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by Audrey Bell-Kearney (Author)
The Housewives of Gwinnett: Book One - The Message in the Mural
A dramedy mystery series
When Monica Wilson texts Cami Banks at 8:47 on a Tuesday morning, she doesn't ask. She informs. Be on the arts panel Thursday at 6. No is not an option.
Cami Banks built The Peach Crown salon from a single chair and a sign she painted herself - standing on a step stool at 10 PM while her husband held the flashlight. She knows Gwinnett County the way you know a place you love and refuse to let lie: from the inside, completely, without illusions. Every woman in the county sits in her chair eventually. She hears everything.
So when a $50,000 public mural competition draws eight finalists to the Lawrenceville Arts Commission - including one anonymous submission with no name on the tab, just a small red heart drawn in ballpoint pen - Cami notices what the panel doesn't. And when a man turns up dead in the archive room and the anonymous portfolio disappears, Cami and the women of The Gwinnett Chapter are already too deep to walk away.
The Gwinnett Chapter. Part book club, part intelligence network, part chosen family. Five women who would not have chosen each other from a catalog - bound together by books, and now by a mystery that goes all the way down to the county's bones.
Camille "Cami" Banks - Spelman woman, salon owner, the bridge between the elite and the street. The first to notice when something is wrong in Gwinnett.
May Lin Carrington - Cybersecurity expert and angel investor. The quietest woman in the room. The most dangerous.
Charlotte "Red" Montgomery - Fourth-generation Gwinnett royalty, trapped in a beautiful prison, trying to become someone her raising didn't fully prepare her for.
Elena "Lulu" Rodriguez - Feeds the whole county from her food truck. Knows more about Gwinnett than anyone, because the people who make a place run have always been the ones at the window, not the table.
Brooke Whitmore - Looks like a Pinterest board. Coming apart at the carefully stitched seams. Braver than she knows.
Set in one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the United States, The Message in the Mural is a story about what happens when art becomes evidence, when community becomes a weapon for good, and when five very different women decide that the truth is worth more than the peace of staying quiet.
The Gwinnett Chapter will return. May Lin has already found something. She says it's probably nothing.
She has never once said something was probably nothing and been right.
Read. Rise. Reign.
The Housewives of Gwinnett is a standalone dramedy mystery series. Each book features the same core cast in a completely new case.
