Author: Julie Doar

The author is joined by writer/editor Ken Jaworowski to discuss her debut murder mystery "The Gallagher Place," selected as the December 2025 Top Pick by LibraryReads.

Tea and cookies will be served starting at 2:45 p.m.

About the Book (from the publisher):  A layered exploration of family secrets, sibling misconceptions, and an unsolved murder in this chilling debut set in New York’s Dutchess County.

When Marlowe Fisher, an illustrator living in New York City, returns to her family’s bewitching Hudson Valley home for the holidays, she discovers a body in the woods—a murder that draws her back into the haunting case of her teenage best friend’s disappearance two decades earlier. What happened to Nora?

As police descend on the sprawling Fisher property, Marlowe is pulled into an investigation that threatens to unravel the town’s fragile loyalties and expose the shadowed legacy of a weekend home steeped in secrets. Marlowe must confront the fallibility of her own memory and the feeling that everyone—including her brothers—is hiding something if she’s to uncover the shocking truth about her lost friend. In this gripping debut, Julie Doar delivers a chilling mystery that explores the corrosive power of silence and the tension of family secrets.

About the Authors: 

Julie Doar grew up in New York. As a child, she loved to imagine the abandoned barns and rolling countryside of the Hudson Valley were haunted. She attended Rice University for undergrad and studied English. She's worked as a cold-calling Sales Rep, a Starbucks barista, and a romance novel ghostwriter. Currently, she is a middle school English teacher.

Ken Jaworowski is an editor at The New York Times. He graduated from Shippensburg University and the University of Pennsylvania. He grew up in Philadelphia, where he was an amateur boxer, and has had plays produced in New York and Europe. He lives in New Jersey with his family.

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