Celia Miles, Author
Celia Miles’ new novel, Eight Nights at the Harris Hotel, is a departure from her series of mysteries centering around Appalachian grist mills. “My inspiration for writing started when my doctor was whistling Mendelssohn’s overture The Hebrides,” says Miles. “And since I’ve been to the islands often, it suddenly offered my main character, Mrs. Grant Worthington Wheeler.” Set on the Hebridean island Lewis and Harris, the novel offers its elderly protagonist travel—and a murder to investigate with the help of a young island girl.
“Mrs. Wheeler is not an especially lovable character—rich, used to being in charge—but she is capable of depth under her commercial façade,” Miles says. “Her young attendant is told to ‘obey, not to question’, but in trying to solve a murder at the hotel they begin to understand each other, if not always agreeing. They find they have a similar past and that they do what has to be done to manage.”
Miles had a cover in mind before she published her book and was fortunate to find a work by Asheville artist Sally Lordeon that fit the bill. “I knew I wanted water and sky, a mood, not a person or building, and finally I went searching in the Asheville art galleries and came upon Abstract in Blue,” Miles says.
Eight Nights at the Harris Hotel, October 2024, fiction, paperback, $14.95, by Celia Miles, and published by Stone Ivy Press, Asheville. The book is available locally at Mountain Made, in Asheville’s Grove Arcade and through the author’s website. Learn more at CeliaMiles.com.