Longtime friends and authors Mary Maki and Andrea Zimmermann will each debut a new book at the 2022 Newtown Arts Festival, September 17-18, 11 am to 5 pm, at the Fairfield Hills campus.

The friends, who are sharing a booth, will offer eight titles between them including the two published this month — Deadly Secrets, Maki’s fourth book in her Caitlyn Jamison mystery series; and Talbot’s Quest, an intriguing novel written by Zimmermann’s mother before her death.

In Deadly Secrets, Maki’s protagonist Caitlyn Jamison arrives in the Adirondack town of Pont-Aven the day a librarian, who is also an environmental activist, is attacked. When Caitlyn decides to investigate, she finds the town is in an uproar over plans to build a large commercial building on the prime public waterfront property. Murder ensues, and as Caitlyn wonders if the two crimes are connected, she begins to uncover the town’s deadly secrets.

“I love spending time with my characters and see where they take the story,” says Maki. “I stay motivated by my readers who continually ask when the next book is coming out.”

Lois Zimmermann, an artist and author, wrote and published short stories and poems for children before turning her attention to writing novels for adults.

Talbot’s Quest is the tale of a child who disappears in the Boston Gardens and how the lives of those connected with the event unfold. Among a full cast of characters, powerhouse attorney John Talbot takes the lead in searching for his missing daughter as a beautiful and unrelenting villainess wreaks havoc from Boston to Las Vegas to Paris. Zimmermann’s artwork was used to create the book cover.

Newtown resident, fellow author and Lois’s daughter Andrea Zimmermann took the steps needed to make sure her mother’s novel was published.

“Mom was so talented — and this is such a great read — that I wanted to get her book into print for everyone to enjoy,” says Andrea Zimmermann. “She was my biggest cheerleader when I started to write, so publishing this book is my tribute to her creativity.”

Maki began to write in earnest after attending a memoir writing program at C.H. Booth Library years ago. She is also a genealogist and has published an article in Connecticut Ancestry on the Irish tombstones in St Rose Cemetery. She does presentations for small groups and writing conferences.

Andrea began her writing career as a reporter for The Newtown Bee, then was a freelance features writer for The New York Times Connecticut Weekly section and other regional publications. Her next book, Horse Latitudes, a mystery set in Michigan, will be out this winter.

The two authors became friends while working on the decade-long Newtown Oral History Project. They, and the late Town Historian Dan Cruson, interviewed, transcribed, footnoted, and indexed the stories of townspeople, which are bound in four volumes and available at the library.

At the Arts Festival, Maki, whose mysteries weave in societal and environmental issues, will also be selling the first three novels in her Caitlyn Jamison series: An Unexpected Death, Fatal Dose, and The Death of Cassie White.

Zimmermann will also offer three of her own books: A Legacy of Lies: A Rock Ridge Mystery, an amateur sleuth mystery set in a small New England town; The Great Danbury State Fair, a lively and highly illustrated account of the 112-year-old fair; and The Case Files of Detective Laszlo Briscoe: True Crime in Newtown 1889-1933.