"A wombat," I said dreamily, almost to myself. I knew we'd never get a wombat. A wombat was a lousy exhibit. It would sleep all day and take up a lot of space with nothing interesting for visitors to see. A big snoozing mound of fur that might as well be a stuffed animal. "Waste Of Money Brains And Time," Margo had sneered.

"A wombat!" Allison exclaimed, jolting me out of my marsupial reverie. "What a splendid idea."

I surreptitiously pinched myself. Surely this was some kind of crazed zookeeper fantasy dream, where the director swoops down and gives you the animal you've always longed to work with. I was sure that in a minute I'd wake up and go into work and tell people about it, and I'd find out that everyone had had this dream, like we'd all had the dreams of our animals getting out, or those moments where we woke up in the middle of the night, positive we'd left some shift door in the wrong position.

Like everyone else who writes for newspapers, I really want to be a novelist. My first mystery, The Sloth’s Eye, was just published by Five Star. Hey, Kirkus says it's "far more amusing than you'd expect"! And read the lovely and insightful reviews at Mysterious Reviews and ZooNews Digest.

Click here to read the first chapters.  Order it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or look for a local independent bookstore to order it for you here.

Everyone comes to the zoo to see the charming yearly ritual of elephants playfully stomping pumpkins at Halloween. Small mammal keeper Hannah usually thinks it’s not fair—why do the big animals get all the attention? But this year the fun turns deadly: Victor, lover of charismatic zoo director Allison, is found dead in the elephant yard—where he’d been left with a pumpkin carved to fit his head.

Just when Hannah’s feeling lucky to be in the background, Allison reveals her plan to distract the media from the murder: it’s a celebration of the new wombat that she promised to the Small Mammal House. Now Hannah’s swept into the spotlight and into the middle of some mysterious conflict between Allison and her boss Chris, with whom she’s trying halfheartedly not to fall in love.

But the real trouble begins when she discovers that her favorite sloth has been kidnapped—obviously an inside job—and then she and Chris are threatened as well.

At the zoo, everyday decisions--from the treatment of a sick animal, to how a keeper handles a dangerous predator--can have life-and-death consequences. What better setting for a mystery?