Claire Hamner Matturro was raised on tales of errant, unhinged kith and kin, whiskey making, and more than a few nefarious whoppers. Inspired by such stories, she wanted to write fiction, but became a lawyer instead. An honors graduate of The University of Alabama Law School, she became the first female partner in a large uptown Sarasota, Florida law firm. After a decade of lawyering, Claire taught at Florida State University College of Law and spent one long, cold winter as a visiting legal writing professor at the University of Oregon. She guest blogs, reviews books at Southern Literary Review, where she is an associate editor, and Compulsive Reader, maintains a butterfly garden year round in SW Florida, is active in writers critique groups, and counts her blessings daily. Claire maintains her long love affair with Florida through her fiction, as well as her life.
In addition to The Smuggler’s Daughter, her other books are: Skinny-Dipping (2004) (a BookSense pick, Romantic Times’ Best First Mystery, and nominated for a Barry Award); Wildcat Wine(2005) (nominated for a Georgia Writer of the Year Award); Bone Valley(2006) and Sweetheart Deal (2007) (winner of Romantic Times’ Toby Bromberg Award for Most Humorous Mystery), all published by William Morrow, and Trouble in Tallahassee (2018 KaliOka Press). Changing pace from romantic suspense to serious mystery, Claire wrote Privilege (Moonshine Cove 2019), a steamy legal thriller noir set on the Gulf coast of Florida. She and a co-author, psychologist Penny Koepsel, are polishing Wayward Girls, which their wonderful, fun, funny and radically energetic agent Liza Fleissig placed with Red Adept Publishing for a late summer 2021 publication.
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