Welcome book lover!

Photo by Marsan

“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”
―Jhumpa Lahiri

“Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.”
―Ben Okri

Karla M. Jay

Photo by Lynda Smart-Brown

Nice to meet you! I’m so glad you’ve stopped by to find out more about my books and what I’m reading. Since I love Historical Fiction, you’ll find my reading list is heavily loaded in that direction, but I read other genres as well. Recently, I finished writing a vigilante story set in Ohio, 1998.

When people ask what I write, I say I write about injustice.

A Shot at Justice is a bit different this time. It’s a vigilante/thriller book that was so fun to veer off the historical path and write. Published March 1, 2023.

Wyatt Dardin is an artist and successful junkyard operator, with a girlfriend and two beautiful dogs. He believes his violent childhood is behind him until a child shows up with a broken arm and a story about his abusive father. Unable to stand idly by, he confronts the man and inadvertently kills him. He makes the body disappear on his property realizing whether it’s justified or wrong, it finally feels good to be doing something to stop abusers.

As his childhood resurfaces, he sets out to find his mother, a woman who fled his father’s abuse all those years ago. Is she still alive? On the journey west, another story of abuse arises. Should he kill again and if so, how many killings are enough to scare potential abusers from committing an act they should pay for? He briefly befriends a young man, who’s mentally broken due to his father’s abuse. Wyatt takes pity on him and helps him. This act of kindness sparks a series of events that puts everything and everyone Wyatt holds dear in grave danger.

Has his shot at justice been worth it?


The Puppet Maker’s Daughter is a WWII Historical Fiction novel. It was published on January 26, 2022, the day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as well as the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In the Budapest ghetto, however, the end to mass starvation and death was still weeks away. This startling and emotional new novel is part of that story.

Most Recent Award for 2022!


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It Happened In Silence was published October 30, 2020. It’s set in Southern USA in the 1920s in a world where women of the KKK betray their neighbors, horrors of unscrupulous foundling homes come to light, and buried mysteries are not all that hidden. This novel delves into the gut and sinew of fairness, probing often inexplicable questions, as old and persistent as the forest itself.

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IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award
“IT HAPPENED IN SILENCE”

If you do not wish to view the entire presentation for the
Historical Fiction category, my acceptance speech for a Silver Award starts at 2:11.


In April 2019, I published my debut Historical Fiction When We Were Brave. In this story, we find a conflicted SS officer, Wilhelm Falk, who risks everything to escape the Wehrmacht and get out the message about the death camps. Izaak is a young Jewish boy whose positive outlook is challenged daily as each new perilous situation comes along. American citizens, Herbert Müller, and his family, are sent back to the hellish landscape of Germany because of the DNA coursing through their veins. In the panorama of World War II, these are the high-stakes plots and endearing characters whose braided fates we pray will work out in the end.