Zigzag Girl, by Ruth Knafo Setton, is a twisty contemporary mystery with a touch of magic, set in Atlantic City and the eerie New Jersey Pine Barrens.
Lucy Moon, a brilliant young magician with a mysterious past, works in the town’s theatre, staging performances of enchantment and conjure. But one night, during the ‘Sawing a Woman in Half’ trick, Lucy discovers her friend’s body in the box, dead.
As Lucy digs deeper, she uncovers a trail of murders and suspects. With the help of a fierce group of female magicians and mystics, she must expose the truth before she becomes the final act
The first magician I ever saw was my grandfather in Morocco—though he wouldn't have called himself one. He kept homing pigeons in brass cages on his roof terrace, and one afternoon we painted their wings and watched them fly. A rainbow of color lifting into the sky. That moment of wonder never left me.
I've spent my life chasing moments like that—magic that spills from the stage to the street. For a while I read Tarot cards for a living. I studied with master magicians. What I love about how magicians think isn't that they think outside the box—it's that for them, there is no box. They helped set my imagination free.
When I wrote Zigzag Girl, I wanted readers to experience the magic as Lucy Moon and Elvis Jones perform it onstage—the gasps, the impossible made real. But I also wanted to take readers backstage, behind the curtain, where the true magic happens: the sweat, the practice, the secrets, the trust between partners. That's where wonder lives, not just in the trick itself but in the people who devote their lives to creating it.
It all started with painted wings and pigeons taking flight.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Born in Morocco and raised in the Lehigh Valley, Ruth Knafo Setton is the author of the novel, The Road to Fez (Counterpoint Press). Her honors include awards and fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, PEN, CineStory, Nimrod, Cutthroat, Writer’s Digest, and residencies at Hedgebrook, Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a multi-genre author whose fiction, creative nonfiction, screenplays, and poetry have won many awards and appeared in journals and anthologies. A former fiction editor of Arts & Letters, she has taught Creative Writing and Multicultural Literature at Lehigh University and on Semester at Sea.
Golden Age of Hollywood Mystery / Humor / Detective
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: January 20, 2026
Number of Pages: 328
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SYNOPSIS:
A Babs Norman Hollywood Mystery
Against the backdrop of WWII, no one expected to find a murdered stagehand on a Warner Brothers sound stage. With so much at stake, Jack L. Warner hires Babs Norman and Guy Brandt, the two young private eyes who recently resolved his high-profile Maltese Falcon/Blackbird Killer Case. Social justice crusader Leon Lewis suspects local Nazi sympathizers are responsible. Lewis assigns a German stuntman, a veteran of the decadent subculture of Weimar Berlin nightlife and one of his newest operatives, to join forces with the private detectives.
According to Warner, the show must go on, but everything from bomb scares to the Japanese internment, to unruly parrots, forbidden love, and family crises conspires against solving the crime. “As Time Goes By,” actors Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and the rest of the Casablanca ensemble join the professional private eyes to round up the unusual suspects and capture the killer.
CHECK OUT THE REST OF THE BABS NORMAN MYSTERY SERIES:
Love 1940s classic movies? Treat yourself to the award-winning Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles (Book 1) and Bye, Bye Blackbird (Book 2) of Elizabeth Crowens’s Babs Norman Golden Age of Hollywood mystery series by Level Best Books.
Hi, everyone. I’m Elizabeth Crowens, and I just released Book 3 of my Babs Norman Golden Age of Hollywood Mystery series, Round Up the Unusual Suspects, about a murder on the Warner Brothers studio lot in 1942 where my PIs, Babs Norman and Guy Brandt, enlist the help of the cast of Casablanca to solve the mystery. Where did the title come from? There’s a famous line that Captain Louis Renault, the Vichy Chief of Police (played by Claude Rains), always says, and that’s, “Round up the usual suspects.” I just tweaked it a bit.
Whenever I launch a book, I do a few author interviews, but sometimes I get either the most bizarre questions, or the first answer that pops into my head is completely off the wall. For example, let’s talk about snacks. Apparently, a popular question to ask is what kind of snacks do I indulge in while in the writing zone? First of all, I shouldn’t be eating anything if I’m constantly counting my calories. Secondly, I’ve spilled coffee and cereal on enough keyboards that I should know better by now. There’s a dedicated spill zone to the left of my desk where my tan carpet has been permanently stained from reaching for a cup of coffee or putting one back and missing the end table. It’s gotten so bad that I purchased a peacock blue shaggy bathmat from Target and covered it up. Also, one of my favorite snacks is extra crunchy Cheetos, but the last thing I want to do is to get that neon orange cheese dust all over my computer! Yikes! Time to make a trip to the Apple Store.
Another question I get is what kind of music I listen to when I’m working? Generally, I can’t listen to music. It’s too distracting. Although on Sundays, I like to start out with Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, probably because I’m such a Stanley Kubrick film freak. Remember A Clockwork Orange? Yeah, I have strange tastes in film, but the cinematography from that movie, along with the first Star Wars, was what propelled me to work in the entertainment industry. So, on most Sundays, I indulge in classical music. Saturdays when I’m cleaning around the house, I get into lively rock and roll like The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, or the B-side of Abbey Road by The Beatles. I play that one a lot and also like their song, "Paperback Writer." Gee, I wonder why? LOL
When it comes to editing, I must have absolute quiet. Pretty much the same for writing, but on occasion, and only if I’m working in the early evening, a glass of wine and movie soundtracks do the trick. My favorite film composer is Hans Zimmer. But for the most part, since I like it quiet with no distractions, I tend to wake in the middle of the night to write. For that, I need my coffee.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Elizabeth Crowens is bi-coastal between New York and Los Angeles, where she has worn many hats in the entertainment industry. Awards include Lefty nominee for Best Humorous Mystery, Agatha nominee in multiple categories, MWA-NY Chapter Leo B. Burstein Scholarship, NYFA grant, Eric Hoffer Award, Glimmer Train, Killer Nashville Claymore finalist, Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Top Picks, two Grand prize and six First prize Chanticleer Awards. Crowens writes Golden Age of Hollywood mystery with humor and alternate history in her Time Traveler Professor series. She also has a popular Caption Contest on Facebook.
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