Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: Readers who love psychological thrillers that illuminate the domino effect of secrets within all families will be swept up by this story. Anyone with an interest in genealogy will enjoy the way in which the many branches of one family tree are introduced in their specific era and environment, from the present to 1800s England.

Q: What is the book about?
A: Tom Nelson is struggling after the death of his son at the hands of his wife Jane. While Jane sits in a Texas mental hospital for her part in the crime, prosecutors turn their focus to Tom, believing he knew Jane was in decline, and charge him with “failure to protect.” Enter attorney, Dave Frontella, who employs a radical defense strategy – one that lays the blame at the feet of Jane’s nature and nurture. To gather evidence about Jane’s forbears, Frontella hires a woman with the power of retrocognition – the ability to use a person’s belongings to re-create their past.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: I passionately wanted to understand the days and moments leading up to a woman deciding to take the life of her child. My quest for answers and months of research helped me develop an understanding that the pivotal moment is not, in fact, a moment or a sudden snap, but a series of events and breakdowns leading up to this moment. I am also a mother. I don’t think I could have written this without the full understanding of the challenges of parenthood.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: If I met your grandfather, what would that tell me about your personality? If I observed a day in the life of your childhood, what would that tell me about how you make choices today? Jane, the character who committed this terrible crime in Janeology, is drawn from the perspective of her genealogy. To know her, we must also know her parents, her grandparents and her great-grandparents. And we also meet her on one critical day of her childhood. While there are wonderful non-fiction treatments of nature and nurture and genetic inheritance, Janeology is a unique fictional account exploring one family and its legacy of secrets.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: Janeology explores the idea that genes passed down through the generations impact who we are in countless ways; that nature and nurture are illuminated by the other. The reader is introduced to four generations of Jane’s family on both her maternal and paternal sides – from her English-born great-grandmother to her rough and tumble west Texas father. All the while, we watch as her husband – a man torn apart by still loving a woman he can no longer understand – grapples with putting the pieces of his life back together.

To read an excerpt or view the heart-stopping trailer, please visit www.karenharringtonbooks.com

Question: Who is the intended audience?
Answer: Anybody who is not going to be offended by a literary novel about sex workers.

Q: What is the book about?
A: Joy is a twenty-three year old sex worker who has over a million dollars of inherited money in her bank account. She donates all her earnings to charity, goes to church and is counting the days she has left as a sex worker before she can return home to reconcile with her family. When a married client declares his love for her, Joy tries to let him down gently, and falls for his clichés in the process. Joy’s friend and co-worker, Caro, refuses to take her stalker seriously, even though she knows that her past is bound to catch up with her and endanger the safe haven Caro has created for her daughter.

Q: Why are you the best person to write this book?
A: Because I went undercover to research the Auckland sex-worker scene… seriously! I went to the Co-op pretending to be a newbie who considered starting in the trade. Ok, so I was too embarrassed to admit I was a writer.

Q: How is this book different from other books on this topic?
A: It’s written with compassion. The novel’s world is not the world of drugs or pimps or backstreet quickies. The girls charge top dollar, they are in control of their lives and of the choices they’ve made and they realise that the glitter that surrounds them is only skin-deep.

Based in Auckland, New Zealand, the book delivers emotional punch by telling the story of everyday ever-important relationships: between a father and a daughter, between a daughter and a mother, between husbands and wives and substitute wives.

Q: Is there anything else we should know about this book?
A: Substitute Wives is currently a semi finalist in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Contest. You can review the first few chapters here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001200CFK.