Lantern author

Zeta Carlton

Midlife mayhem, small-town mysteries, and a little everyday magic.

Paranormal midlife women's fictionParanormal cozy mysteriesCozy Fantasy

94,307published words across 1 Lantern story

Behind the byline

About the author

Zeta Carlton believes that discovering your magic—and stumbling across the occasional dead body—is the perfect cure for a midlife rut. She writes paranormal women's fiction and cozy mysteries dedicated to seasoned heroines who are old enough to know better, but suddenly powerful enough not to care.

When she isn't busy dreaming up supernatural cold cases or snarky familiars, Zeta can usually be found hunting for vintage treasures, drinking entirely too much coffee, and convincing herself that the creaking in her house is just the wind. She loves writing stories that prove life's greatest adventures (and trickiest whodunits) often begin well after forty.

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On Lantern

Stories by Zeta Carlton

Paranormal Cozy Mystery

Appraising the Afterlife

The mirror comes up cold, monogrammed T.V., and it isn’t done yet.

By the time Trix McGlone gets home from her first solo estate sale, there’s a trickster spirit riding shotgun in raccoon form. He introduces himself as Pockets and gets straight to the point: the mirror is only the first piece. Trisha Vantree, blamed and run out of Glencross County decades ago for a theft the whole county still believes she committed, left herself behind in silver and cloth and paper, scattered through every estate sale Trix will ever work.

Reuniting them means reopening a case nobody wants solved, least of all the families whose good names depend on Trisha staying guilty and gone. It means going up against Ruben Brasch, the competitive, entirely too charming owner of the county’s only auction house, every single time a piece comes up for bid.

Trix built a business out of finding out what things are actually worth. This time it might cost her the quiet life she just started building and hand her a rival who won’t stay just a rival. Trisha Vantree has waited fifty years for somebody to finally look. Trix isn’t putting the mirror down.