Taken for Granted

When former prosecutor Caroline Spencer answers a middle-of-the-night call for help from her friend Kate Daniels-a prominent medical researcher-she has no idea the toll it will take. Her seven-year-old daughter, her marriage, her professional relationships, and her sometimes-precarious emotional health are all jeopardized. How is Kate able to explain her presence at the apartment of a dead graduate student? What connects this career-driven woman to a ruthless drug dealer? Why does Caroline have trouble recognizing the friend she's known for half her life? As she struggles to answer these questions and discovers the person Kate has become, Caroline is forced to examine her own life and make some painful choices. Set in Madison, Wisconsin, amid the backdrop of the federal criminal justice system, Taken for Granted is page-turning psychological fiction.

Leslyn Amthor Spinelli-writer, editor, and publisher of two childhood newspapers-put creative writing on the back burner when it came time to choose a ＂real＂ career. Her interest in the field of criminal justice took her on quite a journey. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology, but her most fascinating educational experiences occurred in the workplace. Leslyn was employed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a case manager at a halfway house in Kansas City, at the prison camp in Leavenworth, and at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. Later she was hired as a probation officer for the U.S. District Court in Madison, where she conducted in-depth investigations into the backgrounds of criminal defendants. Throughout the years, Leslyn’s clientele included mobsters, gangsters, drug dealers, meth cookers, tax evaders, bank robbers and embezzlers. Many were addicted-to drugs, alcohol, gambling or spending. The fictional characters and plotlines in Leslyn’s three Caroline Spencer novels are influenced by her own occupational experiences and those of her husband Nick, a retired private investigator. Leslyn and Nick live in the Midwest and enjoy spending winters in San Diego. They have two grown children. Leslyn is at work on her fourth novel.