I did not plan to write this post for another two months.
The Mother I Did Not Know, Book One of The Casita Series, is finished. The editing went faster and cleaner than I expected, which means the book is now ahead of schedule and very close to release. If you have been following along, this is your early invitation to pre-order the first printing before it goes wide.
What the book is about
For thirty years, across thousands of fifty-minute sessions, Dr. Mari Vega has kept Santa Fe's quietest emergencies to herself. Then three patients arrive in one week without referrals. A widow who does not believe her husband jumped from the bell tower of La Fonda. A British corporate lawyer whose accent slips on a single vowel. A young woman who keeps asking whether abusers and their victims are the same thing.
By the third session, the case notes Mari swears she wrote are not the notes sitting in her file. And her daughter Sofia comes home to the family casita after three years of silence, carrying a folder she will not open. The lineage no one in her family ever named out loud is about to surface.
It is a psychological suspense novel told in two registers, the clinical and the off the record, set against the high desert of northern New Mexico. If you read Alex Michaelides, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Ashley Audrain, or Isabel Cañas, this one was written for you.
A first look, from the opening pages
When I asked why she chose me, she said, “Because you used to be famous for treating men like him.” I corrected her. I am not famous, and I do not treat men like him. I treat the people they hurt. She smiled and said, “Same thing, then.”
How to pre-order
The print edition, in paperback and hardcover, is available to pre-order now, direct from me. Every direct pre-order is part of the first printing and includes the digital Reader's Companion, a direct-order exclusive with the character family tree, a Santa Fe and Abiquiú map, and a preview of Book Two.
Books ship by August 31, 2026, and possibly sooner given how editing has gone. If you prefer to read on Kindle, the ebook will be available on Amazon Kindle.
Pre-order The Mother I Did Not Know here.
Thank you for being here from the beginning.
K.B. Cordova
Thrive Collective Publishing