SHUNNING SARAH by award winning author Julie Kramer centers on a clash of cultures: flashy TV news versus a reclusive Amish community. Iconic storyteller James Patterson gives the novel high praise: “Remember Witness – that truly thrilling movie with Harrison Ford in his heyday? Shunning Sarah is an even better suspense story.”
Kramer’s latest book involves a homicide victim who can’t be identified without the help of a forensic artist. When she is finally recognized as Sarah Yoder, a young Amish woman, her family objects to the police sketch of her face being publicized by the media because of the biblical ban on graven images. But when TV reporter Riley Spartz finds a clue the cops miss, she uncovers a dark web of fraud and deception—driven by motives as old as the Bible: sex and money. “I grew up on a farm not far from an Amish family,” Kramer said, “and I spent a career in television news, so SHUNNING SARAH was a way to combine both parts of my life in one adventure. As I started to write, I immediately saw the potential for conflict and that always makes for a good read.” In her thriller series, Kramer is known for weaving real life into fiction. SHUNNING SARAH is set near Harmony, a small Minnesota tourist town and incorporates the Amish hair-cutting controversy currently unfolding in Ohio.
“I’m highly influenced by happenings around me as I write,” Kramer said. “I tend to live my research and see character and plot possibilities everywhere.”
A journalist turned novelist, Kramer writes a bestselling series (STALKING SUSAN, MISSING MARK, SILENCING SAM, KILING KATE) set in the desperate world of TV news. Kramer is a career television news producer who ran the acclaimed I-Team at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis before working as a freelance news producer for NBC and CBS networks. “People always question how the media works,” she said. “And I think that’s one of the strengths of my books. I take people inside how newsrooms make decisions in times of crisis – such as which missing people get publicity and which don’t. And that can get ugly. But it makes for provocative stories.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Julie Kramer is a winner of the Minnesota Book Award and the RT Reviewers’ Award for Best First Mystery. She has also been a finalist for the Anthony, Barry, Shamus, Mary Higgins Clark, Daphne du Maurier, and RT Reviewers’ Best Amateur Sleuth Awards. She lives with her family in White Bear Lake, MN.
