Harley Jane Kozak – författare

Serial dater and greeting-card artist Wollie Shelley goes undercover in a media-training company suspected of video piracy, but when a dead body appears on the company’s property, she’s caught up in a conspiracy that goes way beyond some stolen DVDs.Wollie Shelley isn’t happy about taking the job as a “social coach” at MediaRex, but the FBI makes her an offer she can’t refuse. If she agrees to infiltrate the company, they’ll guarantee that her schizophrenic brother will have a home at the federally subsidized halfway house he’s come to love. So Wollie launches into teaching three foreign celebrities how to cope with the customs of Beverly Hills, improve their English, and become Oprah-ready. And when a coyote-chewed corpse appears in the MediaRex compound, Wollie realizes that her colleagues are concealing some serious secrets of their own.

Los Angeles greeting-card artist Wollie Shelley is dating forty men in sixty days as research for a radio talk show host''s upcoming book, How to Avoid Getting Dumped All the Time. Wollie is meeting plenty of eligible bachelors but not falling in love, not until she stumbles over a dead body en route to Rio Pescado--a state-run mental hospital--and is momentarily taken hostage by a charismatic "doctor" who is on the run from the Mob. Wollie fears that her beloved brother, a paranoid schizophrenic living at Rio Pescado, is involved in the murder, so rather than go to the authorities, she decides to solve the crime on her own. As she meets up with an array of small-time crooks and swaggering mobsters only slightly more sinister than the men she’s been dating, Wollie realizes that "getting dumped" is the least of her problems. Finding true love, she discovers, sometimes means learning how to avoid getting killed . . . Dating Dead Men will keep readers guessing until the final bullet is shot--and cheering for the irresistible Wollie as she makes her way out of confusion and into the welcoming embrace of Mr. Right.

Wollie Shelley, the plucky amateur sleuth Kirkus Reviews called “funny, brave, smart, and altogether the fetchingest crime heroine since the early Stephanie Plum,” returns to face suspect lovers and unlovable suspects in this hilarious sequel to Dating Dead Men. Wollie Shelley is a greeting card artist struggling to keep afloat financially and to pursue—despite a series of recent disasters—the search for the love of her life. She reluctantly agrees to be a contestant on the reality television show Biological Clock. The show’s premise: Six eligible singles date each other, and the audience votes on which couple would make the best parents. Alas, Wollie isn’t having much luck finding a man she’d like to date “off the air,” much less father her child. As her own biological clock ticks away, Wollie gets caught up in a much more pressing demand on her time. Her friend Annika has vanished into thin air, and Wollie is convinced that she’s in grave danger. When Wollie reports the disappearance to the Los Angeles Police Department, however, the detective assigned to the case seems more interested in dating Wollie than in finding her friend. So Wollie springs into action—and lands right in the middle of an FBI investigation into an international drug cartel. She soon finds herself being stalked by an assortment of threatening characters, including her fellow television contestants, who will stop at nothing to beat the clock. With Dating Is Murder, Kozak delivers another sparkling treasure, a laugh-out-loud-funny, literate mystery for readers of Janet Evanovich and Sue Grafton and for Kozak’s own growing legion of fans.

Wollie Shelley—the endearing, idiosyncratic heroine of the award-winning Dating Dead Men and Dating Is Murder—returns in a funny murder mystery set in the world of television soaps.When David Zetrakis, the producer of a popular soap opera, is found shot to death the day after Christmas, Wollie Shelley finds herself caught up in the murder investigation. Zetrakis was one of the many Mr. Wrongs in Wollie’s career as a serial dater, and her friend Joey has emerged as the media’s prime suspect. A hot-tempered celebrity who had dated Zetrakis and was fired from his show some years ago, Joey has inherited a million-dollar Klimt from him. But Joey is not the only potential suspect. Zetrakis left lots of nice bequests to the cast and crew of the show. And as the dating correspondent on a talk show called SoapDirt, Wollie, who’s required to dine and dish with the stars, quickly discovers that the behind-the-scenes intrigues of television soaps are as highly charged as the on-screen shenanigans. When Wollie is not trying to protect Joey from an onslaught of predatory reporters, she’s helping her brother make the transition from a mental hospital to a halfway house and negotiating her relationship with Simon, her FBI-agent boyfriend. Dead Ex is another full-out romp of a mystery sure to please Kozak’s many fans—and win her many new ones, too.