It is my pleasure to host the cover reveal for this short story collection, coming June 2025 and now up for preorder.
Publication Date: June 23, 2025
Format: Print, Digital
Genre: Short Story Crime Fiction Collection
Author Website: annakscotti
Book Synopsis
A young librarian must trust Witness Protection to keep her undercover and alive, always just a step ahead of her murderous ex and his cartel henchmen.
A PhD candidate who can quote Shakespeare, Beaudelaire, and Louis Leakey with ease, the brainy but naive librarian we know as “Cam Baker” must go on the run, trusting Witness Protection to keep her alive as she jumps from one alias to another, always just a step ahead of her ruthless ex and his cartel henchmen.
Hiding her intelligence and education, Cam accepts menial jobs that will let her stay on the down-low, experiencing the best and worst of the human condition along the way. From her first placement as nanny to two over-achieving teenaged girls in Billings, Montana to her final adventure living rough on the streets of L.A., Cam solves murders, confounding her WITSEC handlers and the handsome police detective who tries to befriend her.
It’s Not Even Pasttakes Cam from a shack in the mountains to the sunlit beaches of South Carolina and Hawaii, from pastel sweater sets to hacked-off yoga pants and a tattoo. But even as she grows sarcastic and street-wise, Cam never really loses her innocence, and gets her heart broken more than once.
With three inclusions in “The Best Mystery Stories of the Year,” these tales, many of which first appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, will have readers checking the backseat and behind the shower curtain as Cam’s erudite, intellectual persona slips away and a cynical, world-weary woman takes charge of her own life—nearly losing it in the process. This collection includes two new, never-before-published stories from the early and final days of the “librarian on the run!”
Meet the author
Anna Scotti’s short stories have recently been finalists for the Macavity, International Thriller Writers, Claymore, and Derringer Prizes, as well as for the Ellery Queen Reader’s Choice Award, and have been selected three times for Best Mystery Stories of the Year (Mysterious Press, 2022, 2024, and 2025). She has also been the recipient of many awards for her poetry and young adult fiction. Scotti’s work can be found in The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, and in a variety of anthologies and literary magazines.