"She sees what others cannot."

Welcome to the world of Olivia Samuels, a detective who sees emotions as colors —
where betrayal burns red, fear flickers yellow, and justice is never black and white.

If your thoughts could be seen, what colors would you be thinking? She doesn't read people the way most detectives do. She sees them. Emotions bleed through the air around them in color – red flaring at the edges of someone's words, gold softening a face mid-lie, gray settling heavy over a person who's already given up. For Detective O
If your thoughts could be seen, what colors would you be thinking? She doesn't read people the way most detectives do. She sees them. Emotions bleed through the air around them in color – red flaring at the edges of someone's words, gold softening a face mid-lie, gray settling heavy over a person who's already given up. For Detective Olivia Samuels, it started with a head injury no one fully explained. Now it's the thing she can't turn off – and the thing that makes her impossible to fool.
When a body turns up and the investigation pulls her toward Kraig, she doesn't just have a suspect. She has someone whose colors she can't quite read. That ambiguity is its own kind of warning.
Colors of Deceit is the first book in a completed seven-book series. No waiting for the next installment. No cliffhangers left unresolved. Just Olivia's world, fully written and waiting for you.
Pull up a chair. We are just getting started!

Furious is not the word!
Someone tries to kill Detective Olivia Samuels.
And then they try again.
She's faced down killers before – read their emotions in the colors that bleed and flare around them, seen what most people can't. But this time, her ability isn't giving her answers. The threat is invisible, the motive unknown, and no loose
Furious is not the word!
Someone tries to kill Detective Olivia Samuels.
And then they try again.
She's faced down killers before – read their emotions in the colors that bleed and flare around them, seen what most people can't. But this time, her ability isn't giving her answers. The threat is invisible, the motive unknown, and no loose end from her last case should have followed her home.
The worst part? The closer she lets Kraig get, the more danger she's pulling him into.
This is the one where Olivia stops protecting everyone else long enough to realize: sometimes the hardest person to protect is yourself.
Colors of Trust is Book 2 in the Olivia Samuels Mystery Series – seven books, fully written, no waiting. Pull up a chair whenever you're ready.

Detective Olivia Samuels is already fighting for her own life when the city's most prominent citizen dies in the hospital room next door.
She's supposed to be recovering. Instead, she's watching the colors of the medical staff shift around her – and something isn't right.
The death looks natural. The official story holds. But Olivia has spe
Detective Olivia Samuels is already fighting for her own life when the city's most prominent citizen dies in the hospital room next door.
She's supposed to be recovering. Instead, she's watching the colors of the medical staff shift around her – and something isn't right.
The death looks natural. The official story holds. But Olivia has spent her career learning that what people feel and what they say are rarely the same thing. And what she's feeling, even through the haze of anesthesia and fractured dreams, is that this man didn't simply die.
She starts pulling threads from her hospital bed. A buried connection surfaces. Then another. Then the messages she's been keeping start to disappear.
Someone knows she's looking.
This is the quieter kind of danger – institutional, patient, careful. The kind that doesn't announce itself until it's too late.
Meanwhile, Kraig is there. And she's still deciding how much of herself to let him see.
The deeper Olivia digs, the more dangerous the truth becomes.
Colors of Justice is Book 3 in the fully written, 7-book Olivia Samuels Mystery Series – no cliffhangers, no waiting. Pull up a chair. The whole story is already there.
Step into Olivia’s world — Start Here!

Unease was rampant throughout the RiverMarket.
She woke from a coma with senses so sharp they hurt. Doctors say Detective Olivia Samuels needs rest. Her body needs to heal.
What her body is doing instead – bleeding every emotion in the room into something she can almost touch, dreaming of a man she's never met and a dark blue Audi she
Unease was rampant throughout the RiverMarket.
She woke from a coma with senses so sharp they hurt. Doctors say Detective Olivia Samuels needs rest. Her body needs to heal.
What her body is doing instead – bleeding every emotion in the room into something she can almost touch, dreaming of a man she's never met and a dark blue Audi she can't explain – doesn't fit neatly into any medical chart.
She doesn't have time to figure it out. A brutal murder at RiverMarket pulls her back before she's ready. Then two neighbors are found dead at her father's mountain cabin, two hours away in the hills.
Two locations. Two crime scenes. One pattern she can't ignore.
The deeper Olivia goes, the bigger the operation becomes – and the closer it gets to people she loves. Sometimes the most dangerous mysteries are the ones that hit closest to home.
Colors of Hope is Book 4 in the Olivia Samuels Mystery Series – seven books, fully written, ready when you are. I would love your feedback.

Detective Olivia Samuels has survived dangerous criminals. Impossible cases. Threats to her own life. But she wasn't prepared for this one.
When her high school crush is found murdered, Olivia takes the case. She can read emotions as color – she knows what she sees. But this time, her own history is in the way.
What she sees and what she
Detective Olivia Samuels has survived dangerous criminals. Impossible cases. Threats to her own life. But she wasn't prepared for this one.
When her high school crush is found murdered, Olivia takes the case. She can read emotions as color – she knows what she sees. But this time, her own history is in the way.
What she sees and what she feels aren't lining up, and she isn't sure she can trust herself.
The secrets reach back seven years. Someone has been keeping them buried. And they're willing to kill again to make sure they stay that way.
Meanwhile, something unexpected is happening with Kraig. For once, she may have something in her life that isn't a mystery.
Or is it?
The most dangerous betrayal may be the one she never saw coming.
Colors of Betrayal is Book 5 in the Olivia Samuels Mystery Series – seven books, fully written, with no cliffhangers and no waiting.

Hot Springs, Arkansas has always known how to keep a secret. The gamblers knew it. The gangsters knew it. The bootleggers who built fortunes in the shadows of those bathhouses knew it too.
Some secrets just get handed down – generation to generation – until they're so deep no one remembers they're secrets at all.
Detective Olivia Samuel
Hot Springs, Arkansas has always known how to keep a secret. The gamblers knew it. The gangsters knew it. The bootleggers who built fortunes in the shadows of those bathhouses knew it too.
Some secrets just get handed down – generation to generation – until they're so deep no one remembers they're secrets at all.
Detective Olivia Samuels is supposed to be on desk duty. She's ignoring that. Because a church with an impeccable reputation for charitable work is hiding something. And when children are involved, Olivia doesn't wait for permission.
Her color-perception reads what others can't see – the deception behind the generosity, the corruption behind the congregation's clean hands. What looks like innocence to everyone else bleeds with something far darker to her.
The deeper she goes, the more she understands: this didn't start with the people in that church. It started long before any of them were born.
Walt, a Hot Springs local and verified reader, put it this way: "Could not put the story down. Had to keep reading to find out 'what's next.' Really enjoyed the history of the old Hot Springs, as I live there and have visited and read about the gangster era. Owney Madden's house still standing downtown. Kudos to Sharon."
Colors of Corruption is Book 6 in the Olivia Samuels Mystery Series – seven books, fully written, with no cliffhangers and no waiting.
Pull up a chair.

Some are made to protect. Some are made to deceive. Some are made to be kept.
When a man dressed as Santa is found murdered and a woman in an angel costume is discovered dead, Detective Olivia Samuels knows this Christmas Gala at the Peabody Hotel is hiding something far darker than anyone wants to admit.
The Whitmore Family Foundation. T
Some are made to protect. Some are made to deceive. Some are made to be kept.
When a man dressed as Santa is found murdered and a woman in an angel costume is discovered dead, Detective Olivia Samuels knows this Christmas Gala at the Peabody Hotel is hiding something far darker than anyone wants to admit.
The Whitmore Family Foundation. The Riverside Christian Church. Names she recognizes. A conspiracy that reaches farther than she imagined – threading through missing children, buried financial secrets, and the kind of power that knows how to stay quiet.
And underneath it all: her engagement to Kraig, the wedding that keeps receding just out of reach, the life she wants and keeps putting aside because the work isn't done yet.
Seven books, fully written. No waiting, no cliffhangers, no wondering how it ends.
This is where it all leads.
If you haven't met Olivia yet, begin with Colors of Deceit, Book One. And if you've been with her from the start – pull up a chair. She's got one more story to tell you.
In the gripping final installment of the Olivia Samuels Mystery Series, secrets surface, loyalties are tested, and love and justice are put to their ultimate test.
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Have you ever looked at someone and just known they weren't telling you the whole story?
Maybe it was something in their voice. A hesitation. A change in their expression. Something you couldn't quite put your finger on. Now imagine you could actually see what they were feeling.
That is Olivia Samuels' world.
Olivia is a detective, but she has something most detectives don't have. She sees emotions as colors.
Fear may flicker blue. Envy can appear green. Anger—and sometimes love—can burn red. And when a person is lying, Olivia may see yellow. The stronger the emotion, the more intense the color.
Sounds like a pretty useful ability for a detective, doesn't it? Well... sometimes, it can be, but other times... Because here's the thing about colors: They don't tell Olivia everything. They give her a clue.
A color can tell her that something is wrong, but it doesn't necessarily tell her why. It can't tell her what happened five minutes ago or what someone is planning to do five minutes from now. Olivia still has to investigate, ask questions, connect the pieces, and sometimes trust her instincts.
And occasionally, the colors can make things even more complicated.
That's part of what makes Olivia so much fun to write.
Olivia didn't grow up seeing emotions as colors. They appeared gradually after a traumatic event when she was a teenager. At first, she didn't understand what was happening. She certainly didn't have a name for it.
As the years passed, Olivia learned to live with what she saw—and eventually learned how to use it.
Her ability became part of who she was, but it never replaced her training, her intelligence, or her instincts as a detective.
In fact, I think that's what makes her different from the typical fictional detective.
Olivia doesn't have all the answers.
She just has one more piece of information than everyone else.
And sometimes, that one piece is enough to change everything.
That's a question I find myself asking often.
Maybe the better question is:
What would you do if you could see the emotions people were trying to hide?
Would you trust what you saw? Would you confront someone whose color told you they were lying?
Would you tell anyone about your ability? Or would you keep it to yourself?
Olivia chose to keep her ability private for a very long time.
And if you've read any of the Olivia Samuels mysteries, you already know that secrets have a way of finding her. That's where the colors come in.
Every secret has a color.
Come on, pull up a chair, and I'll tell you more about them.
— Sharon

Welcome — I'm So Glad You're Here
I'm Sharon Keathley, mystery author and creator of the Olivia Samuels Mystery Series. I call the beautiful Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas home, where I write with a lake view that seems made for imagination.
My journey to becoming an author wasn't exactly a straight line. After nearly five decades in nursing and years as a medical consultant, I eventually discovered a love for storytelling. Today, I bring that medical experience into my mysteries, creating stories filled with emotion, realism, and heart.
I'm a proud nursepreneur—yes, I made that word up!—and I'm always learning something new, whether I'm unraveling a fictional mystery, figuring out the ever-changing world of publishing, or discovering another way to connect with readers.
When I'm not writing, I love lake life, time with my family, and encouraging women to pursue their own passions. I believe every new chapter starts with a little courage and a lot of curiosity.
Thank you for stopping by. I hope you'll take a little time to explore, meet Olivia, discover her mysteries, and pull up a chair for a while.
I'm so glad you're here!
Sharon
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Sharon Keathley

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