Anna Celeste Burke

Writer in Indio, California

Anna Celeste Burke

Writer in Indio, California

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Author of the Jessica Huntington Desert Cities Mystery Series & The Corsario Cove Cozy Mystery Series! Snooping into life's mysteries with fun, fiction, and food--California style, Baby!

On my way to Oahu to join the rock musician and high school drop-out I had married in Tijuana, I was nabbed by the police as a runaway. When the police let me go and the rock band broke up, my husband and I had to find another way to survive. Our next stop: Disney World where we trained to be chefs, courtesy of the Walt Disney World University and their team of world-reknowned chefs.

A GED for my husband, and many more years of education eventually landed us in academia. With Ph.D.s from the University of Michigan we took professor jobs with U of M’s longstanding football rival, The Ohio State University. Retired now from my role as a professor in social work and behavioral science, I have picked up a long-time interest in writing fiction. In my professional career I wrote and published widely as a scholar, with more than forty manuscripts of varying lengths on my resume. I also carried out hundreds of courses, training, consulting and speaking engagements on a number of gloriously nerdy topics.

So what on earth does a research scientist have in common with a mystery writer? As avid fans of the mystery genre will tell you at the core of any good mystery is a passionate search for the truth. Discovering the truth involves finding and assembling pieces of complex puzzles in order to solve seemingly intractable problems—scientist and sleuth are cut from the same cloth!

Still married to the same sweet guy, I live with my husband in one of the seven desert resort cities in the Palm Springs area. In addition to reading and writing mysteries I enjoy painting, hiking, hanging out with my handsome husband and tending to my Siamese cat.

As my heroine, Jessica Huntington will tell you, the Sonoran Desert is an exquisite setting in which to ponder life’s mysteries, inspired by the surrounding mountains and the bountiful delights of the desert resort communities.

  • Work
    • retired professor
  • Education
    • Phd
    • Msw