conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a story titled The Shadow Cabinet about Harol, English, Corpse with the genre: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author (named for her father s brother) grew up in upstate New York in the town of Rotterdam, a suburb of Schenectady. Her love of mysteries began when her British mother introduced her to English cozies. Credit for her interest in detective stories and political thrillers goes to her police officer father, a political junkie who entertained his family with daily stories of life on the force. In college, Harol s short stories entertained her English professor who encouraged her to switch her major from mathematics to English. However, the prospect of finding a job after college led to a short-lived major in the literary field. After marriage and graduation in that order, she taught biology for two years before staying home until her two children started school, then returning to school herself for graduate studies. While working on her PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, Harol conducted field research in central Mexico, the setting for the first two novels in her Anna Merino mystery series: A Corpse for Cuamantla and A Corpse for the Matadora. She is working on the next story in the series, A Corpse for Cortez, featuring Anna s love interest, Tlaxcala homicide detective, Jos Cortez. Harol s P.I. Polly Berger storys, Holy Death and Holy Mole Murder, are the first in her hard-boiled detective series set in Hollywood, California. Polly and her part-time secretary stand-up comic and karate instructor Bernardo 'Bunny' Contreras solve offbeat murder cases with the help of Polly's ex-husband, Hollywood Detective Johnny Birdwhistle. A third story is currently under construction. Harol began her career as a fulltime novelist after retiring from twenty years in academia. In addition to her mystery series, she s published several short stories, including a short story anthology, Growing Up With Pigs, about life in the 1950 s. She recently completed her first full-length play titled, Our New Thing, a political satire about retired crime bosses who decide to go into investment banking. Harol s first political thriller, The Shadow Cabinet, is due out from Storyteller Publishing in December 2012. When not writing, Harol enjoys reading, cooking, and dancing (swing and ballroom) in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she lives with her physicist husband and four cats.