Emily Bain Murphy – Carol's Notebook

Author: Emily Bain Murphy

Emily Bain Murphy was born in Indiana and raised in Hong Kong and Japan. She graduated from Tufts University and has also called Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California home.

Murphy is the author of the critically acclaimed YA fantasies Splinters of Scarlet and The Disappearances, which was a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year, an ALAN Pick, and shortlisted for the Waterstones’ Children’s Book Prize.

Enchanted Hill, Murphy’s debut adult novel, is a historical mystery set in 1930 over a glittering week of parties at a mansion on the California coast. It is available now from Union Square and Co.

Murphy is represented by Peter Knapp at Park & Fine Literary and Media. She currently lives in the St. Louis area with her husband and three children.

Brimming with Old Hollywood glitz and mystery, Enchanted Hill follows two outsiders, an aspiring private investigator and an alleged thief/murderer, as they infiltrate the estate of Truman Byrd, newspaper owner and Hollywood producer. The story takes place during a week-long house party with a group of movie stars, political figures, and powerful "friends" all vying for fortune, prestige, and power. The estate is lovely and exotic and filled with hidden spaces and secret doors. The atmosphere is both sparkling and privileged and claustrophobic. Cora, our PI, is runing out of time to gather the evidence she needs when the last person she ever imagined seeing again shows up with a new name and dyed hair - Jack. Their history is complicated and the author does a good job dealing with the tensions and attractions between them. I went into the book expecting a historical mystery, which it is, but for me it felt more like a romance or romantic suspense....