Book Blitz for A Dead End in Vegas by Irene Woodbury

Welcome to my stop on the Book Blitz, presented by Pump Up Your Book, for A Dead End in Vegas by Irene Woodbury.  Please leave a comment or question for Irene to let her know you stopped by.  You can follow the rest of her tour by clicking on the banner above.

A Dead End in Vegas

By Irene Woodbury

Publisher:  SynergEbooks

Release Date: September 5, 2014

Genre: Women’s Fiction

Length: 248 Pages

ISBN:  9780744321470

ASIN:  B00NCKEFSI

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About the book: 

As Dave Sloan is leaving for the Denver airport to pick up his wife, Tricia, the phone rings. It’s the cops in Las Vegas.  His wife is dead.  Her nude body was found that morning in a hotel room at the Bellagio.

Dave is stunned and devastated.  He thought she was in Phoenix at a week-long teachers’ conference.  A lie, of course, concocted by Tricia, who flew to Phoenix, then drove to Vegas to meet her Internet lover, the handsome, charming, and very much married Joe Daggett of Chicago.

When Joe can’t join her, Tricia’s a mess.  He calls a close friend, Al Posey, who lives in Vegas, and asks him to take her to dinner.  Al and Tricia hit it off and wind up in bed.  On Saturday morning, he walks out of her hotel room at nine.  Three hours later, her lifeless body is found by a maid. 

A DEAD END IN VEGAS is a searing exploration of how Tricia Sloan’s tragic, mysterious death shatters, and later transforms, the lives of her family and friends. 

For More Information

A Dead End in Vegas is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Smashwords.

Excerpt

In a state of exhaustion and panic, they stopped briefly at a liquor store in tiny Bardsville. There Sarah loaded up on snacks and Randy bought vodka with a fake ID. In the parking lot, blanketed with over a foot of heavy, sodden snow, the two teens huddled in the freezing Subaru, scarfing down Cheetos and Pop-Tarts. As she gulped milk from a quart-size carton, Sarah felt queasy.

A panic attack was coming on. When she told Randy, he stroked her hand, took another swig of vodka from a half-pint wrapped in a brown paper bag, and popped a couple more freshly stolen Dexedrine. Sarah stared at him, alarmed and terrified, but also adoringly.

There was one more stop to make, but it had to be fast. While Randy filled the tank at a Conoco station, Sarah trudged through the thick, frigid snow in her beige suede loafers to a distant, battered door marked “Ladies.” Jerking it open, she gingerly stepped inside the filthy, broken-down restroom. As she perched on the grimy toilet seat, blasts of frigid air and snow sliced through a round hole in the door where the lock had been ripped out. It took a while, but she finally stopped shaking long enough to pee on a solid block of ice.

Back on the road, with the snow coming down harder and heavier, they maneuvered west toward Copper Mountain, the bustling ski resort nestled in the Arapahoe National Forest.  Leadville, the old silver-mining town high in the central Rockies that they were running to, was still a tortuous 23 miles distant, a 45-minute ride in good weather, but much longer in this storm. At 10,000 feet it was a sullen, slate-colored Victorian mining town with a rowdy past that was fondly known as “the ice-box of Colorado.” A good place to hunker down in. No one would ask questions.

They almost made it.

About the Author:

Irene Woodbury’s second novel, A DEAD END IN VEGAS, is a dark, probing look at marriage, infidelity, revenge, and grief.  Immersing herself in drama and dysfunction for months on end was a challenge for this upbeat author, whose first book, the humor novel A SLOT MACHINE ATE MY MIDLIFE CRISIS, was published by SynergEbooks in 2011. 

At first glance, the two novels seem quite different, but both deal with midlife confusion and chaos, and the complexities and unpredictable nature of the human heart.  And both, of course, are partially set in Las Vegas, a city Irene got to know well during her years as a travel writer.  Between 2000 and 2005, her stories appeared in major newspapers in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

Irene, who graduated from the University of Houston in 1993, lives in Denver with her husband, Richard, a retired correspondent for Time Magazine who edited both of her novels.  The couple miss traveling, but, after two novels, Irene insists there’s no greater journey than the one into your own heart and mind. 

For More Information

Visit Irene Woodbury's website.

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