Thursday, January 4, 2024

Movie Stars Shine Brightest In the Dark by Jillian Thomadesn


 Roberta Hobbs is back again, solving crimes in St. Louis, Missouri. This time, she’s investigating the sudden death of ultra-famous movie star Cecilia Cinvenue – whose Ferrari dived over a cliff in a nearby industrial town.


What would bring Cecilia to St. Louis and why did she tell a bystander that someone was chasing her?

No sooner does Hobbs begin her investigation than she’s caught in the case’s many twists and turns. It seems that everyone within Cecilia’s Hollywood inner circle could be a suspect, as the star had no shortage of secrets and detractors.

The more Hobbs works the case, the more well-hidden truths about Hollywood become evident...and Hobbs soon realizes that even beautiful, talented movie stars have skeletons lurking just beneath the surface.

Pick up your copy here...


I wrote my first book, Wollack the Witch, at age 7. Needless to say, this book is exactly what one would expect from a second grader. All 20 pages were little more than an anthology of girls names from the 80s...but it was a start.

I went to college in the mid-90s and there I wrote my second book. I had always thought of Universities as a petri dish for revolution and social change. At the time, UVA was brimming with tailgates, football games, Greek life and social clubs...basically everyone else's vision of college. So, instead of adapting to my environment like most students, I holed up in the library and wrote an 800-page political satire about our nation's obsession with political scandal. Amazingly, I found an agent for this book but she wasn't able to sell it to any publishers.

Fast forward twenty years. A former Wall Street exec and a mother of three, I made sure I still found time to write. In April 2018, I published a dual-narrative suspense novel about a family that disappears under mysterious circumstances. This novel, All the Hidden Pieces, won the 2020 Missouri Author Project award. The subtext involves parenting a child with dyslexia -- a topic I know quite a bit about.

In December 2023, I published a follow-up in the series, entitled Movie Stars Shine Brightest in the Dark. In this novel, when ultra-famous movie star Cecilia Cinvenue dies in a sudden car accident, St. Louis Detective Roberta Hobbs is tasked with leading the case, and her investigation leads her to long-hidden truths about Hollywood as well as issues within Hobbs' own family. There are many twists and turns in the book, all leading up to a surprise ending.

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