Sarah Lovett

For me, writing novels fulfills two essential needs—my hunger to absorb and process new information about the world, and my curiosity with regard to human nature, especially the volatile interaction of desire and choices made in pursuit of said desire, and the resulting (often astounding) actions and outcomes.

Inspired by my experience working as a legal researcher for the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office, work that often took me inside the Penitentiary of New Mexico, I began writing a novel that I hoped would have series potential: Dangerous Attachments. My criminal justice degree and years of study and research in psychology influenced a decision to create a protagonist who is a forensic psychologist, and Dr. Sylvia Strange was born.   I ended up writing four more in the series, gaining major book deals with Random House and Simon and Schuster.

But welcoming a new baby into the family changed my perspective on life, so I took a hiatus from the darkest of subjects to focus on family, the challenges of parenting, and the joys of raising my daughter. She was just shy of her 6th birthday when I got the call from my agent asking if I would be interested in meeting with Valerie Plame Wilson. The resulting collaboration with Valerie yielded two espionage thrillers published by Penguin and optioned for film, Blowback and  Burned, featuring Vanessa Pierson, a CIA covert operative, inspired by Valerie and her career as a NOC.

In recent years my stories focus on the complexities of human nature and on ordinary people who rise to the extraordinary in order to cope with crises and learn what it means to accept human faults and learn compassion, not only for others but also for themselves.

I have two books in the works, tentatively titled The Book of Riddles and When It’s Raining In the Milky Way.  The Book of Riddles will make its debut in 2022.

 

 

 

Sarah Lovett is represented by Theresa Park, Park & Fine Literary & Media

THE BOOK OF RIDDLES

Kady Ryder turns 15 in nine days and all she wants is to grow up, leave behind heartbreak, and feel normal. But this scorching hot morning in the Northern California Delta she reads the front-page story “Death Row Killer Claims Knowledge of Missing Girl,” and all hope of normal vanishes. Kady and her family relive the nightmare that began one year ago when Felicity Tinker, Kady’s cousin and best friend, disappeared.


To find the truth about Felicity’s disappearance—and to face condemned killer Daryl Lee Purse—Kady knows she needs help that her broken-hearted family cannot offer. Reluctantly she turns to Daniel Quist, the detective who promised to find Felicity but who let everyone down.


Although Quist believes he compromised Felicity’s case, he agrees to help. But can Quist, a man haunted by his unrequited love for his estranged ex-wife, his precarious relationship with his 17-year-old daughter, and his alcoholic past, be counted on?


As Kady pursues the truth without any guarantee she’ll find it, she fears her family may be breaking apart irrevocably, as her little sister Olive wakes from nightmares of bad men. All while Kady finds herself drawn to the mysterious boy Jordan Carlsen, who was Felicity’s last crush. And in the background, the Ragman, a local homeless man she’s never feared, but are her instincts trustworthy?


The Book of Riddles is a coming-of-age mystery about the bittersweet lessons of first love, surviving searing loss, facing truths wherever they take you, and, ultimately, about gaining the wisdom to open your heart without giving yourself away.

Read an excerpt>>

Books By Sarah Lovett

A Desperate Silence

The girl gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Her fingers were pale where knuckles stretched skin, her arms were thin as sticks. Bones–not flesh–defined her body. Toes on toes, her bare feet pressed the accelerator flush against the Honda’s floorboard.  read more>>

Blowback

The quick slap of a runner’s stride against asphalt broke the late-afternoon hush of Vienna’s Prater garden. Vanessa Pierson tensed, catching a flash of blue and white in her peripheral vision. read more>>

Dantes Inferno

At the stunning new Getty Museum, perched high above the city’s tony westside, a bomb hidden beneath a stairwell kills a teacher and a ten-year-old boy when it detonates during a school field trip. read more>>