Author: Frankie Bow

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Spotlight and Giveaway: Secrets in the Stones, a Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mystery

This book is amazing and I loved every page…The plot is very intriguing, well-developed, full of suspense.
~LibriAmoriMiei

Within the mysteries of the body, especially those who have been murdered, 18th-century anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone specializes in uncovering the tell-tale clues that lead towards justice…Newly released from the notorious asylum known as Bedlam, Lady Lydia Farrell finds herself in an equally terrifying position–as a murder suspect–when she stumbles upon the mutilated body of Sir Montagu Malthus in his study at Boughton Hall.Meanwhile Dr. Thomas Silkstone has been injured in a duel with a man who may or may not have committed the grisly deed of which Lydia is accused. Despite his injury, Thomas hopes to clear his beloved’s good name by conducting a postmortem on the victim. With a bit of detective work, he learns that Montagu’s throat was slit by no ordinary blade, but a ceremonial Sikh dagger from India–a clue that may be connected to the fabled lost mines of Golconda.
From the mysterious disappearance of a cursed diamond buried with Lydia’s dead husband, to the undying legend of a hidden treasure map, Thomas must follow a trail of foreign dignitaries, royal agents–and even more victims–to unveil the sinister and shocking secrets in the stones…

About The Author  
Since leaving Oxford University with a History degree, Tessa Harris has been a journalist and editor, contributing to many national publications such as The Times and The Telegraph. She has also acted as a literary publicist for several well-known authors. Readers can visit her website at tessaharrisauthor.com.
Enter to win a print copy by leaving a comment in reply to this question: Other than the Dr. Silkstone mysteries, what is your favorite historical mystery? One commenter will be chosen at random.

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Guest Post and Giveaway: Kait Carson, author of Death by Sunken Treasure

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When Hayden Kent’s mentor and friend discovers her son Mike’s dead body, dressed in full scuba attire, washed up on Pigeon Key, she needs Hayden. Her paralegal and dive skills may help unravel the tragedy of Mike’s last days. He’d recently discovered a sunken Spanish galleon and rumors that he hit the mother lode ran through the Keys like wildfire.
death by sunken treasure
Hayden’s dive on the treasure site uncovers gold, and clues that Mike’s death was something far more sinister than an accident. When two different wills, both signed the day Mike died, are delivered to the courthouse, the suspect list grows, as do the threats against her. The danger escalates as she tries to save herself, discover the motive, and find the killer.

Deep Fears

Guest Post by Kait Carson

 
I’ve never found a body underwater, or treasure for that matter. Not unless you count all the quarters. For some reason people lose quarters at sea. I can’t imagine what they’re doing with them, but I bet I’ve found $20 underwater. All in quarters. Someday, I’ll have to go out on one of those commercial fishing boats. Maybe it’s a tradition, catch a fish, toss in a quarter. Loss a fish, toss in a quarter. Now that’s more likely. Problem is I wouldn’t last on a fishing boat. I’d catch sight of a pretty reef below and splash! I’d be in the water and heading for the bottom.
Like my protagonist, I’m a SCUBA diver. Neither one of us can imagine life on land without the beauty of the deep. She’s the one who finds the bodies and the treasure. Maybe I should plan a couple of dives with her. For treasure. Not for bodies. Nothing wrong with a doubloon or two in the jewelry box.
No Regulator
 
There’s more treasure under the water than gold and silver (although finding some of that would be fun). The biggest treasure of the sea is the breathtaking beauty. Swimming with the fishes in my world is a good thing, and one I’m passionate about. I used to say that I made a bad trade when I swapped gills for lungs at birth. Then I discovered humans don’t have gills at any time in their development. So much for that little bit of trivia from my personal garden of misinformation! Still, you get the idea, and you have to admit, it sounds good.
When the warm water closes over my head and I follow the anchor line to the bottom, I’m at home. It doesn’t matter if I’m in a crowd of fifty divers or with only my favorite dive buddy. I’m more alive than at any other time. The soft kiss of the sea eases any tension. The in and out sound of my own breathing fades into the background and little things fill my vision. Cushion starfish often line a sandy bottom, looking more cartoon than real. Schools of fish, my favorite are the silversides. They form a shiny curtain under the sea and undulate as if controlled by a single puppeteer. Startle them and the entire school will flit off as if it were one fish.
Forests of staghorn coral create surreal structure. Perfect domes of brain coral sprout colorful Christmas tree worms that disappear in a puff of coral dust when the diver gets too close. Pillar coral stands tall and yellow nearly shoulder to shoulder. It’s here that the stingrays often hide. Covering their wings with sand and showing only two humps of eyes. Conchs pod their way across the bottom and Florida lobster wave antenna looking for all the world like they are playing out the King of the World scene from Titanic.
Follow me
This is my world, and Hayden’s. And it’s at risk. Seventy-one percent of the world’s surface is ocean. That’s huge. Yet UNESCO estimates that eighty percent of marine pollution comes from land-based sources, this is runoff, sewage, just plain dumping and the ever-ubiquitous plastic. Plastic is estimated to be responsible for the death of one million seabirds and one hundred thousand marine mammals per year. The effects of pollution on the reef are clear. The reef is bleaching, the water often has a murky quality, coral are dying, fish populations are failing, some from overfishing, some from habitat change, some from a myriad of fishy illnesses that have become more common as the ecosystem weakens. We may never be able to undo all of the damage done, but if we act responsibly, we can lessen the new damage. It’s our responsibility, and it should be our joy.
So, here’s a secret for Island Confidential…the next body buried might just be the deep blue sea.
Thank you for having me. It’s been fun to be here and to share a little bit about my book and about Hayden and my passion for a healthy ocean.
Do you dive? Sail? Or is a nice hot bath the closest you get to open-water adventure? Enter to win an autographed copy of Death by Sunken Treasure by leaving a comment on this post.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author photos 009
Kait Carson spent a lifetime living and working in the tropical paradise of south Florida. She opted for a day job as a paralegal practicing in the world of high-end estates and probate litigation. Legal pads give way to a keyboard in the evening and Kait spins tales of murder and mayhem set in the steamy Florida heat. Like her protagonist, Hayden Kent, Kait is an accomplished SCUBA diver. She lives with her husband, six rescue cats and three tropical birds at an airpark in Florida. Not too far from the water.
Keep up with Kait

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Interview: Marty Wingate, author of The Skeleton Garden

USA Today bestselling author Marty Wingate’s Potting Shed series continues as expert gardener Pru Parke digs up a Nazi warplane—and a fresh murder.

Texas transplant Pru Parke has put down roots in England, but she never dreamed she’d live in a grand place such as Greenoak. When her former employers offer Pru and her new husband, former Detective Chief Inspector Christopher Pearse, the use of their nineteenth-century estate while they’re away for a year, she jumps at the chance. Sweetening the deal is the prospect of further bonding with her long-lost brother, Simon, who happens to be Greenoak’s head gardener. But the majestic manor has at least one skeleton in its closet—or, rather, its garden.
Working on renovations to the extensive grounds, siblings Pru and Simon squabble about everything from boxwood to bay hedges. But when the removal of a half-dead tree turns up the wreckage of a World War II–era German fighter plane and a pile of bones, the arguments stop. That is, until a rival from Simon’s past pays a surprise visit and creates even more upheaval. It’s suddenly clear someone is unhappy their secrets have been unearthed. Still, Pru’s not about to sit back and let Simon take the fall for the dirty deed without a fight.

Q: Aloha Marty, and welcome back! Tell us about your protagonist, Pru.
A: Pru Parke is a middle-aged American gardener who, just three years earlier, moved to England. This drastic change in her life made great sense to Pru – her mother was English and Pru grew up with stories about her mother’s life as a girl – although her friends back in Dallas thought she was crazy. The Skeleton Garden is book four in the series, and so in only three years, a great deal has happened. She’s married for the first time, working with a brother she never knew she had, and living in a lovely house in the south of England. Pru is stubborn but kind and hates to argue. She’s always been known as a bit of a Pollyanna.
Q: How much of you is in Pru? How would you feel about her if you met her in real life?
A: I love soup – and so does Pru. We have a Southern background in common, although really she’s from Texas, not the deep South. And we both love gardening and England – so I think we’d be friends.
Q: Do your characters change and evolve throughout consecutive books in the series?
A: That’s what I love about a series – there can be an over-arching story arc for the character throughout with small changes in each book as they relate to the plot of that particular story. Pru arrives in England with no family – an only child, both parents dead. But she has become accustomed to making her family out of those closest to her, and so in book one (The Garden Plot) we meet her London friend Jo and Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. Pru believes Mr. Wilson is being unjustly suspected of murder, which, she feels, is totally preposterous – and so she sets about to prove his innocence. In each book we see her make a family – it just so happens that now, she really does have a brother. (Read book two for that story – The Red Book of Primrose House.)
Q: Have you ever thought of killing someone that you know in real life–on the pages of a murder mystery, I mean?
A: That’s funny. I’ve heard of authors who get fed up with someone and so use that person as the victim. And I’ve had people say to me (when I’m researching a place for the next book) that they have a few names they’d like to recommend as victims. I treat this as a joke – at least I hope it is. I have not turned anyone I know in real life into a victim.
Yet.
Q: How realistic is your setting? Do you take liberties, or are you true to life?
A: I am true to life – and I take liberties. The Skeleton Garden is based on a real village outside of Romsey in the south of England – although I’ve built up the village a bit. I love pubs, pub names, and pub signs, and have a fun time creating those – often an amalgamation of the many places I’ve visited. The Robber Blackbird is made up, but I hope that readers will enjoy the description of its sign and the interior and the cellars. (The German fighter plane buried in the garden – true!)
Q: When the movie or TV series is made, who plays the major parts?
A: Well, very soon, Renee Zellweger will be old enough. She needs to dye her hair brown, though. And for Christopher – I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing Clive Owen. Would you?

Q: What’s the worst and best advice you’ve heard or received as an author?
A: Writers – especially new writers – are always getting advice on how to write, and loads of published authors have put in their two-cents-worth, writing their own books on how to write. I suppose the best advice I’ve received is “just write.” Start – get something down and go from there. The editing process is quite freeing once you get to that stage. The worst advice is the kind that tells me what I must do, instead of letting me figure out my own process. “You must write a first draft straight through – don’t stop and edit!” is a common edict. No thanks, that’s not how I do it. Learning about the many different ways writers write is wonderful – being told how I should do it is not.

 

About The Author  
is the author of three previous Potting Shed mysteries: The Garden Plot, The Red Book of Primrose House, and Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Her new Birds of a Feather Mystery series debuted with The Rhyme of the Magpie. Wingate is a regular contributor to Country Gardens and other magazines. She also leads gardening tours throughout England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and North America. More Potting Shed and Birds of a Feather mysteries are planned.
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The Kryptonite of Smart Decisions? Overconfidence

PAFF_030816_OverconfidenceKryptonite_newsfeatureResearch shows that people in general are overconfident, but entrepreneurs appear to be particularly prone to cockiness.
About half of new companies fail within five years, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite the imposing failure rate for new businesses, entrepreneurs are often quite confident that their ventures are going to succeed. One survey of 3,000 entrepreneurs found that 81% believed that their chance of success was 70% or higher; and a whopping 33% estimated their chance of success to be 100%.
New research from psychological scientists Daylian Cain (Yale University), Don A. Moore (University of California, Berkeley), and Uriel Haran (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) suggests that entrepreneurs may be the victims of their own better-than-average beliefs.
Across three experiments, the researchers showed that the better a person believes they are relative to others on a task, the higher the likelihood that they will decide to compete on that task. This overconfidence leads to larger numbers of competitors in “easy” markets, which could provide one reason why so many entrepreneurs make the mistake of confidently entering markets that are already overflowing with competition.
“Naturally, if people believe their chance of success is higher than that of the competition, it will increase their willingness to enter contests or start new businesses, even when their objective chances of succeeding are not particularly good,” the researchers explain.
In one of their overconfidence studies, 160 participants completed two math and logic puzzles – one easy and one difficult. After completing the quizzes, they could choose to enter one of their quiz scores into a competition market against other anonymous players.
The higher their score relative to other competitors, the more “tickets” they would be able to enter into a drawing for a cash prize, and the higher their chance of winning. Half of the participants were told that the difficult quiz was associated with a large prize ($90) and the easy quiz was associated with a smaller prize ($45), whereas the prize values were reversed for the other group of participants.
Regardless of prize size, people overwhelmingly preferred to compete in the easy-quiz market: Only 53 individuals chose to compete in the difficult-quiz market. This meant that the easy market was flooded with competition, driving the odds of winning the cash prize down.
“Our experiments revealed that this tendency of people to flock to competitions characterized by easy tasks is driven by their beliefs that they are better than others on these easy tasks but worse than others (or at least, not so much better than others) on difficult tasks,” Cain and colleagues write.
This finding supports previous research on overconfidence conducted by Moore and Albert Mannes of the University of Pennsylvania. In a study published in Psychological Science, Moore and Mannes found that people tended to overconfident in their estimates, even after receiving accurate feedback.
When it comes to opening a new business, Cain and colleagues make the argument that it is not whether one can make a hamburger that leads to success at opening a burger joint, but whether one can do so better than the competition.
“When it comes to relative standing, the performance of one’s competition can be just as important as one’s own performance,” they conclude. “As the old joke goes, when two campers are being chased by a hungry bear, it is not necessary to outrun the bear—only to outrun the other camper.”
 
References
Cain, D. M., Moore, D. A., & Haran, U. (2015). Making sense of overconfidence in market entry. Strategic Management Journal, 36(1), 1-18. doi: 10.1002/smj.2196
Mannes, A. E., & Moore, D. A. (2013). A behavioral demonstration of overconfidence in judgment. Psychological Science, 24(7), 1190-1197. doi: 10.1177/0956797612470700
from Association for Psychological Science » Minds for Business http://bit.ly/1XcRIR0

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Oh, you want to be an artist? Know what else starts with the letter "A"? (Accountant)

By Melissa Burns
Whether you are just starting out at college or are going to graduate this year, you should think carefully about what your future career is going to be. But probably not too carefully – we don’t live in the age of static jobs, so even if you make a wrong choice today, or made it some years before, it is never too late to change the course. Here is the list of careers that are going to be hot in the next decade – so keep an eye on them!

1.    Accountants/Auditors

It may not sound very exciting, but the fact is a fact – with the growing number of small businesses, self-employed people and entrepreneurship, the demand for professional accountants that can service a large number of independent businesses is going to grow as well. All these small firms and sole proprietors won’t be able to employ accountants and auditors full-time, and will need somebody to take care of their books and records.

2.    App Developers

Programming in general and app development in particular is a job of the future. This market has exploded in the course of the last few years, and ongoing research and development in such spheres as the Internet of Things, smart home systems, artificial intelligence and so on show that what we’ve seen so far is nothing but a tip of an iceberg. If you get a good education in this sphere, you will have no trouble finding a job with any firm from the list of the top iPhone development companies.

3.    Registered Nurses

The world’s population is getting older – the percentage of senior citizens, especially in developed countries, is growing steadily, and is going to noticeably change the world economy sooner than one may expect. All this aging population is going to need somebody to take care of them, and the number of registered nurses capable of doing so is already somewhat insufficient, which is reflected in rapidly growing demand for their services.

4.    Medical Specialists and Surgeons

Nursing is not the only sector of healthcare that is going to grow. High-end specialist physicians, and especially surgeons, are among the highest-paid jobs today, and this tendency isn’t going to alter any time soon. Their median pay is already very high and is only going to get higher – however, the level of education necessary to land such a job is not easily attainable as well. Not to mention that it requires a considerable initial investment.

5.    Veterinarians

Veterinarians do much more than simply treat dogs, cats and other domestic animals (although it is no small feat in its own right). They also inspect livestock, protect public health, keep our food supply from contamination and disease and in general have a far greater impact on our everyday life than one may think. In recent years, scientific advancements in veterinary medicine have created many new jobs, and their number is only going to expand in the years to come.
Of course, having a degree in one of these spheres doesn’t guarantee total job security, but it certainly is going to be higher than in most other areas.
Melissa Burns graduated from the faculty of Journalism of Iowa State University in 2008. Nowadays she  is an entrepreneur and independent journalist. Her sphere of interests includes startups, information technologies and how these ones may be implemented.
      
– See more at: http://stanford.io/1MaShdK
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How Caffeine Can Keep You Honest

PAFF_031116_CaffeineHonest_newsfeatureCaffeine is the most commonly used psychoactive drug in the world. And anyone who has ever worked in an office probably has a good reason for this socially accepted drug use: Caffeine enhances many cognitive processes, particularly when people are tired. This could explain why around 90% of Americans consume caffeine every day.
In addition to wreaking havoc on productivity and safety, researchers have found evidence that sleepiness may also play a role in unethical behavior. Sleep deprivation increases the presence of adenosine, an inhibitory neuromodulator that decreases cellular activity in the brain. One known mechanism by which caffeine counteracts the negative effects of sleep deprivation is by blocking adenosine receptors and increasing availability of the nerve cell messenger glutamate.
In one study, psychological scientists Michael Christian (University of North Carolina) and Aleksander P.J. Ellis (University of Arizona) found that sleep-deprived employees, those who received less than 6 hours of sleep in a night, were more likely to be engage in negative and unethical behavior at work the next day. However, in another study, Christian, Ellis, and colleagues David Welsh (University of Washington) and Ke Michael Mai (University of Arizona) found that providing tired people with a jolt of caffeine may help ward of negative behavior.
For the study, about 100 college students were kept awake all night in a lab where they could watch TV and play board games. The next morning, they were joined by a group of 100 well-rested students. At the start of the experiment, all of the students were given two pieces of mint-flavored gum. Half of the participants were given normal gum, but the other half received gum with 200 mg of caffeine — approximately the same amount of caffeine contained in a 12-ounce coffee.
Participants then took part in a money-sharing game. They were led to believe they were splitting $7 with another person in the study, but in reality they were playing against a computer opponent. In the game, the participant was given information about two options for splitting the money; in option A the participant received $5, while in option B they would receive $2. They could send their partner either an honest message (choose option A and you get $5) or a deceptive one (choose option B and you get $5).
Half the participants were assigned to a social influence condition, in which one of the experimenters encouraged them to send the deceptive message. In the control condition, participants received no encouragement either way.
Overall, sleep-deprived students were far more likely than their well-rested counterparts to send the deceptive message. But caffeine appeared to help tired students stick to their ethical principles. Among sleep-deprived students, those who had consumed caffeine were significantly less likely to send a deceptive message compared to their un-caffeinated counterparts, even under social pressure from the experimenter.
“The effects we found might be even stronger in an organizational context where employees not only have to stay awake all night but must also fulfill challenging job responsibilities during this period,” the researchers write.
Organizations need to be aware that the negative costs of sleep deprivation not only hurt employees, but can also hurt the bottom line. In a recent special section of Perspectives on Psychological Science, researchers argue that policymakers need to start taking steps to prioritize sleep health in the workplace with stronger regulation of work hours and schedules.
While Welsh and colleagues suggest that providing caffeine in the workplace is one way to help avoid ethical lapses, they also warn that caffeine is no substitute for getting a good night’s sleep.
 
Reference
Welsh, D. T., Ellis, A. P., Christian, M. S., & Mai, K. M. (2014). Building a self-regulatory model of sleep deprivation and deception: The role of caffeine and social influence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(6), 1268. doi: 10.1037/a0036202
from Association for Psychological Science » Minds for Business http://bit.ly/1MbEiih

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Spotlight: Plateful of Murder: A Terrified Detective Mystery by Carole Fowkes

Eating at Cannolis is murder on Claire’s figure…but chasing a singing killer could be deadly.
Book cover
 

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Private Detective Claire DeNardo is afraid of everything. Simple things like balloons, roller coasters, and hairpieces make her knees knock loud enough to be a band’s rhythm section. Unfortunately, the only job Claire can find is working for her Uncle Gino in his seedy detective agency. Until now, her cases have all been middle-aged men with trophy wives who needed watching. But Claire gets swept up in a murder case despite being afraid of conflict, bodily harm, and hurting anyone’s feelings. She enlists a jaded security guard, Ed, to help her. But when Ed is attacked and left comatose, Claire must stumble along by herself. Both the client who hired her and the handsome police detective want her off the case. When the wrong person is charged, it’s up to the terrified detective, to summon all the courage she can to find the true killer.

About the Author

Author
Carole Fowkes is the author of the cozy mystery series, “The Terrified Detective.” She has also had stories in a number of “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books and other similar anthologies. She’s a registered nurse and lives with her husband in Dallas, Texas.

Author Links
www.carolefowkes.com,
https://www.facebook.com/carolefowkes,
https://twitter.com/CaroleFowkes,
https://www.goodreads.com/carolefowkes
 

 

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Spotlight and #Giveaway: Shards of Murder

When a glass-making competition turns deadly, glass shop owner Savannah Webb must search for a window into a criminal’s mind…
As the new proprietor of Webb’s Glass Shop, Savannah has been appointed to fill her late father’s shoes as a judge for the Spinnaker Arts Festival, held in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. With her innovative glass works, the clear winner is Megan Loyola, a student of Savannah’s former mentor.
But when Megan doesn’t show up to accept her $25,000 award, rumors start flying. And when Savannah discovers the woman’s dead body on festival grounds, the police immediately suspect her of murder. To keep from appearing before a judge herself, Savannah sorts through the broken pieces of glass scattered around the victim for clues as to who took this killer competition too far.

 

>>>Enter to win a print copy of Shards of Murder<<<

 

About The Author  

Cheryl Hollon now writes full-time after she left an engineering career of designing and building military flight simulators in amazing countries such as England, Wales, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, and India. Fulfilling the dream of a lifetime, she combines her love of writing with a passion for creating glass art. In the small glass studio behind her house in St. Petersburg, Florida, Cheryl and her husband design, create, and produce fused glass, stained glass, and painted glass artworks. Visit her online at cherylhollon.com, on Facebook or on Twitter@CherylHollon.
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To Spot a Liar, Listen Closely

PAFF_030116_CatchaLiar_newsfeatureThe car company Volkswagen recently came under fire for purposely designing diesel engines to “cheat” emissions tests. Volkswagen is now facing billions of dollars in fines from countries around the world. Volkswagen’s CEO claims that he was unaware of the scheme, but German prosecutors are now probing the CEO for fraud charges.
It’s difficult and expensive for regulators to catch corporate fraud, but new insights from psychological science may eventually provide new techniques for spotting deception.
In general, research has shown that people are not very good at spotting lies. People tend to use nonverbal behaviors when they’re trying to spot a lie, but research suggests that vocal cues are much more reliable.
In a comprehensive review of the literature on lying, published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Aldert Vrij (University of Portsmouth) and colleagues give an example of this. Participants in one study were supposed to detect lies in a statement from a convicted murder. The more visual cues the participants reported, the worse their ability to distinguish between truths and lies. Those who mentioned nonverbal behaviors, like gaze aversion or fidgeting, as “tells” for lying had the lowest accuracy at spotting lies.
Instead, the study showed that listening carefully to what was being said was the best way to accurately discern the truth from a lie.
To find out more about verbal “tells” for lying, a team of researchers led by Judee Burgoon of the University of Arizona analyzed the speech of corporate fraudsters. Burgoon and colleagues analyzed over 1,000 statements made by the CEO and CFO of one company during six quarterly earnings conference calls. These two company executives were eventually convicted of fraud in multiple securities class action lawsuits.
The corporate earnings conference calls allowed the researchers to accurately compare lying during both scripted, as well as unscripted, speech. These calls are publicly broadcast, and follow a typical pattern; executives give an hour-long presentation on the company’s earnings, followed by an unscripted Q&A with financial analysts.
The research team hypothesized that lying would be more cognitive taxing than telling the truth. Compared to making a truthful statement, it might be easier to use simpler language during a lie.
“Because of the increased cognitive load and the human mind’s finite processing capacity, liars will have difficulty simultaneously maintaining a false story and producing linguistically complex utterances,” Burgoon and colleagues write. “In other words, the more difficult it is for deceivers to concoct a believable response, the more they must resort to simpler language.”
Previous experiments indicate that liars enlist specific strategies to try to distance themselves from their lies. They try to keep statements short and use vague or hedging language (e.g., “I guess” and “maybe” or “could,” “might”). Liars also tend to avoid first-person singular pronouns (e.g., “I,” “me,” “myself”), which are usually a clear signal that the speaker is taking ownership of a statement.
Using special software, the researchers analyzed sound recordings from these calls at a granular level. In order to differentiate between lies and true statements in the recordings, a financial expert was recruited to code the overstatements and lies related to financial fraud.
The analysis confirmed that there were certain speech patterns the executives fell into while lying. Fraud-related speech tended to be more “fuzzy” than non-fraudulent statements; the executives used more hedge words, more distancing language, and more uncertain statements. Contrary to their expectations, the researchers also found that fraudulent statements tended to be longer and more detailed than honest ones.
Executives also used more positive and fewer negative emotional words during fraudulent statements, “suggesting a desire to put a positive spin on what was being reported.”
The researchers caution that the results of this study are limited because this study was based on only two people from one company. However, as different types of data become increasingly available – including call transcripts, online chat logs, social media – researchers will have a bigger pool of materials to draw from.
“For better or worse, new frauds are exposed on a regular basis leading to an expansion of available data. As additional candidate scenarios and features become available, richer analysis is possible,” the researchers conclude.
 
References
Burgoon, J., Mayew, W. J., Giboney, J. S., Elkins, A. C., Moffitt, K., Dorn, B., … & Spitzley, L. (2015). Which spoken language markers identify deception in high-stakes settings? Evidence from earnings conference calls. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. doi: 10.1177/0261927X15586792
Vrij, A., Granhag, P. A., & Porter, S. (2010). Pitfalls and opportunities in nonverbal and verbal lie detection. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 11(3), 89-121. doi: 10.1177/1529100610390861
from Association for Psychological Science » Minds for Business http://bit.ly/1QS4rdA

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Spotlight: Murder in an Irish Village by Carlene O'Connor

“If Janet Evanovich and Maeve Binchy wrote a book together, Murder in an Irish Village would be the result. The Irish setting rings with authenticity and Siobhan O’Sullivan is a character to savor. She’s funny, feisty, and fearless. I want her to be my new best friend. I also want another book by Carlene O’Connor to read. This one is delicious fun.”—Laurien Berenson, author of Live and Let Growl

In the small village of Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, Natalie’s Bistro has always been a warm and welcoming spot to visit with neighbors, enjoy some brown bread and tea, and get the local gossip. Nowadays twenty-two-year-old Siobhán O’Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother, along with her five siblings, after the death of their parents in a car crash almost a year ago.
It’s been a rough year for the O’Sullivans, but it’s about to get rougher. One morning, as they’re opening the bistro, they discover a man seated at a table, dressed in a suit as if for his own funeral, a pair of hot pink barber scissors protruding from his chest.
With the local garda suspecting the O’Sullivans, and their business in danger of being shunned–murder tends to spoil the appetite–it’s up to feisty redheaded Siobhán to solve the crime and save her beloved brood.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR CARLENE O’CONNOR AND MURDER IN AN IRISH VILLAGE

“A smart whodunnit in an idyllic locale. I dare you not to be charmed by sleuth Siobhan and her siblings, the O’Sullivan Six.”—Barbara Ross, author of Musseled Out
“A delightful, funny, fast-paced romp of a book. O’Connor has written a vivid evocation of life in a small Irish town, an evocation replete with sharp characterizations and dialogue real enough to make you believe you’re sitting in an Irish pub. A satisfying read that will keep you entertained from the first to the last page.”—Isis Crawford, author of A Catered Tea Party
“The cheeky and close-knit repartee among the O’Sullivans…[and] their antics are sure to appeal to cozy fans, who will also appreciate the warmth and spirit of the people of Kilbane.”– Publishers Weekly
“The first in this new series set in an Irish village delivers charm, warmth, and a smartly plotted mystery. Sprinkled with Irish words and phrases, the dialogue is authentic. The plot unfolds nicely, with several layers linking the current crime to an earlier accident. Siobhan is strong-willed and tenacious, while also being likable and funny. A winning debut.”– RT Book Reviews, 4 Stars

About The Author  
Carlene O’Connor comes from a long line of Irish storytellers, or professional liars as she prefers to call herself. Her great grandmother emigrated from Ireland to America during The Troubles, and the stories have been flowing ever since. She has dual citizenship and divides her time between New York and the Emerald Isle. Of all the places across the pond she’s wandered, she fell most in love with a walled town in County Limerick and was inspired by the town to create Kilbane, County Cork.

 
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Looking for more small town mystery? get THE CASE OF THE DEFUNCT ADJUNCT

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