In her prior corporate career, she managed marketing model and consumer product research contracts for M.I.T. spin-off consulting companies. She also served as a manager and instructor for an international training firm giving seminars to government agencies and large corporations nationally and abroad. She has worked as a certified professional graphologist (handwriting analyst). Her hobbies include watercolor and crafts.
Educational credits include a BA from Oberlin College and MA from Cambridge College. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, three cats and a dog.
Katherine Fast
Katherine Fast is an award-winning author of over 25 short and flash fiction stories. She was a former contributing editor and compositor for six anthologies of New England crime stories. Her debut novel, The Drinking Gourd, was published by Level Best Books in the spring of 2022 and Church Street Under, the second book in the series in June, 2023. The third book, Caboose is due out in March, 2025.
Church Street Under,
Casey Cavendish Mystery #2
Praise for Church Street Under:
“The deepest play is in private homes, as Katherine Fast proves with a page-turning tale of deceit, betrayal, and murder in the wainscoted viper's nest of Boston's leafiest (fictional) suburb. Fans of Fast's indomitable Casey Cavendish may find themselves wishing our heroine had never left the relatively warm embrace of the Ohio penal system.”
Robert Carlock, Executive producer and screen writer of Emmy Award winning
TV sitcoms.
“Fans of traditional mystery will love Church Street Under. A colorful cast of characters, a fearless heroine, and a superbly plotted story. Katherine Fast has done it again!”
Bruce Robert Coffin, Award-winning author of the Detective Byron mysteries
For ex-con Casey Cavendish, a quest for family and a new life becomes a primal battle for survival. After clearing her name but burning her bridges in Ohio, Casey Cavendish ventures to New England in search of a mystery man she believes to be her father and to find a place to call her own. Instead, she becomes embroiled with a new-found dysfunctional family: a rich, legally blind Irish widow, her disabled and severely disfigured sister, a cousin who lives under a bridge and collects cans, and an estranged, but charismatic, son-in-law who appears to claim his inheritance.
Casey is swept into a flood of dangerous undercurrents of family secrets, greed and deadly vendettas which threaten her and those she’s come to love and hold dear."Kat Fast writes with deft agility and a refreshing narrative style. Church Street Under plumbs the murky depths of a wealthy New England family’s dark past with a well-paced, focused directness that engages the reader from page one and never lets go."
Gerald Elias, Author of the award-winning Daniel Jacobus mystery series
“In Church Street Under, Casey Cavendish searches for the father she’s never known and finds herself in a deadly battle for an inheritance she never knew existed. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, rooting for Casey, the wily underdog, to survive and find her family at last.”
Barbara Ross, Author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries
Find the books:
www.Amazon.com
www.BarnesandNoble.com
The Drinking Gourd
A confident and compelling debut by an author to watch! Timely and thought-provoking, The Drinking Gourd combines a solid mystery with a riveting and brave look at the tensions of history, and the way the past haunts us--until we face it. Main character Casey Cavendish is tough and wonderful—and we root for her all the way. Do not miss this!
Hank Phillippi Ryan. USA Today Bestselling Author of Her Perfect Life
The Drinking Gourd resonates with vivid characters ensnared in a web of love, betrayal, and greed that roils just below the surface of a sleepy college town. Wrongly sent to prison for dealing cocaine, Casey, the hero-rebel-victim, fights to clear her name before she’s framed a second time, this time for murder. Fast, a fresh new voice in the crime fiction world, offers a twist on the damaged heroine and a powerful sense of place with echoes from the Underground Railroad.
Kate Flora, award-winning author of the Joe Burgess series
Two compelling characters, one an ex-con, the other a cop, take you on a wild ride as they untangle the mysteries that haunt the past, shatter the present, and threaten the future. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.
Barbara Ross, Author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries and the Jane Darrowfield Mysteries
Find the book on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Drinking-Gourd-Casey-Cavendish-Mystery-ebook/dp/B09WYVNWNL/
Barnes and Noble:https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-drinking-gourd-katherine-fast/1141376053?ean=9781685121167
Book Launch at the Weston Art and Innovation Center in May, 2022
Discussing The Drinking Gourd and Handwriting Analysis on a recent Podcast
Friends took The Drinking Gourd to their cabin on a remote lake in northern Maine
At a Sisters in Crime Speakers Bureau event at the Swansea Library with Judy Copek and Leslie Wheeler
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Only You
Kat’s story “Only You” was published in Blood Root, Best New England Crime Stories, Crime Spell Books, 2021.
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Kat Tales
19 of Kat’s favorite Tales are included in Kat Tales, Fast Associates, 2016. Cover is a watercolor by Kat.
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A Light Touch
Kat’s story “A Light Touch” appears in Getting Through: Tales of Corona and Community edited by Gerald Elias, 2020.
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Graphology the Fast Way
Graphology the Fast Way is a handbook Kat wrote for her handwriting analysis course. Max, featured on the cover, ate 20 copies of Elements of Style in 5 minutes. Cover is a watercolor by Kat.
