William W. Beard 1861-1865 due out spring 2012. Linda is a marketing communications consultant. She is currently editing a Vegan cookbook and writing Tapestry & Patchwork: A Family History Sampler. For more information on The Mystery of the Ming Connection, contact the authors at sandratrouxmysteries@gmail.com or visit www.sandratrouxmysteries.com. You can follow the adventures of Sandy, Bobbi and Lizbet on Facebook and Twitter at sandratrouxmysteries.com or on our blog. For both culinary and literary inspiration, visit the Char-Broil at 613 Valley Road in Upper Montclair, New Jersey.