Today, senior reviewer Teresa Cross is sharing her top reads of 2019!  As a first-grade teacher in North Carolina Public Schools, my favorite past time is to read. After reading children books all day I love to snug up under a blanket with a great author and I have exceeded my goal of 50 novels this year. I love reading mysteries and thrillers with a lot of suspense. Even cozy mysteries are fun to read. This year started out with a lot of great novels and is ending with some that are just as amazing! After reviewing for Fresh Fiction since 2014, I have to say this year had the best novels. I will run down some of my favorite that I have reviewed.  I will start with my favorites first. BREWED AWAKENING written by Cleo Coyle is the top of all my novels that I read this year! Coyle has the greatest series, The Coffeehouse Mysteries and this is the 18th one. I started reading this author years ago when I picked up her fourth one in the series not realizing it was not the beginning of the story. Before I could read anymore, I had to get the…

Your latest novel has a young college student, Darby, traveling home to see her dying mom. So you are already feeling for this character, then, a snowstorm, an uneasy rest stop, and no cell reception, leaving her already with a lot of obstacles. Where did you get your inspiration for NO EXIT? Why a rest area? TA: I’ve spent several years driving to and from college, from Seattle to Spokane. It’s not a particularly long or harrowing drive, but there are quite a few rest areas along the way, and some of them are fairly remote, and can be quite unsettling when it’s late at night and you’re alone (or at least, you hope you’re alone!). Most everyone seems to have a personal horror story about an iffy experience they’d had at a rest stop, so as a setting, it seemed like an untapped resource for a thriller. Reading this novel had me scared of just the local Sheetz at the rest stops nearby. This is one that really sticks with you. I personally thought of Stephen King when I was reading your novel. Are there any authors that you read over time that influenced you to write such psychological…