Cutting Loose in Paradise

Cutting Loose in Paradise is a mystery novel set in a remote island full of quirky people off the northeast coast of Florida. The story involves the death of a middle-aged woman who supposedly committed suicide by shooting herself in the chest. But local hair stylist and single mom LaRue Panther has her doubts. When part-Seminole LaRue is cutting the dead woman's hair in the casket, she realizes the woman's neck has been slashed and that there is no wound in the chest. LaRue and her local friends, a bartender and a journalist, are on the case to find out what really happened.

Mary Jane Ryals has lived near the northern gulf coast of Florida most of her life. Besides teaching university and college writing, she has worked as a waiter and bartender, office manager, pharmacy tech, features writer/editor, typesetter, yoga teacher, and mother. She’s traveled to 13 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, as well as throughout the North Americas. She won a Florida Book Award in 2011 for her novel Cookie & Me, and is Poet Laureate of the Big Bend of Florida.