Jolene Garcia is back, and this time, she’s embroiled in not one but two murders that could be connected to corruption involving Phoenix City Hall .

Jolene, a fictional Emmy Award-winning Phoenix television journalist, is the protagonist of Christina Estes’s new mystery, "The Story That Wouldn’t Die,” which comes out on Tuesday, Aug. 19. Readers first met Garcia last year, when Estes’s debut novel, “Off the Air,” was published by Macmillan in March 2024.

Estes’s real-life story has its own twist: The longtime Emmy Award-winning reporter covering local government on KJZZ public radio is now on the other side of the microphone. She left to become Phoenix Vice Mayor Ann O’Brien’s director of communications in March.

The plot thickens: The new book was written well before Estes left jou

See Full Page