Margarita Kauzlaskas (a/k/a Margot), a beautiful immigrant girl from Lithuania, is determined to have it all, no matter who she has to use to get it. The result is a long list of enemies, including a jealous husband, a revengeful ex-wife, an obsessed girlfriend, and a star-crossed lover. After convincing her four best friends into taking a reunion cruise to Bermuda, on the night of the ship's return to New York, a body is spotted going overboard. The next morning, Margot is nowhere to be found.Enter FBI Agent Richard Heller, whose early abandonment issues cause him to become obsessed with finding out what happened to the infamous femme fatale. As the investigation unfolds, an aura of foul play descends upon her friends as well as her enemies. With insufficient evidence to convict, the case grows cold––until he receives an anonymous envelope in the mail. Is it someone's idea of a joke, or can it help him solve the mystery once and for all? Maria was born in the Republic of San Marino, an enclave in the Apennine Mountains of northern Italy and is one of the smallest independent states in Europe. At the age of five, she immigrated to the United States with her family and settled in the Midwest. From the time she first set foot in an American school, English became her favorite subject and reading became her favorite pastime.After graduation, she went on to obtain a paralegal degree and worked in the legal field for almost 20 years where she enjoyed working alongside lawyers helping them get their cases ready for trial.After raising three children and living on the east coast as well as the west coast, she and her husband retired to the state of Nevada. There she joined the High Sierra Writers so she could finally pursue her true passion: writing. In October of 2019, she was thrilled to learn that she had won the HSW Manuscript Contest for her novel, Chapter Thirteen, which gave her the confidence to land her first publishing deal. It further ignited her drive to keep on writing and is currently working on her second novel.
