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LEIGH ROSE

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Leigh Rose is the American Fiction Author of the ©”Legends on the Rise Novel Series” for which she received the Massachusetts Cultural Council Award in Literature (2023).

Leigh is an independent author and research scholar. Leigh’s novels are not AI generated. Leigh does all the writing, formating, book design, branding and publishing.

In addition to Legh’s Legend’s on the Rise Novel Series, Leigh plans to publish three (3) stand alone novels by the end of 2026. The titles and summaries are listed below. ENJOY!

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LEGENDS ON THE RISE NOVEL SERIES

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REVIEWS

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“Riveting… Page-turning…The pacing is swift, the action scenes are cinematically developed, and Rose’s moving, assured prose keeps the pages turning.” The Prairies Book Review, February 24, 2022

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READ MORE ABOUT LEIGH ROSE and HER NOVELS by CLICKING on the BUTTONS BELOW

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SUMMARY of the LEGENDS ON THE RISE NOVEL SERIES. A TRILOGY of SUSPENCE!

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The Legends on the Rise Novel Series is a trilogy of three fiction books that recounts the life of the Reiss and Freedman families and their descendant’s’ search for the truth about how an heirloom dowry was acquired during the French colonial slave trade.

In Mistaken Legacy, Book 1. Upon her engagement to William Fournier, Juliette Reiss-Marston inherits her dowry: A carved ebony chest of rare gemstones, passed down to all Reiss women in her French bloodline. Skeptical about why her mother had withheld the valuable acquisition from her, shortly afterward, Juliette receives a suspicious letter from overseas.

Claude Freedman, a distant cousin who Juliette had never met, explains he had inherited her ancestor’s memoir, which discloses how the dowry was acquired during the French colonial slave trade. Claude convinces Juliette to defy her mother’s wish to forget about the Freedman family, having claimed they are impostors. However, Juliette surmises her mother is hiding the truth and chooses instead to agree with Claude and travel to meet him in St. Augustine, Florida, where the truth about the dower of her gift is revealed: Juliette’s fourth great grandfather, Captain Françoise Jules Reiss III.

In Heiress and Epithet, Book 2. By invitation, Claude visits Paris, France, to meet and mend a long-standing family feud with the Reiss family. However, Interpol gets wind of how Juliette’s dowry was acquired and its value to the French government. Investigating the Reiss family for international fraud, Interpol learns the dowry of gemstones was stolen from the French Crown, centuries earlier. Exasperated by Interpol’s findings, Juliette, Claude, and their closest friends, help hide the dowry until they can figure out how to clear the Reiss family name.

Children of the Alliance, Book 3 is Juliette’s fourth great-grandfather’s memoir; his life and journeys from 1754 through 1810 in three cities on three continents: Toulon, France; Senegal, West Africa and St. Augustine, Florida. The memoir recounts how Juliette and Claude’s ancestors had struggled with keeping their mixed-race families together during the French colonial slave grade, the acquisition of Juliette’s dowry and why the Reiss and Freedman families had parted ways over the centuries.

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REISS & FREEDMAN FAMILY TREE

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THREE UP AND COMING NOVELS

(STAY TUNED FOR RELEASE DATES & Click Arrows from Left and Right)

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DOUBLE ORPHAN

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©Double Orphan is a story about Angie Olivetti. A descendant from a long line of book publishers and award-winning journalists, Angie was born and raised in the historic neighborhood of North Beach, California. A famous San Francisco community, with a notorious past since the 1848 California Gold Rush.

Angie’s father, Luke Olivetti, had won the Pulitzer Prize for his article on the transnational crime syndicate, Sonora cartel. Since the publication of Luke’s article, gang leaders ordered his “hit” if and when he re-entered Mexico. Undeterred by cartel threats, Luke continues the family’s decade long vacations at Rocky Point. In 1990, when Angie is eight years old, she survives the brutal murder of her parents by Sonora cartel members, when the family is on vacation at Puerto Peñasco, Mexico.

The novel opens years later and when, in 2013, Angie had graduated from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is now senior editor for the San Francisco Headline’s (SFH) U.S. & World Report division, and when she receives a call from Arturo Lopez, a Mexican miner claiming he witnessed cartel smuggling natural gas and crude oil over the U.S. border for a Texas refinery. A federal offence, Arturo is seeking asylum for his family of four for witness testimony.

Angie jumps on the whistleblowers claim and takes the story. With a team of SFH journalists, Ice Shadow Wolves, and Federales, the team goes undercover and investigates the mining sting at Burgos Basin, in northeastern Mexico, and to rescue the Lopez family, hiding out from cartel death threats, in Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains.

Everything goes as planned until Angie’s Uncle Johnny shows up and when Angie discovers a family secret: Why her parents were hunted down by cartel and brutally murdered.

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MURDER AT SWEET LIFE INN

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©Murder at Sweet Life Inn is a mystery fiction novel set in 2015, with historic flashbacks to WWI & WWII Italy. A time when the Forni family open their generational B&B, Sweet Life Inn, in Campobasso, Italy, and Sweet Life Bakery, in Princeton, New Jersey.

As residents are preparing to celebrate the cities traditional 100th Anniversary of the Summer Solstice Warbler Festival and Festival of Mysteries, a murder takes place at the inn and Luna Forni, the owner of Sweet Life Inn, is suspect of the crime.

Fearing for her life, Luna contacts her cousin, and confidant, Eanna Tasso, who owns Sweet Life Bakery, in Princeton, New Jersey. Eanna thinks the situation is out of hand and that the Campobasso police have jumped to conclusions: Guests at the inn heard wood warbler distress calls on the night of the murder and, as Campobassani residents are well aware, Forni descendants are master warblers; skilled songsters that can imitate warbler bird calls.

Knowing things can get out of hand, Eanna, her family and good friends travel to Campobasso to help exonerate Luna. However, as the investigation into the murder unfolds, Chief Alessandro Ricci requests all city residents and visitors take part in a wood warbler “trilling contest,” assuming he can eliminate potential suspects by identifying the imitator of the wood warbler; passerines that had migrated to the region during WWI and that befriended the Fornier family. However, when all potential “trilling” suspects are eliminated, the results come up empty.

Frustrated, police request forensic DNA analysis on all potential suspects, including Forni family members. However, even these come up empty and detectives are unable to make a match using Italy’s DNA Investigation System, claiming their last resort is to try a “new” forensic analytical tool: Forensic Genetic Genealogy and Familial DNA testing to build a family tree and trace the ancestry of the murderer. Then, they will match sections of the DNA thread between family members to see if individual(s) are biologically related.

Cross your fingers and hope for the best. Will Luna Forni be exonerated? Is the murderer related to a Forni descendant?

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SPECIAL AGENT:VALENTINE DAY

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©Special Agent: Valentine Day is a spy thriller about Ned and Maggie Stiles, a married couple from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ned is a brilliant software engineer and Maggie a biochemist for the CIA. When the couple arrive to speak at “Moscow’s 2007 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence,” Maggie goes missing.

Ned surmises his wife’s disappearance has everything to do with the classified project she was working on: A Top-Secret project Ned knows nothing about and the secret that had placed a wedge between them.

After a yearlong CIA investigation into Maggie’s disappearance, the agency tells Ned, “Maggie was kidnapped by dissidents and deceased.” Angry he has to bury his wife and the mother of their two boys, Darius and Lukas, without a body, Ned is not convinced the CIA is telling him the truth. Suspecting foul play, Ned patents AI-QFP, the Artificial Intelligence & Quantum Forensics Program he swears will find her and bring Maggie home alive!

Five years have now passed since Maggie’s disappearance and when the CIA finds out about Ned’s patent for AI-QFP. When they offer Ned their top position, Director of Artificial Intelligence, Ned takes the offer to gain access to Maggie’s CIA file to input into AI-QFP. With his team of experts, Ned discovers he was right all along. Maggie is still alive and on a mission in Moscow to intercept “The Wolf.”

Dmitry Volkov (The Wolf) is a former CIA foreign asset gone rogue, and he wants to steal and sell the CIA classified project Maggie developed to terrorists: A biohybrid robot that mimics human behavior “in real-time.” In the wrong hands, it will lead to massive worldwide fatalities…

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EDUCATION

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MA University of North Carolina (2010)

BPM Florida Atlantic University (2005)

BFA University of North Florida (2003)

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leigh@lroseauthor.com

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