Books one through three available now everywhere books are sold. Books four and five coming in the summers of 2024 & 2025. Back Before Dawn, standalone suspense, is available June 27, 2023.
Ever wonder where the concept for Kerry’s series originated?
It’s a crazy story! At the release of her first book, one of her first author events in Maryland included ten other authors. Everyone had tables scattered around the room in the Hampstead Library in north Maryland, waiting expectantly for interested readers to drop in and buy their books.
However.
Only one woman seemed to be raking in sales…as every interested reader made a beeline to her table! After an infuriatingly long period of non-interest, the other authors began to get agitated! Why was this one, tiny, perky woman getting all the attention? Kerry couldn’t stand it any longer, and popped up from her table and walked over to the woman’s table and asked her what was different about her? The woman smiled at her and shared this story:
“I was in a car accident five years ago. It put me in a coma for six months with a brain injury, and I wasn’t expected to live. When I woke up, my family told me my brain must’ve rewired itself, because I arose a different person. Instead of shy and retiring, I was like this!”
Kerry cocked her head, studying her. “You draw customers like no one I’ve ever seen!”
The woman’s sparkly, brown eyes twinkled. “I just know I can’t quit reaching out to people. I’m kind of…on permanent bubbly.” She shrugged. “People must like it, because I sell tons of books!”
Kerry raced back to her table and started scribbling notes. Olivia Callahan was born that very day.
Mysterious fires. A haunting past. A secret file.
Three years ago, Olivia Callahan endured an assault that resulted in a devastating brain injury. She survived, but she couldn’t remember anything about her life or who she was. Now, she’s determined to build a bridge between the past she lost and the life she must reclaim.
When Olivia crosses paths with PI Tom Stark, she is drawn to the investigative field, and becomes his intern. She finds a heavily redacted, forty-five-year-old file locked in his desk drawer that mentions her mother as a young woman. Why had her mentor hidden the file from her, and why had he never mentioned a case involving her mother?
As Olivia moves forward with her fledgling career, a string of mysterious fires moves through the community, puzzling the Baltimore Arson Investigative Unit. One of the fires strikes Olivia’s beloved farmhouse in rural Maryland. Now, in addition to uncovering the secrets bound within the redacted file, she becomes convinced that the fires happening around the area are disturbing calling cards…and they’re meant for her.
Praise for The Torching!
“Kerry Peresta has done it again, giving us Olivia Callahan, a complex heroine, who is strong, yet vulnerable, clear-headed one moment, lost in the terrifying fog of traumatic brain injury the next. In THE TORCHING, we get to ride along as Olivia battles to rebuild, literally and figuratively, her life and her home, while her murky past continues to throw shadows over her present and future. Tightly written, this one’s a heart-pounding page-turner from beginning to end.”
– Annette Dashofy, award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of the Zoe Chambers and Detective Honeywell mystery series
Discover more about book three in the Olivia Callahan Suspense series here!
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After an assault that landed her in a hospital as a Jane Doe two years earlier, Olivia Callahan has regained her speech, movement, and much of the memory she lost due to a traumatic brain injury. The media hype about the incident has faded away, and Olivia is ready to rebuild her life, but her therapist insists she must continue to look back in order to move forward. The only person that can help her recall specifics is her abusive ex-husband, Monty, who is in prison for murder. The thought of talking to Monty makes her skin crawl, but for her daughters’ sake and her own sanity, she must learn more about who she was before the attack.
Just as the pieces of her life start falling into place, she stumbles across the still-warm body of an old friend who has been gruesomely murdered. Her dream of pursuing a peaceful existence is shattered when she learns the killer left evidence behind to implicate her in the murder. The only person that would want to sabotage her is Monty—but he’s in prison! Something sinister is going on, and Olivia is desperate to figure it out. Do all her friends have targets on their backs because she made the tragic decision to marry a sociopath twenty years ago?
The Rising, Book Two in the Olivia Callahan Suspense series released Spring, 2022 and is available here!
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Praise for THE RISING!
“The Rising’ is the second in the Olivia Callahan series. It is an enthralling sequel to ‘The Deadening’, although it can be read as a stand-alone.
It is two years since the assault that left Olivia with a traumatic brain injury, but questions surrounding her attack still haunt her. Is she being paranoid, or is that a product of her injury? In the process, Olivia learns to face her fears, and attempts to adjust to the changes both in her personality and in her altered relationships with family and friends. The psychological challenges of overcoming her memory loss is, for me, one of the most interesting aspects of this book. Olivia’s determination to find a way forward after a life-changing experience is realistically portrayed and inspirational.” – Laraine Stephens, Author, Reggie da Costa Mysteries
“Peresta’s skill ensures that the central drama of the novel swells around the reader, leaving them to experience the protagonist as her investigator, witness, gossip, judge, friend and foe. An immersive experience. A carefully composed book, with a painter’s eye for details that vivify. – Coy Hall, author of Grimoire of the Four Imposters and The Hangman Feeds the Jackal
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The Deadening, Book One in the Olivia Callahan Suspense series, released March, 2021 and is available here.
Olivia Callahan’s quiet, orderly life is shattered when she regains consciousness in a hospital and discovers she is paralyzed and cannot remember a thing. The fragmented voices she hears around her help her piece together that an apparent assault landed her in the hospital, but nobody knows who attacked her, or why. After a chilling struggle to survive, she awakens from a coma unable to remember what happened to her or anything at all, except she has been told she is an entirely different person. Or is she?
Now, in spite of a brain injury that has rewired her personality, Olivia is on a mission to reclaim her life. As clarity surfaces and she starts to understand who she was, she is shocked. Had she really been that person? And if so, does she want her old life back?
Five Stars!! I couldn’t put it down!
I purchased the Kindle version of Kerry’s new book & read it during a flight to DFW & then a connecting flight from there to Tampa. By the time we arrived in Tampa, I had finished this book. I was actually happy about a long, unexpected delay in Dallas before our second flight. Thank you, Kerry Peresta, for yet another can’t-put-it-down page turner. Fantastic! ~Amazon reviewer
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After two difficult divorces, hardworking single mom Isabelle Lewis admits that ‘the perfect marriage’ might be a fairy tale. However, she refuses to give up hope. Online dating has become an escape from her hectic life, and after her kids are asleep, she logs onto her three favorite dating apps. Every night, for a few hours, the weight of the world lifts. She feels wanted. Valued. More often than not, she clicks with one of the matches and dashes out into the night to meet him. She reassures herself it’s only a few hours and her teenage kids won’t even realize she’s gone…but they do. Her creepy boss drags her into his office to confront her about the rumors of her serial online habit and tells her the chronic exhaustion is affecting her work. She needs to change, or else. But she can’t. It’s become an obsession. When one of her online matches begins to trespass on her property and riddle her with threats, she is forced to get a protective order. Complications stack up. Her ex threatens another custody battle. She could lose her kids and her job. Her friends beg her to stop running out at night, but it makes her crazy to think she has to give up the one thing that makes her feel valued. The final blow is a phone call that lands her in an interrogation room at police headquarters. Now, she’s looking at a prison sentence. How could she have imagined that her simple desire to find a soulmate would result in murder?
Back Before Dawn is available here.
Click to watch Kerry’s author interview with the historic Pat Conroy Center in Beaufort, SC.
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