Rebecca A. Miles (Neé Rebecca A. Stepek) has successfully infused her writing with her experience from her years as a psychologist. Her work with patients in Behavioral Medicine in Oncology has shaped and deepened how she draws her relatable and all-too-human fictional characters. Across all of her novels she presents friendship as the healing salve to life’s unexpected challenges.
In her decade as a writer, she first produced the PITTSBURGH MURDER MYSTERY trilogy, Ground Truth, Broken Glass, Locked Box, all traditional mysteries. Locked Box achieved Best Seller status on Amazon and all three novels have five-star ratings.
Her fourth novel, La Quinceañera, is a more psychological and person novel in which she uses a crime as a device around which the main character grows and changes in her familial relationships. Rebecca explores the deep attachment between the main character, Marisol, a math teacher, and her immigrant grandmother. She dedicates this novel to her own immigrant grandmother with whom she was close.
Holiday Mysteries and Enchantments is a delightful and sometimes morally tantalizing collection of short stories based in the major American holidays. This compendium is dedicated to P.D. James who often wrote a Christmas mystery for the local papers in London. Rebecca believes that women who write murder mysteries are the “renegade daughters of fiction,” often looked down upon by the mainstream literati. As a psychologist, she views these renegade daughters as women who first and foremost seek justice in the world.
Rebecca A. Miles holds a Doctorate in Psychology from Duquesne University where she was an Associate Professor. Her private practice in Pittsburgh focused on the medically ill patient and the physicians and nurses who treated them.
Broken Glass
Obsession can be deadly.
When a fellow student in her glass blowing class drops dead, finding his killer becomes personal for amateur sleuth Kate Chambers. The young Eugene Rose had a bright future as a historian in the world of art collecting; luckily for Chief Detective Jablonsky, Kate’s connections to that world make her a valuable asset to his investigations. Her people skills open doors into situations that the chief needs a warrant to enter, and even though he often fears for her safety, her psychological insights have proven worth the risk.
The deeper they dig, the more complicated this case becomes. How is a family heirloom tied to the local parish? What really happened on a study abroad trip to Italy? And how did all of that lead to the untimely death of Eugene Rose?
Kate and Jablonksy are determined to catch Eugene Rose’s murderer before more deaths follow.
This traditional mystery will keep you guessing all the way to the end. Broken Glass is the second book in the Pittsburgh Murder Mystery series; however, each book can be read as a stand-alone or in order of publication.
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Ground Truth
Kate Chambers knows that cold cases are almost always a lost cause.
So when two skeletons are discovered in Pittsburgh and Kate believes that she has insider information about the crime, she joins Chief Detective Stefan Jablonsky in his investigation. She's determined to find justice for the family.
It doesn't take long to identify the victims: two siblings who had gone missing twenty years ago. As Kate digs into the neighborhood and Jablonsky starts chasing down leads, the list of suspects grows.
With the cold case reopened and witnesses dying soon after coming forward, it's clear that someone has a lot to lose. Kate and Jablonsky must work together to unravel the mysteries and make sure that whoever killed the siblings doesn't get away with murder a second time.
Perfect for fans of Louise Penny, Ann Cleeves, and Kerry Greenwood, this mystery will keep you guessing all the way to the end.
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Locked Box
Celine Arceneau was admitted to the hospital for food poisoning and declared medically stable before her physician, Ellen Smythe, left for the evening. When she died the next morning from an unknown cause, Chief Detective Stefan Jablonsky suspects foul play and eyes Dr. Smythe, Dr. Kate Chambers’ friend and mentor, as his prime suspect. Pittsburgh’s amateur sleuth quickly joins the fight to prove her friend’s innocence.
Chief Detective Jablonsky and Kate Chambers have worked together in the past; he finds her and her university friends to be elitist and annoying, but grudgingly effective, and she finds him to be a stodgy, old-school detective, but one who always gets the killer. Jablonsky and Kate must put aside their differences to catch the culprit before the body count rises.
This psychological mystery will hold you captive until the very end. Locked Box is the third book in the Pittsburgh Murder Mystery series: however, each book can be read as a stand-alone or in order of publication.
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