A former reporter gets a new spin on life in this gripping debut from author Jaime Parker Stickle, whose psychological roller-coaster ride set in sunny Los Angeles tackles motherhood and murder.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Jaime Parker Stickle’s Vicious Cycle, which releases on October 21st 2025.
New mother Corey Tracey-Lieberman wakes up to nightmarish news: two teenage girls found hanged in a nearby park. Even more unsettling is how the news casually casts the tragedy as the result of increasing street crime, as if the victims’ lives didn’t really matter.
Corey knows better. In the six years she’s lived in Highland Park, she’s seen gentrification but no uptick in criminal activity. A former broadcast journalist, she knows all about spin―and not just the media kind. She now teaches spin classes in the neighborhood, between caring for her nine-month-old son and battling postpartum anxiety.
When police efforts fall short, Corey launches her own investigation into the hangings, flexing her idle sleuthing skills with baby in tow. And after a third murder strikes too close to home, she knows she’s onto something big.
An emotional gut punch tempered by belly laughs, Vicious Cycle is a tour de force certain to thrill all readers.
Listening to a police scanner is tedious work and habit forming and has nothing to do with me anymore except that I can’t quit.
When we got pregnant, I promised Evan I would stop monitoring the criminal activity in our neighborhood: He assumed that was the cause of my episodes. He was wrong, but I went along with it. Now that our son, Jacob, has arrived, everything is fair game again. Except alcohol. No alcohol while I nurse. No alcohol to ease anxiety. No alcohol to enjoy life.
I flip on the police scanner.
A high-pitched chirp comes from my phone. A sound that I’m conditioned to respond to immediately—a new tweet.
NELAScanBoy: Alert: Possible 187 NELA HLP area.
Debs Park/2F/Hispanic/17yo
NELA = Northeast Los Angeles. HLP = Highland Park. My neighborhood. Fuck.
LA News First with the Wake-Up Crew is shouting at me from the television, but I can’t remember turning it on. I grab the remote to turn it down, not wanting Jacob to wake up yet. The scanner, the small TV, Jaime Parker Stickle my laptop, the crib, and my baby are all in my office, now an office / nursery / investigative hideout.
LA News First: the place where my career started and ended. The Wake-Up Crew was exactly that—the early-early-morning anchors. Bottom-feeders who couldn’t cut it with a mainstream audience—I knew because I had started there as a general assignment reporter fourteen years ago. Of course, the money worked in their favor, put them up in nice homes with decent cars, but there was no potential for prestige or fame. To Los Angeles, The Wake-Up Crew is background noise against the morning hustle and bustle of teeth being brushed, blow-dryers screaming, and juicers pulverizing. Or, in my case, the constant motoring of the breast pump as it indelicately attempts to milk me. I glance at Jacob in his crib, still asleep, swaddled in a muslin blanket decorated with giraffes in neat rows. His head full of red baby hair. It’s easier for me to get ready to go to class while he’s still asleep, not needing me. We’ll be leaving after the weather report. Always after the weather, the same time every morning, and Jacob will be bright eyed and ready to teach spin with me.
“. . . and I’m Courtney Wheeler. Two young women were found dead at the bottom of a trail at Debs Park in Northeast LA this morning. The women’s names are not being released at this time. Sources say the deaths may be related to an uptick in gang-related activity.
“We’ll be right back with your daily weather forecast. It’s another hot September, folks.”
* * *
I’ve lived in this neighborhood for six years. We were able to afford a starter home. Now the starter homes cost more than our dream home. I live on the east side of town, an ungentrified holdout, but they are coming: the gentrifiers, the hipsters, and the Realtors aiming to become reality stars, HGTV flippers. Only a few years ago, these same opportunists wouldn’t even set foot in Highland Park, but after 2Vicious Cycle the federal gang injunction, it’s now just an ordinary working-class neighborhood ready to be taken over by the white middle class.
There is no uptick in gangs. The only g word that is upticking is gentrification. Anything labeled gang related is code for Latino/ Latina—and only when they’re from a marginalized community does the media refer to seventeen-year-old children—victims—as young women or men. Just another way we make it easier to victim blame and dismiss the crimes against them. Isn’t that right, Courtney Wheeler? You’re so very good at sweeping murder under the gang-related rug. It’s guaranteed with the tag—gang related—that the girls would never be mentioned again.
“That’s what you’re doing, right, Courtney? Isn’t it?” I say. Quietly to the TV so as not to wake Jacob.
Courtney was an intern at the assignment desk when I was the general assignment reporter. She’s an ass-kisser. An idiot with no journalistic ethics. Zero integrity. A wannabe entertainment-television host building her résumé in local news. She sped through newsworthy stories just to get to her comfort zone—celebrity fluff pieces. Courtney is more Playboy Playmate than Good Morning America anchor—tan, blond, and perfectly coiffed. She’s on her way to becoming the local TV hero, five days a week—an anchor who can barely read her prompts but will blink, smile, and flirt for LA.
“Being a morning anchor is as good as being syndicated. I’m a verified celebrity on Instagram and X.” Courtney sang this fucking millennial tune to anyone who’d listen when she got the gig. I hate how much everyone loves her—I’d find a way to get her fired, if they’d offer me my job back. I used to imagine some form of tragedy happening to Courtney, something—anything—that would send her away: a drug problem, a cheating scandal, DUI. Those thoughts were simple whispers. Harmless. Almost playful. Happy hour jokes with those that felt the same way. I look at Jacob, stirring in his crib. Trying to free his hand from the tight swaddle. I want to pick him up and hold him close to me. I promise myself I will never hurt him. I swear I will protect 3Jaime Parker Stickle him from anyone who would hurt him. My baby—I love him in a way that makes me feel primal and scared at the same time, all the time. My fight-or-flight instinct has been on constant overdrive since his arrival.
I was never a talking head reading someone else’s words like the Courtney Wheelers of the world. I’m an investigative reporter—was. I wrote the stories that I told. I controlled the message. My focus and hard, relentless work ethic made me a producer at LA News First. Traits that also eventually cost me my job there.
My engorged breasts are resisting the relentless suction of the Medela pump again—top of the line, courtesy of my husband’s premier health plan at his middle management marketing job—while I pine over chasing the “gang-related” murder. “C’mon, give me another ounce, please,” I say to my left breast. “I’ll give you a lanolin massage later, I promise.” My husband’s alarm beeps from the other room—I’m running out of time. If I can squeeze out another half an ounce, Jacob will be content while I teach the sunrise spin class.
I hate it. All of it: spin class, life, motherhood, marriage, the news . . . I zone out to the police scanner a lot. Sketch out the crimes in my head. Talk out the story—how I’d interview the prime suspects. Investigate the victim’s social media before the accounts were made private. Tally my eventual wins and losses.
I should be happy I’m alive. Not dead. Not at the bottom of Debs Park.
Copyright © 2025 by Jaime Parker Stickle. From VICIOUS CYCLE by Jaime Parker Stickle. Reprinted by permission of Thomas&Mercer, a division of Amazon Publishing.
