Missing Pieces: A Small Town Amnesia Romance with a Suspense Twist

It’s a July afternoon as I write this — which feels right, because that’s exactly when Missing Pieces begins: on a mountain highway outside Elken Grove, GA, where a woman is walking down the center line with no shoes, no bag, no name, and no memory of how she got there.

Missing Pieces is my new small-town amnesia romance and the first book in the Larsson Hearts series. It comes with a heroine who gets to build herself from scratch, a gruff arborist who doesn’t do the sensible thing, someone asking questions around town that nobody should be asking — and Boss, whom my early readers have unanimously declared the true hero of the book. (They may have a point.)

It’s a novella: one cozy, slightly suspenseful evening of reading, with a guaranteed happy ending. Everything you need to decide whether it’s your kind of book is right below — the blurb, the tropes, and the very moment Keenan finds her.

Blurb

She doesn’t know her name. He doesn’t know what to do with that.

Keenan Larsson finds her on the highway—dazed, bruised, walking in the middle of the road on a July afternoon with no memory of who she is or how she got there. He’s an arborist with a cabin in the woods and a quiet life that suits him just fine. The sensible thing would be to drop her at the hospital and get back to it. He doesn’t do the sensible thing. She calls herself Jane. She’s wry about it, funny in a way that makes him think whoever she was before, she wasn’t boring. The problem is that someone put her on that road—and someone is now asking questions around Elken Grove, looking for a Jane Doe who survived something she still can’t remember. Keenan isn’t going to let her face that alone. He just hadn’t counted on not wanting to let her go at all. And when the missing pieces finally surface, they’ll change everything—except the one thing that matters most.

Perfect for readers who love a gruff hero who falls first and a heroine who has to find herself before she can choose him.

Small town romance with a mystery thread, an open door heat level, approximately 28,000 words. Book 1 in the Larsson Hearts series. Each book stands alone with its own HEA. No cliffhanger, no cheating.

Excerpt

He saw her a half-second later: a figure on the highway, walking down the center line. Moving wrong—too slow, too sideways, one hand drifting out like she was reaching for something that wasn’t there.

The truck shuddered, tires grabbing asphalt. Boss braced hard against his harness and let out a short, sharp whine.

Keenan pulled onto the shoulder, hazards blinking, and sat with his hands still on the wheel, assessing the situation.

No car. No bag. One shoe—he could see it from here, a bare foot on hot asphalt. Moving like she didn’t know where she was going, or maybe didn’t quite know where she was.

He walked toward her, and a familiar, purposeful quiet settled in his chest. Later he would notice that there hadn’t been any hesitation. No calculation, no wondering whether it was his place, no standing there deciding. She needed help; he was here; that was the entire equation. He hadn’t even had to think about it.

She heard him coming. Her head turned toward the sound—not sharp and startled but slow, underwater-slow, like the signal was taking too long to arrive.

“Hello?” Her voice came out thin and frightened, barely carrying in the heavy air. “Is anyone there? Help. Please.”

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