Kenora Reinvented. This item is unavailable.Kenora Reinvented

There is no roadmap for starting over.

Her mother’s sudden death was the first crack in Kenora’s Tedesco’s world. When her philandering husband dumped her, her predictable suburban life was upended. Things went from bad to worse when she was fired for insubordination. An empty nester, she’s stuck with a rusting sedan, dwindling savings and a lakefront fixer-upper in the country.
When an eleventh-hour interview lands her a job as a private investigator, Kenora figures that’s the end of her troubles. Not so.

Sparks flew during her first interview with Jake Barclay, a retired police commander--and her boss--but they are both skittish. He’s the handsome, fifty-something CEO of Barclay, Benford & Friday, a risk management company. Kenora’s mentor, Bosco Poon, is her champion when the going gets tough, but he has little patience with her rookie errors or insecurities.

Kenora, the smart, passionate female lead in this contemporary mystery and seasoned romance novel is 42 years old. Sure, she knits, knows her way around an Instant Pot and practices Tai Chi, but she's a licensed professional, not an amateur sleuth or hard-boiled operative.

Instead of a snazzy wardrobe and movie-inspired intrigue, danger threatens to derail her new career and second-chance romance with Jake. Her intertwined investigations lead to her being trapped in a storage locker by a lovesick embezzler, caught up in an international fraud case, and declared dead by a drugstore pharmacist. Through trial and error, she learns what she must do to win: play by company rules, ditch the fear, trust her judgment, and don’t look back.

The action is set in and around Toronto, Ontario. This suspenseful page-turner features quirky antagonists and strong female and male protagonists. With witty dialogue, quirky characters, plot twists and turns and hooks in every chapter’s opening and closing scenes, this intelligent contemporary coming-of-middle-age novel propels readers into a binge-worthy whodunit that will keep them engaged until the last page. Kenora Reinvented is an ideal book club selection.

I'm the author of award-winning short stories as well as magazine and newspaper articles, contemporary women's fiction and non-fiction. I've been published in Borealis magazine and in Herotica 7, Whispered Words, and Allucinor, The Elements of Romance anthologies.

My debut novel, Kenora Reinvented, (Investigations, Mystery and Seasoned Romance) was published in 2019. You Are the Change: A Future Self Journal for Personal Growth, was published in 2024. The Fifth Man, book two of the Kenora & Jake series, is scheduled for release in early 2026. Works in progress include short stories and novellas, Fragments in Time, edited poems from my father, and a general interest text based on interviews with over seventy current and retired police officers around the world about challenges, rewards and leadership in their chosen profession.

I am Past Chair of Crime Writers of Canada and a founding member and Past President of the Writers Community of York Region. I belong to professional organizations including Sisters in Crime, Toronto Romance Writers and Crime Writers of Canada.