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Rebecca Cantrell is an American award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of mystery--cozy mystery and historical mystery novels.

Equipped with an articulate understanding of German, she received her high school diploma from the John F. Kennedy Schule in Berlin, before subsequently studying at the Freie Universität in Berlin and the Georg August Universität in Göttingen, and graduating from Carnegie Mellon University.

Passionate about writing from the time she was seven, Cantrell resigned from her job, sold her house, and relocated to Hawaii where she began writing the Hannah Vogel Mysteries.

Her books, which have been published in 10 languages, have won several awards, including the ITW Thriller, the Macavity, and the Bruce Alexander awards.

Cantrell currently lives in Hawaii with her husband and son, having previously resided in Berlin.

More about Rebecca Cantrell

Genres: Cozy Mystery, Historical Mystery

Born: 1968

United States

Website: https://www.rebeccacantrell.com/

Anthologies

  1. Cigarette Boy and Other Stories (2017)

Hannah Vogel

  1. A Trace of Smoke (2009)
  2. A Night of Long Knives (2010)
  3. A Game of Lies (2011)
  4. A City of Broken Glass (2012)

Joe Tesla

  1. The World Beneath (2013)
  2. The Tesla Legacy (2015)
  3. The Chemistry of Death (2015)
  4. The Steel Shark (2017)

Malibu Mystery (Co-authored with Sean Black)

  1. 'A' is for Actress (2015)
  2. 'B' is for Bad Girls (2015)
  3. 'C' is for Coochy Coo (2016)
  4. 'D' is for Drunk (2016)
  5. 'E' is for Exposed (2017)
  6. F is for Fred (2019)
  7. G Is for Groovy (2020)

Novellas

  1. On the Train (2013)
  2. The Man in the Attic (2014)
  3. Caulbearer (2020)
  4. Homework (2020)

Order of the Sanguines (Co-authored with James Rollins)

  1. City of Screams: An Order of the Sanguines Novella (2012)
  2. The Blood Gospel (2013)
  3. Blood Brothers: An Order of the Sanguines Novella (2013)
  4. Innocent Blood (2013)
  5. Blood Infernal (2015)

Detailed book overview

Anthologies

Cigarette Boy and Other Stories

In her first-ever solo anthology, New York Times bestseller Rebecca Cantrell demonstrates her award-winning skill with four wonderful stories, including the prequel to her Hannah Vogel series where Ernst Vogel explores the shadowy world of Weimar-era Berlin on the cusp of the Nazi rise to power as he investigates the murder of a young cigarette boy at his cabaret.

The collection also includes a journey through the wreckage of postwar Berlin in a search for hope, a fated meeting on a train to a concentration camp, and a supernatural warrior protecting a shtetl in wartime Czechoslovakia.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2017
ISBN: 978-1549824395
Publisher: Independently published

Hannah Vogel

A Trace of Smoke

It’s 1931 in Berlin, and the world is on the precipice of change—the affluent still dance in their gilded cages but more and more people are living under threat and poverty. Hannah Vogel is a crime reporter forced to write under the male pseudonym Peter Weill. 

As a widow of the Great War, she’s used to doing what she must to survive. Her careful facade is threatened when she stumbles across a photograph of her brother in the Hall of the Unnamed Dead. Reluctant to make a formal identification until she has all the details, Hannah decides to investigate, herself. She must be cautious as Ernst’s life as a cross-dressing cabaret star was ringed in scandal, and his list of lovers included at least one powerful leader in the Nazi party.

She’s barely had a chance to begin before an endearing five-year-old orphan shows up on her doorstep holding a birth certificate listing her dead brother Ernst as his father, and calling Hannah ‘Mother.’ Further complicating matters are her evolving feelings for Boris Krause, a powerful banker whose world is the antithesis of Hannah’s. Boris has built a solid wall preventing anyone from disturbing his, or his daughter Trudi’s, perfectly managed lives—a wall Hannah and Anton are slowly breaking down.

As Hannah digs, she discovers political intrigues and scandals touching the top ranks of the rising Nazi party. Fired from her job and on the run from Hitler’s troops, she must protect herself and the little boy who has come to love her, but can she afford to find love for herself?

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2009
ISBN: 978-1726677097
Publisher: Independently published
A Night of Long Knives

Journalist Hannah Vogel has vowed to never again set foot in her homeland of Germany while the Nazis are still in power. She has good reason: three years ago in 1931, she kidnapped her "son," Anton, from the man claiming to be his father--Ernst Rohm, head of the Nazis' SA. A powerful man not to be trifled with, Hannah knows that Rohm will never stop searching for them.

Hannah is asked to write about a zeppelin journey from South America to Switzerland, but Switzerland turns out to be too close. The zeppelin is diverted to Munich, where Hannah and Anton are kidnapped and, to Hannah's horror, separated.

It's unlucky timing for Rohm, however. Hitler has ordered the execution of Rohm and hundreds of his storm troopers and is determined to wipe out any remaining traces of his name. The Night of the Long Knives has begun.

When Rohm is killed before Hannah can ascertain Anton's whereabouts, she desperately enlists all of her remaining sources and friends to locate Anton before the Nazis do. And the Gestapo is closing in...

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2010
ISBN: 978-1543233292
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
A Game of Lies

Journalist—and part-time British spy—Hannah Vogel is back in Berlin to cover the 1936 Olympics. At least, posing as travel reporter Adelheid Zinsli, lover of SS officer Lars Lang, that’s her cover story. Rather, she’s collecting Nazi secrets from Lang and smuggling them back to Switzerland.

During the opening games, Hannah slips away to meet her mentor, Peter Weill, who has tasked her with carrying a package out of the country. He collapses at her feet, presumably poisoned, and Hannah must scramble to create a cover story, particularly as she is surrounded by former colleagues who could identify her.

The cover-up drives a deeper wedge between Hannah and Lars—whose alcoholism has increased, and whose loyalty she has begun to question. To ensure her safety, and clear Lars’ doubt, she sets out to discover the identity of Weill’s killer and the package he died to protect.

In order to get Weill’s package out of the country, she must decide whom to love—and whom to trust—before her true identity is revealed.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2011
ISBN: 978-1544020051
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
A City of Broken Glass

In 1938, after four years in hiding in Switzerland, journalist Hannah Vogel believes the coast is clear and takes the opportunity for a holiday with her 13-year-old son Anton. Traveling again under the name of Adelheid Zinsli, they arrive in Poland to cover the St. Martin festival, only to learn of the deportation of 12,000 Polish Jews from Germany. Hannah drops everything to get the story on the refugees, soon discovering that the wife of a friend of among them.

Running headlong into danger, she agrees to help find the woman’s missing daughter—a promise which leads her straight into the arms of the SS, as well as those of Lars Lang, the lover she had presumed dead two years before. Injured, she and Anton are trapped in Berlin with Lars days before Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass— where she is torn between ensuring their escape, and keeping her promise. But she can't turn her back on this one little girl, even if it plunges her and her family into danger.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2012
ISBN: 978-1545068380
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Joe Tesla

The World Beneath

Software millionaire Joe Tesla is set to ring the bell on Wall Street the morning his company goes public. On what should be the brightest day in his life, he is instead struck with severe agoraphobia. The sudden dread of the outside is so debilitating, he can't leave his hotel at Grand Central Terminal, except to go underground. Bad luck for Joe, because in the tunnels lurk corpses and murderers, an underground Victorian mansion and a mysterious bricked-up 1940s presidential train car. Joe and his service dog, Edison, find themselves pursued by villains and police alike, their only salvation now is to unearth the mystery that started it all, a deadly, contagious madness on the brink of escaping The World Beneath.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-1494787714
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
The Tesla Legacy

Still crippled by agoraphobia and confined to the tunnels under New York City, Joe is haunted by the fact that he cannot even attend his father's funeral. His father’s death brings threats to the safety of Joe's underground home: guilt over the broken relationship that can never be healed, a mysterious box of papers inherited from eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla, and a ruthless enemy determined to steal those papers no matter the cost.

Mystified by why his inheritance is so valuable, Joe and his service dog, Edison, follow clues left a century ago by Joe's famous ancestor to reveal the power of his family legacy. While Joe must rely on his considerable talents as a hacker, he must also reach out to friends.

But whom can he trust as he battles to save his beloved city from...The Tesla Legacy?

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-1507676677
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
The Chemistry of Death

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me...or can they? In the third thrilling installment of this award winning series from New York Times bestseller Rebecca Cantrell, tortured genius Joe Tesla is on the trail of a sadistic serial killer who charms his victims into the bowels of the Manhattan subway system--and who holds the keys to Joe's crippling condition. Can Joe stop the murderous rampage of this silver-tongued killer, or will he become the next victim?

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-1517114930
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
The Steel Shark

His dog. His computer. The tunnels under New York City.

That’s all Joe Tesla’s agoraphobia has left him with—the inside world, the dark world—and now the black depths of the sea.

In the latest book in this award-winning thriller series, Joe Tesla ventures out into the ocean depths in an underwater scavenger hunt. The competition turns deadly when a mystery sub rams Joe’s and leaves him for dead on the ocean floor.

Joe survives and his search for answers leads into a web of international intrigue and enigmatic weapons. When he shares his knowledge with the authorities, they bury his information and threaten to bury him as well. After a drone attack drives him out to sea, he realizes that he alone can discover the truth hidden in a rogue submarine...and save the city he loves from annihilation.

But can a man trapped inside by his own fears ever save the larger world above?

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2017
ISBN: 978-1547206438
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Malibu Mystery (Co-authored with Sean Black)

'A' is for Actress

Sofia scribbled a list of the things that might be required to get a typical middle-aged man to make a pass at a woman who was not his wife.

Three small sips of wine later, she had come up with:

1.Two arms.

2.Two legs.

3.A winning smile.

4.A vajayjay.

5.Breasts.

6.A heartbeat.

She chewed the end of the pencil, thought about it a little more deeply, and crossed through the first three items."

Readers, meet Sofia Salgado, Malibu's newest private investigator.

After a decade spent in the glare of the Hollywood spotlight as the star of kids' TV show Half Pint Detective, Sofia Salgado has had enough. Desperate to build a life outside showbiz, she quits acting to do something that everyone around her - including her family thinks is plain nuts. Get a real job.

They think she's even crazier when she announces that she's going to become a real detective, instead of playing one on TV. She's convinced the technical consultant from her TV show, Brendan Maloney, to take her on in his detective agency, but can

accident-prone Sofia deal with paparazzi-filled stakeouts, the world’s most annoying partner, and real-life murder?

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-1909062443
Publisher: Sean Black Digital
'B' is for Bad Girls

Maloney Investigation's newest private detective, Sofia Salgado, is back on the case that turns into her mother's worst nightmare when she ends up undercover in one of Malibu's many rehab clinics—complete with pictures and an offer to star in a reality TV show.

But the clinic isn’t a safe place. If Sofia doesn't solve the find out who killed an up an coming rock star soon, she and all the bad girls she meets inside, including rock star Brandi Basher and reality TV train wreck Monaco Jane, might just end up going to the big rehab center in the sky.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-1519631824
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
'C' is for Coochy Coo

Former child star Sofia Salgado is finally finding her feet as a trainee investigator at Maloney Investigations when they are drafted in to help thirteen-year-old Daniel find his birth father. There's only one snag. According to Daniel's mom, former Los Angeles party girl, Candy, there's more than one candidate.

A lot more!

Sofia and Aiden have to have some pretty uncomfortable conversations with businessmen, a basketball star, and a good part of a minor league baseball team.

But they keep striking out, and if they can't find the father and convince him to help Daniel, the kid's not going to see his next birthday.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2016
ISBN: 978-1535558044
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
'D' is for Drunk

Maloney Investigation's new client? An eccentric vineyard owner convinced his even more eccentric neighbor is siphoning off his precious water. But of course it's not as simple as that. Or as dignified. 

Sofia and Aidan soon find out these Merlot messiahs are turning water into wacky, plowing more than fields, and sowing more than grapes. But there's no putting the cork back in when the opposing vintner turns up naked and face down in a trough of sour grapes. Can Sofia and Aidan clear their client and unmask the killer? Or will they, too, perish in the Pinot Noir?

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2016
ISBN: 978-1076923257
Publisher: Independently published
'E' is for Exposed

Sofia Salgado's latest case at Maloney Investigations has some pretty tempting ingredients: blackmail, male strippers, and whipped cream. When a friend of Sofia's mom finds herself the victim of blackmail, stuffy Aidan has to go undercover as an exotic dancer, much to Sofia’s delight. Can Aidan make it in the cut-throat world of male stripping? Can Sofia stop her mom from getting too involved? Does whipped cream have more or fewer calories when it's licked from a man's naked torso?

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2017
ISBN: 978-1981960064
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
F is for Fred

After a caviar-related disaster, Sophia Salgado races to prevent the assassination of Maloney Investigations' greatest celebrity - Fred the seagull.

When Sofia returns from vacation, she discovers that her pet seagull, Fred, has become her greatest enemy: the paparazzi. Her former agent has dressed him with a tiny camera and created a wildly successful YouTube channel using his footage. To ensure his loyalty, her agent has been bribing Fred with caviar, feeding into his addiction and stoking a fire within his tiny heart that can only be quenched by more caviar. So he starts hitting luxurious parties. And that's where it all goes south.

Fred crashes a party for caviar but ends up filming nefarious activities. When the disgruntled host uses bullets to defend his secrets, Sofia must find the bird before the host gets another chance to finish the job. Weighing her down are her insufferable fellow detective Aidan Maloney and her kindergartner bodyguard Violet. Can Sofia lead this crew to Fred before it's too late?

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2019
ISBN: 978-1076921406
Publisher: Independently published
G Is for Groovy

What do you get when you mix together an airhead heiress, a kooky cult leader, a giant plastic vagina, and a super-horny English Bulldog?

Sofia, Brendan, and Aidan and the rest of the gang are back in this fun and funny mystery set in glamorous Malibu, California. Sofia goes undercover in a seemingly harmless cult called The Church of The Divine Goddess. At the same time, she has to protect an overly amorous English Bulldog from crazed Aussie movie star, Bruce Brunt, who wants to do to Harvey what legions of women would love to do to Bruce - cut off his marble pouch!

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 979-8609803672
Publisher: Independently published

Novellas

On the Train

Third Reich, winter of 1943.

Fascist ideology has turned to boot and rifle, tank and rail, pulling more and more of Europe into its borders and cleansing it of impurities and undesirables. The Nazis are organized, industrious, systematic. They capture, sort, and ship the riffraff to camps by rail. Depending on their label, they are forced to feed the war machine as laborers if they are deemed useful, or the crematorium smoke stacks if they are not.

Joachim Rosen finds himself on such a train. He survived the last camp by being careful and unremarkable, and is grimly determined to survive the next the same way. But his plans and his resolve are shaken when another prisoner recognizes him from his life before and threatens him with dangerous truth, reckless hope.

There were, after all, always those who would not comply; those who chose to resist the machine—to fight, to flee, to die. On that slow and inevitable track, Joachim must choose whether to cling to his careful plan, or reclaim his humanity with a simple, courageous, possibly fatal gesture. Time is running out. He is reaching his final destination, on the train.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2013
Ebook: B00EFD4Q30
Publisher: Rebecca Cantrell
The Man in the Attic

1940, German-occupied Czechoslovakia.

A dark shadow lurks near Jacob's village, one dressed in tall black boots and carrying guns. He should listen to his grandfather, give up his childish games and possessions. But when two boys try to take his prize marble, he runs away to his synagogue and hides in the forbidden attic.

There Jacob uncrates a huge, dusty clay man. Could it be the creature from his grandfather's stories, the Maharal's earthen defender of the Jews of Prague? If such legends were true, no one would dare come for his marble—or his village. Legends taught that the statue could be brought to life with a single word to do its master’s bidding. But that was a childish thought, and he should give up childish thoughts. And even if it were true, the legends also told of unintended horrors once that word was spoken to the creature, that word he should not say...

“Awaken.”

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2014
Ebook: B00JCSMT8W
Publisher: Rebecca Cantrell
Caulbearer

Rainbow was born with something special, a small amount of LSD in his system and a caul over his face. So far, all he's been able to get out of his powers are three divorces and a buy in bulk deal with his divorce attorney. All of that changes during his last party as a married man where he goes home with his former secretary. Will his mysterious powers allow him to connect with the people that matter most before it's too late?

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2020
Ebook: B08K76HKY2
Homework

Dogtrainer Ada and her fellow jewelry thieves try to steal a four-million-dollar ring, but things don't go as planned... for some. Her good boy, Flames, is the real star of the show with his training and broad appetite fitting right in as the centerpiece of their band of thieves. The actress Ada, the hot one Jasper, the planner Silas and the dog Flames. Not exactly your typical heist crew, but see if their experience and skill are a match for Nigel and the potent defenses of one of Los Angeles's most affluent Tiffany's.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2020
Ebook: B08JFWF7MZ

Order of the Sanguines (Co-authored with James Rollins)

City of Screams: An Order of the Sanguines Novella

In the haunted, war-torn highlands of Afghanistan, amid the ruins of Shahr-e-Gholghol, an archaeology team is massacred in the night. Sergeant Jordan Stone and his crack forensic team are called in to examine the site, to hunt for the perpetrators of this horrific act. But the discovery of a survivor--a child of ten--will shatter all the team knows about life and death. Among the crumbling bones of dead kings, something hoary and murderous stirs out of the ancient past, lurching forward to claim vengeance on those still living.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2012
Ebook: B0095IATR2
Publisher: William Morrow
The Blood Gospel

An earthquake in Masada, Israel, kills hundreds and reveals a tomb buried in the heart of the mountain. A trio of investigators--Sergeant Jordan Stone, a military forensic expert; Father Rhun Korza, a Vatican priest; and Dr. Erin Granger, a brilliant but disillusioned archaeologist--are sent to explore the macabre discovery, a subterranean temple holding the crucified body of a mummified girl.

But a brutal attack at the site sets the three on the run, thrusting them into a race to recover what was once preserved in the tomb's sarcophagus: a book rumored to have been written by Christ's own hand, a tome that is said to hold the secrets to His divinity. The enemy who hounds them is like no other, a force of ancient evil directed by a leader of impossible ambitions and incalculable cunning.

From crumbling tombs to splendorous churches, Erin and her two companions must confront a past that traces back thousands of years, to a time when ungodly beasts hunted the dark spaces of the world, to a moment in history when Christ made a miraculous offer, a pact of salvation for those who were damned for eternity.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-1409120506
Publisher: Orion
Blood Brothers: An Order of the Sanguines Novella

As a young reporter, Arthur Crane exposed the secrets behind the Orchid Killer, a cult murderer from the late '60s whose crimes blackened the end of the Summer of Love. Half a century later, Arthur wakes to find an orchid resting on his pillow, a symbol of death from a killer connected to his estranged younger brother, Christian. To discover the horrifying truth, Arthur will risk all--even his very soul--for Christian may not be the brother that Arthur remembers...

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2013
Ebook: B00EXOFE4Q
Publisher: William Morrow Impulse
Innocent Blood

A vicious attack at a ranch in California thrusts archaeologist Erin Granger back into the folds of the Sanguines, an immortal order founded on the blood of Christ and tasked with protecting the world from the beasts haunting its shadows and waiting to break free into the sunlight. Following the prophetic words found in the Blood Gospel--a tome written by Christ and lost for centuries--Erin must join forces with Army Sergeant Jordan Stone and the dark mystery that is Father Rhun Korza to discover and protect a boy believed to be an angel given flesh.

But an enigmatic enemy of immense power and terrifying ambition seeks the same child--not to save the world, but to hasten its destruction. For any hope of victory, Erin must discover the truth behind Christ's early years and understand His first true miracle, an event wrapped in sin and destruction, an act that yet remains unfulfilled and holds the only hope for the world.

The search for the truth will take Erin and the others across centuries and around the world, from the dusty plains of the Holy Land to the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean, from the catacombs of Rome to an iron fortress in the Mediterranean Sea, and at last to the very gates of Hell itself, where their destiny--and the fate of mankind--awaits.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-0062297884
Publisher: HarperLuxe
Blood Infernal

As an escalating scourge of grisly murders sweeps the globe, archaeologist Erin Granger must decipher the truth behind an immortal prophecy foretold in the Blood Gospel, a tome written by Christ and lost for centuries: The shackles of Lucifer have been loosened, and his Chalice remains lost. It will take the light of all three to forge the Chalice anew and banish him again to his eternal darkness. 

With the Apocalypse looming, Erin must again join forces with Army Sergeant Jordan Stone and Father Rhun Korza to search for a treasure lost for millennia. But the prize has already fallen into the hands of their enemy, a demon named Legion, before whom even the walls of the Vatican will fall.

The search for the key to salvation will take Erin and the others across centuries and around the world, from the dusty shelves of the Vatican's secret archives to lost medieval laboratories, where ancient alchemies were employed to horrific ends. All the while, they are hunted, besieged by creatures of uncanny skill and talent. 

As clues are dug free from ancient underground chapels and found frozen in icy mountain caverns, Erin will discover that the only hope for victory lies in an impossible act--one that will destroy not only her, but all she loves. To protect the world, Erin must walk through the very gates of Hell and face the darkest of enemies: Lucifer himself.

Author: Rebecca Cantrell
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-1409120520
Publisher: Orion