Lesbian Authors Guild
Martha Miller
Midwestern writer Martha Miller is the author of six books: Skin to Skin: Erotic Lesbian Love Stories, Nine Nights on the Windy Tree, Dispatch to Death, Retirement Plan, Widow and Tales from the Levee. Her stories, reviews, and articles are widely published in anthologies, magazines, periodicals, and newspapers. She’s won both Academic and other awards for her writing, including,
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Springfield Area Arts Council
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Raymond Carver Short Fiction Award
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Illinois Arts Council, Artist Fellowship. Writing. 1997.
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Poets and Writers Inc, Lila Wallace Award to Developing and Teaching Memoir Writing for People Living With AIDS. 1996.
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University of Illinois as Springfield, Craig A Brown, Outstanding AST Award. 1996. For Teaching Memoir writing.
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University of Illinois at Springfield, Applied Study Program, Outstanding AST Student Award. 1996.
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Sangamon State University, Rosie Richmond Writing Scholarship—for writing. 1995.
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Illinois Times Readers Poll, "Best Author in Springfield." 1995.
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Friends of Lincoln Library Fiction Writer of the Year Award. 1995.
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Springfield Area Arts Council Rosie Richmond Award--Fiction. 1994-1995.
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Both of her recent mysteries were short listed for Lambda Literary and Golden Crown awards.
She is a retired English and writing instructor who loves to read and loves basketball. She lives a quiet life with her wife Ann and two dogs and two cats.
Dispatch to Death
Cabdriver Trudy Thomas picks up a fare one fateful day, the beautiful and mysterious Anita Alverez. The next thing she knows, the dispatcher at her cab company is killed in cold blood, and Anita starts looking pretty suspicious. Despite her best intentions, Trudy is irresistibly drawn by Anita into an intrigue of drug running and shady politics. But if Trudy doesn't save Anita, who will?
Skin To Skin
Nineteen stories sharing the intimate, evocative, romantic moments of women's lives.
"These are warm, generous, sexy stories about women you will recognize" -Tee Corinne
Nine Nights on the Windy Tree
Prequel to Widow
Bertha Brannon is a lawyer who takes care of her grandmother and is usually broke because the work she often takes is pro bono or sliding scale for the domestic violence shelter or the public defender for juvenile cases. She has eighteen months of sobriety from a cocaine addiction. Late Friday afternoon, she’s looking forward to a long and peaceful weekend, when a woman comes into her office who wants to retain her for a murder she hasn’t yet committed. Bertha needs the rent money. Thus begins a living roller-coaster ride that includes betrayal, arson, and murder. While making trips back to the drug-using haunts, Bertha meets a police woman who wants her, but she’s not sure for what. Is it just sex or is there something more?
Widow
A Bertha Brannon Mystery
County Judge Bertha Brannon’s life blows up when her partner of twelve years, police sergeant Toni Matulis, the love of her life, is killed during a domestic violence call gone bad. Bertha is still trying to accept what’s happened when she gets the first of several threatening phone calls. This is followed by one dangerous incident after the next, one dead body after the last. The police are no help, so Bertha starts her own investigation and learns that Toni was working on a case that no one wanted her to solve, a case of corruption that goes all the way to the top.
Retirement Plan
What do you do when you fall through the loopholes in the system and all you have to rely on are your own wits?
Lois and Sophie have scrambled and saved for years, planning for their retirement in Florida. But now they've lost it all, and Lois's sniper training from her long-ago service as an Army nurse leads to a desperate career choice.
When Detective Morgan Holiday is assigned to investigate a spate of sniper killings, it's just one more stress point in her already overburdened life. But as she grows increasingly solitary—coping with an Alzheimer’s-plagued mother who refuses to be confined to a nursing home, and a police partner counting the days to retirement—she comes to realize that these murders may cut close to home.
A modern morality tale of justice, retribution, and women who refuse to be politely invisible.
Tales from the Levee
“Different is a brave thing to be,” a mother tells her five-year-old daughter. During the 1960s and 1970s, when things for gays and lesbians were starting to change in larger cities, in the Midwest, different was not a safe thing to be. A memorable cast of characters, a sympathetic, believable, tight-knit community of friends and rivals fill out the interconnected stories with butches, femmes, go-go dancers, and drag queens who try to find their way in an unaccepting culture by becoming a family of choice. Anyone who has ever been on the outside looking in will feel at home on “the levee.”