Triss Stein Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Kay Engels Books
Murder at the Class Reunion | (1993) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Digging Up Death | (1999) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Erica Donato Books
Brooklyn Bones | (2013) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Brooklyn Graves | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Brooklyn Secrets | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Brooklyn Wars | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Brooklyn Legacies | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Triss Stein
Author Triss Stein spent most of her adult life working and living in New York City and is a small-town girl. It gives her the useful double vision of a resident and a stranger which she uses to pen mystery stories about Brooklyn, which is her ever-changing, ever-fascinating, ever-challenging adopted home.
Writing is her third career. The first was actually the job that inspired her to write the series, working as a children’s librarian in a dozen sharply different Brooklyn communities. The second was working for many years in business research, in settings from DC Comics to a major global consulting firm.
She writes the “Erica Donato” series and the “Kay Engels” series. Her debut novel, called “Murder at the Class Reunion”, was released in the year 1993. Her work is from the mystery genre.
“Brooklyn Bones” is the first novel in the “Erica Donato” series and was released in the year 2013. Unburying history can sometimes have some unintended consequences.
A crime from the past hits far too close to home after Erica Donato’s teen daughter Chris discovers a skeleton located behind a wall in their crumbling home in Park Slope. Erica, who is an overage history PhD candidate and a young widow, as well as a product of blue-collar Brooklyn, gets pulled into the mystery after learning that the skeleton is that of an unknown teen girl. It was hidden there back in living memory. Chris and Erica both are disturbed and touched by this mysterious tragedy that happened in their own home.
With her work at a local history museum and her daughter’s dangerous curiosity, Erica follows the leads about the mysterious skeleton back to her own neighborhood during its pregentrification, edgy time. During the time when the age of Aquarius had been turning dark. She finds that there is a crabby retired reporter looking share old files, the crazy lady hanging around her street keeps attempting to tell her something, and slumlord’s charming widow has got some surprises for her.
There are some people, including those that she is close to, who know the entire story and are willing to stop at nothing in order to make sure it stay buried forever.
“Brooklyn Graves” is the second novel in the “Erica Donato” series and was released in the year 2014. A savagely killed family man who never had an enemy in the entire world. A box filled with charming letters home, that were all written a hundred years ago by some unknown woman worker at the famed Tiffany studios. Green-Wood cemetery, where there is a decrepit mausoleum with its stunning stained glass windows now is off limits. All of a sudden, this is all a part of Erica Donato’s life. Erica is the lowest on the totem at the history museum where she works.
Pretty quickly, secrets start emerging in the most unexpected of places. An admirable life was not at all what it appeared, confiding letters actually hide their most important story. All of it is set against the backdrop of the wonderful old cemetery as well as the life of modern Brooklyn. These stories of old loves and old families with hidden connections merges with some new crimes and the real value of art.
“Brooklyn Secrets” is the third novel in the “Erica Donato” series and was released in the year 2015. Erica is researching the thirties when Brownsville was still the home of the notorious organized criminals that the papers called Murder, Inc. she soon learns that Brownsville is still like it used to be: tough, filled with gangs, and poor.
While doing some field research, Erica makes a stop at a local library tuand meets a young woman named Savanna who is headed for an elite college and a bright future.
A few days go by, and Savanna is found battered and left for dead. A young girlfriend of Savanna’s is discovered dead, too. Could there be a link of some kind? Erica’s has found some women that are happy to share their memories. Two are childhood friends that guard secrets and disagree on a lot.
“Brooklyn Wars” is the fourth novel in the “Erica Donato” series and was released in the year 2017. From the start of the Republic until LBJ’s administration, the Brooklyn Navy Yard was both the creator of seventy thousand local jobs and an arsenal of democracy. In time it gained a reputation for being the scary place that New Yorkers had to find to rescue their impounded cars. Then it returned to life, but not without a war.
A public meeting turns into a battleground over the plans to redevelop the once-proud Brooklyn Navy Yard. Local residents clamor for their own agenda to redevelop three hundred acres overlooking a sparkling downtown Manhattan, while real estate and business experts argue and all the city officials cower. Erica Donato, who still writes her PhD dissertation about all the changes in city neighborhoods, sees the shocking murder of a power-broker the night on the Yard’s condemned Admirals’ Row.
Erica finds the dead guy’s complex history with the Yard, with his road to a high-flyer lifestyle and wealth, and with his mistresses and wives. Chris pays her dad’s relatives for her family history project, Erica accompanies her ad finds out that the Donato family was involved in the Navy Yard’s glory days and its politics ridden and slow death.
The tale of a tall blond named Philomena, who was one of the proud Brooklyn girls that built ships in the Yard during the Second World War, holds her captivated. After the Americans won, these ladies were told to quit their jobs for the men coming back home. Philomena, who is so happy and strong, mysteriously just faded away and wound up dying young.
Under pressure to delete her chapter on the Navy Yard and just complete her PhD dissertation on a final deadline. And the cops step aside for safety, erica once more finds “what is past is prologue” to murder, as well as to her life.
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