Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

Rick Larnerd has published a new novel, "The Mystery of Gasparilla Bay," a crime story set on Florida’s Gulf Coast that pairs a present-day poaching case with the region’s pirate lore, according to the publisher’s announcement. The book is out now through Covenant Books, available in bookstores and through major online retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

At the story’s center is Andy Warden, an experienced Florida conservation officer who pursues Bart Thibodeaux, an alligator poacher, through Florida’s swamps and Gulf Coast backwaters. According to the publisher’s description, Thibodeaux’s crimes take a darker turn when he takes a vacationing mother and her two children hostage during a treasure hunt of their own — one tied to the buried fortune of nineteenth-century pirate Jose Gaspar, whose legend has long drawn treasure hunters to the area. The description frames the story as one built on the question of whether the woman he’s underestimated will turn the tables on him, and whether Warden can close the case before it’s too late.

Larnerd’s own background runs close to his protagonist’s. He spent thirty-one years in law enforcement, including service as a wildlife officer in both Pennsylvania and Tennessee, and eight years as police chief in his Tennessee hometown, according to the announcement. He also served as an active-duty infantryman in the military. The publisher’s materials describe that record as the basis for the procedural detail in the novel, particularly the conservation officer’s perspective on poaching and the backcountry terrain where it plays out.

"I wanted to blend the romance of pirate legend with the reality of modern-day conservation challenges," Larnerd said in the announcement, adding that the aim was a story that "keeps readers on the edge of their seats while honoring both history and the natural world."

"The Mystery of Gasparilla Bay" is published through Covenant Books. Larnerd has said on social media that the book has already drawn its first reader review, which he described as encouraging.

Studio CarryOnHarry is always interested in writers who put a working career on the page rather than research alone — a three-decade law enforcement record is the kind of detail that tends to show up in a book’s texture, not just its marketing copy.

Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.

Are you an author with a new release? We’re always looking for books to cover and authors to interview — tell us about yours here.

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Joe Reina has published a new novel, "Shadows over Scottsdale: An Unsolved Murder Mystery," built around a scenario true-crime statistics make uncomfortably familiar: a man commits a devastating crime and simply disappears, leaving investigators and a grieving community with no resolution.

The book follows a character named Robert, who flees the country using forged documents and a cargo ship after an act of destruction that leaves behind, as the publisher describes it, charred remains and an unanswered investigation. The case goes cold. The novel, according to its publisher, is less concerned with the mechanics of the escape than with what happens afterward, to the people left waiting for answers that never come.

Reina, now retired in Scottsdale, spent decades in international business across apparel, footwear, and real estate, with extensive time in Europe and a particular connection to Italy that shaped two earlier books, "The Goat Sleeps in the Kitchen" and "A Love Affair in Tuscany." "Shadows over Scottsdale" marks a different direction, built instead around the real scale of unsolved homicide in the U.S. The publisher’s materials cite roughly 346,000 unsolved homicides since 1965, with more than a dozen occurring unresolved each day. Separate reporting on the book has cited a figure of about 7,778 murders in 2023 alone, which it similarly frames as more than a dozen a day going unresolved.

"Writing ‘Shadows over Scottsdale’ forced me to confront uncomfortable questions about justice itself," Reina said, according to the announcement. "Too many crimes go unsolved, too many families wait endlessly for answers. I wanted readers to understand that behind every cold case statistic is a real story, real suffering, and real questions that may never be answered."

The publisher positions the novel as an examination of institutional limits as much as a crime story: the toll of a case gone cold on the people who can’t move past it, and what it means for a community when accountability simply never arrives.

"Shadows over Scottsdale" is published by Covenant Books and is available in paperback and hardcover through the publisher’s website and major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.

Cold-case statistics tend to get cited and then forgotten. Studio CarryOnHarry is curious whether fiction built directly around that number does more to stick with a reader than the number alone ever does.

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