MATTURRO DELIVERS PLUCKY SOUTHERN CHARM
WITH A SIDE OF MAMA DRAMA

Sweetheart Deal
By Claire Matturro

Drenched in southern charm, laced with family shenanigans, and packed with quirky humor, Claire Matturro’s SWEETHEART DEAL (William Morrow, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers; On Sale: 10/30/07; $23.95) is a smart and sassy new suspense novel about a lawyer who must roll up her sleeves and take on the case of her life—her mama.

After engaging critics and readers alike with Wildcat Wine, Bone Valley, and the award-winning Skinny-Dipping, Claire Matturro returns with the sharp, sexy and loveably neurotic vegetarian attorney Lilly Belle Rose Cleary. Lilly is yanked from her life in Florida when her brother Dan phones with the startling news that their reclusive, phobic mother—who hasn’t left her house in years—is not only lying comatose in the local hospital, but is accused of murder. Though Lilly vowed to never return to her hometown (for good reason!) after graduating from high school twenty years ago, she cannot refuse Dan’s plea, especially given such strange circumstances; it seems that Lilly’s mother shot a man in a dispute over a freezer full of voodoo eggs (yes, voodoo eggs).

Lilly arrives in Georgia just in time to discover the body of her old high school crush, a county commissioner with some dubious dealings, smothered under a load of sweet feed. Then, a trio of meddling teens, including Lilly’s nephew, goes missing, along with an albino ferret harboring some serious Lassie fantasies. If all this isn’t enough to keep Lilly half crazy and too busy, she’s also got to juggle someone trying to kill her over-sedated mother along with the demands of her work, including a pesky lawsuit back in Sarasota that needs fixing pronto. But despite being armed with little more than her cell phone, her cunning, and her high tolerance for risk no matter how tumultuous the circumstances, Lilly always seems to crack the case with her shrewd sense of humor intact.

Claire Hamner Matturro, a real-life lawyer born in Alabama and now a Georgia resident, delightfully captures the eccentric Southern culture and complex legal world both she and her protagonist share. With a plot shot full with enough attorney adventures to satisfy any die-hard legal thriller fan, a sense of poignancy bred from tackling tough family issues, and a cast of characters richer than a bowl of cheese grits, Matturro conjures up a compelling case for SWEETHEART DEAL.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Claire Hamner Matturro earned an M.A. and a law degree with honors from The University of Alabama before returning to the region of her childhood, southwest Florida. In Sarasota, she practiced law at the prominent Dickinson and Gibbons law firm, becoming its first female partner.

After nearly a decade of lawyering, Matturro spent six years on the writing faculty at Florida State University College of Law, before turning her talents to writing fiction. Matturro has won the Romantic Times Award for Best First Mystery, first place in the SEAK Contest for Legal Fiction, and was nominated for a Barry Award in 2005, as well as receiving a Georgia Author of the Year nomination in 2006.

In 2007, Matturro was a visiting professor in legal writing at the University of Oregon School of Law, but is now back in the house her husband built in rural Georgia. There, they share a small organic blueberry farm with their 21-year-old cat.
Praise for Claire Matturro’s Lilly Cleary Series

(A note about the masthead: Chloe Weil, webmaster and graphic artist, took a painting by my friend, Florida artist Ted Morris, and created the wonderful masthead you see on this website. Visit Ted Morris' website at www.floridalosttribes.com. The art work on this website is copyrighted. Please do not copy or abuse the artists' rights. Thank you.)

The excerpt behind the masthead:
“Before us lay the palmetto scrubs where rattlers and boars and the myriad forms of wildlife that were capable of harming a person lived their lives, but also where the scrub jays, white-tailed deer and the gopher tortoises went placidly about their gentle lives. Perhaps a panther or a jaguarundi might still prowl, wholly unaware of the monster housing developments working its way toward their meager habitat, guaranteeing their eventual extinction. Florida wilderness is nothing if it isn't the ultimate example
of the yin and yang.”
Lilly, in Wildcat Wine.