Step back into the 20s with Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and many more legendary figures of the time with prolific mystery writer and former bookseller Matt Cost. With over 10 mystery/historical fiction books under his belt, his fast-paced historical mystery, “Velma Gone Awry: A Brooklyn 8 Ballo Mystery” (April 13, 2023, Encircle Publications), is sure to please fans as it follows PI 8 Ballo on a peculiar case with fascinating people.

In the new book: As the 8th child in his family, Ballo’s mother simply named him 8. Now in his mid-thirties, the jilted, college-educated, Great War veteran has his own private investigator business and is on a jarring journey to discover why Velma, the flapper daughter of a wealthy businessman,  has gone awry.

Reviewers have called his previous work “especially vivid” storytelling that “mystery and thriller genre readers alike will find involving on many different levels” (Midwest Book Review), “chillingly prescient, insightfully nuanced and disturbingly evocative” (booklymatters, 5-stars) and “powerful and gritty (The Reading Cafe).

Thank you for the opportunity to showcase this title!