All website contents © Ellen Byerrum, except as specified. All rights reserved.
BREAKING NEWS
My Crime of Fashion Mysteries relaunch continues with
The first four books
in the series
are also available in new editions with beautiful new
covers.
And more new Crime of Fashion editions are coming soon.
My new thriller
is now available inebook
and trade paperback editions
from Amazon.
(The Ellen Street Observer) for my writing
news and book events, and even the occasional recipe.
Ellen Byerrum is a novelist, playwright, reporter, former Washington D.C. journalist, and a graduate of private investigator school
in Virginia.
The Woman in the Dollhouse is her first suspense thriller. It introduces a young woman named Tennyson
Claxton, whose mind seems to hold the memories of two very different women.
Ellen writes the Crime of Fashion
Mysteries, starring that stylish female sleuth Lacey Smithsonian, a reluctant fashion reporter in Washington D.C., "The City
Fashion Forgot." Two of these mysteries, Killer Hair and Hostile Makeover, were filmed for the Lifetime Movie Network. The latest
in the series is Lethal Black Dress.
Her novels, her middle-grade mystery, The Children Didn’t See Anything, and
her spooky Halloween ghost story, The Last Goodbye of Harris Turner, are all available on Amazon.
Photo of Ellen Byerrum © Joe
Henson
Lethal Black Dress
The Tenth Crime of Fashion Mystery
An innocent little black dress becomes a lethal black dress at the most
secure event in Washington, D.C., the fabled White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
There's something very strange
about a TV reporter's vintage black gown and its stunning emerald lining. When the woman dies mysteriously, fashion reporter
Lacey Smithsonian follows her sixth fashion sense about that lethal black dress. Lacey's investigation brings her face to face with
spies, lies, danger and jealousy, the green-eyed monster.
But will our fashionable style sleuth also discover
that green is the color of death?
KILLER HAIR
The First Crime of Fashion Mystery
Lacey Smithsonian looked down at the unfortunate woman in the coffin and thought,
"Oh my God, that is the worst haircut I've ever seen."
And they say you can't die from a bad haircut...
Killer Hair is the book that began the entire Crime of Fashion Mystery series, and launched my stylish sleuth Lacey Smithsonian
on her comic (yet romantic) adventures in crime-solving, couture, and love.
It's also the book that began
my career as a mystery novelist, and I'm proud to present it in a brand-new edition that reflects my original vision for Lacey and
her world.
DESIGNER KNOCKOFF
The Second Crime of Fashion Mystery
If you can't dress up for the United States Senate, what can you dress up
for? Lacey wondered. Apparently not much. Poorly dressed, badly coiffed, regrettably groomed? Ah yes, the journalists...
Designer Knockoff has always been, for me, the heart and soul of my series. This is the book where we first discover what Lacey's
Aunt Mimi (and her trunk full of dusty old dress patterns) means to her, how they inspire her, and how that ancient steamer trunk
leads her into a decades-old mystery -- and helps her find the solution.
Mimi's legacy of heart, soul
and style lives on in Lacey Smithsonian.
HOSTILE MAKEOVER
The Third Crime of Fashion Mystery
Hostile Makeover was inspired by the reality TV shows dealing in "extreme
makeovers," from surgical to stylistic. I wondered what might happen when that outer “ugly duckling” becomes a beautiful swan. Might
her soul suffer as radical a transformation? Would the dream of beauty and fame become a nightmare? How would an extreme
makeover change the “lucky” girl and those around her in the celebrity world of high fashion modeling and design, as well as her loved
ones?
And how would Lacey be drawn into solving a mystery in which the inner self and the outer façades of
both victim and killer seem to be at war?
GRAVE APPAREL
The Fifth Crime of Fashion Mystery
Why is Lacey ruining Christmas?!
The holidays are
a season of joy in Our Nation’s Capital, but fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian learns there’s no room at the inn for the hungry and
homeless.
Lacey is tangled up in a scandal called “Sweatergate,” the paper’s food editor is on a baking
boycott, everyone seems to be mad at everyone else, and poor Lacey is (unfairly) getting blamed. When the office Grinch is brutally
assaulted with a giant candy cane and a homeless child dressed in a stolen shepherd’s robe is the only witness, Lacey searches the
snowy back alleys of D.C. on a rescue mission to keep a killer from ruining Christmas.
THE WOMAN IN THE DOLLHOUSE
A novel of suspense
What’s in a name? Shakespeare said “a rose by any other name...” And what’s in
a book title? I’ve fought publishers for great titles that I’m proud I stuck with. But what about The Dollhouse in the Crawlspace?
I think it's my best book so far, and reviewers agree that my new thriller is intense, gripping and affecting—yet my readers have
resisted picking it up.
It's been hard to get it placed online in the “right company,” books similar
in style and theme, and perhaps the original title suggests it's a creepy horror story like Toys in the Attic, which it definitely
is not. But I'm very proud of my heroine Tennyson Claxton and her odyssey to discover who she really is and where she belongs
in the world. She deserves another chance -- and a new title!
Here it is: The Woman in the Dollhouse. Please
join me (and Tennyson) on this journey, and let me know what you think.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST CORSET
The Fourth Crime of Fashion Mystery
A Romanov princess died in this corset! Who wouldn't kill
for it? Bloody tales of the execution of the Romanovs and the jewels they’d hidden in their clothing inspired my fourth Lacey Smithsonian
mystery. Some say only three jewel-filled corsets were found on the bodies of the four Romanov princesses. What if the fourth corset
had been stolen? A secret someone took to the grave, and that others would kill or die for? A lost corset full of priceless gems:
the perfect mystery for an intrepid fashion reporter! Where is it now, a century later? And what if Lacey broke loose from Washington,
D.C., to chase the news story of a lifetime? What if?