Lumi's Curiosities

​Lumi's Curiosities, the first in a contemporary romance series set in the world of antiques, is a heart-thumping, heartwarming novel of first love, repressed memories, nostalgia, and mystery.

Lumi Leski has returned to her Indiana hometown to open an antique shop after ten lonely years away, hoping she can slide back into the comforting life she'd had before. But her family has since moved away, her old friends have moved on, and she's still friendless and clueless as to how to change her lonely existence.

Maddy, an older neighbor with a Victorian home full of magnificent antiques, often shows off her vintage stereoscope cards and viewer. One day she is horrified to find an additional five disturbing, homemade cards. They depict upsetting scenes that trigger vague yet terrifying flashbacks for Maddy, who won't report what may be a threat to the police in case she is guilty of some crime she has forgotten.

Lumi agrees to help Maddy solve the mystery of the cards' images—what they represent from her history, who sent them, and why—and gains unexpected assistance from a group of decades-old letters purchased at an auction by accident. The engaging letters written from a mother to her newly married daughter offer clues to the origins and meaning of the mysterious stereoscope images, and they glide Lumi into her first-ever flirtation and romance with Nolan, a young policeman widower.

​However, the letters may not prevent Lumi from sabotaging herself out of a new relationship or help her to push Maddy past survivor's guilt and the wounds that repressed memories have kept open for decades.