Official Website of Historical Mystery Author
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My Story
Rose Johnson (pen name of Rosemarie Szostak) took the path less travelled when she was in college, and majored in science. She has now stepped off that path after a long and successful international career as an academic and a researcher.
When Rose is not writing mysteries and exploring the history of the Deep South, she, her husband, and her cadaver dogs help law enforcement find closure for families with missing loved ones. They live in a historic (post-Civil War) cotton plantation house on the outskirts of Atlanta Georgia and manage a flock of sheep whose bloodlines have been in her husband's family since the 1800s.
Rose is pictured here with one of her cadaver dogs, a bossie (border collie Aussie cross rescue). The picture was taken when they were training to find the dead in water, from a boat.
My Books
A German spy in Atlanta? It is 1917. The US has just entered the Great War. Two young women, bored with their place in Southern society, play a deadly game of cat and mouse to unearth a dark secret. From the well-known neighborhoods of genteel Atlanta to the seedy warehouse district they try to uncover a spy in their midst. Actual key figures, locations, and events of Atlanta 1917, documents and memoirs from that critical time in Atlanta history, intermingle with mystery, suspense, and ultimate horror of the Great Atlanta Fire in this gripping romantic suspense page-turner.
Enemy Fire
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A sassy, tenacious female protagonist. A ghost with a chilling demand. A little black dog that finds the dead.
Death is not the end. Angel Boudreaux, the granddaughter of famed New Orleans Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, helps spirits find closure. When the spirit of Miss Ida materializes on Angel’s doorstep, her request isn’t like the other spirits: This haint also wants her murderer dead. Under the moss-draped oaks and longleaf pines in 1913 South Georgia, evil has been coaxed from the grave and finding Miss Ida takes an unforeseen detour. Meanwhile, Angel adopts an unconventional partner to help. A small black bob-tailed dog she calls Boug, has a nose for the dead. As bodies pile up, Angel and Boug must navigate Voodoo, conjure spells, protection dolls, and even a Zombie potion in order to battle evil and figure out what happened to Miss Ida. Assisted by a Voodoo priestess, a witchdoctor, a sheriff, and three Civil War vets, Angel and Boug search for Miss Ida but are forced into battle with raw evil. How they honor Miss Ida’s unsettling request morphs into a horror they never counted on.