Bubbles Yablonsky is the fictional protagonist of the Bubbles series of screwball mysteries by Sarah Strohmeyer

Sarah Strohmeyer

Sarah Strohmeyer is an award-winning American author of crime novels and of books about human relations between men and women. Her works include The Cinderella Pact, The Secret Lives of Fortunate Wives, The Sleeping Beauty Proposal, and the Bubbles Yablonsky series...

. She first appeared in Bubbles Unbound, published in 2001; as of 2006, she has appeared in six novels by Strohmeyer strictly about Bubbles, with an extra cameo in Strohmeyers "The Cinderella Pact," appearing as a friend of the main character's sister.

Bubbles Unbound got the Agatha Award

Agatha Award

The Agatha Awards are literary awards for mystery and crime writers who write via the same method as Agatha Christie...

 for best first novel in 2001. It has been translated to French in 2006 (Bubbles se lâche - Fleuve Noir - ISBN 2-265-08217-1 ).

The character

Bubbles is a high-energy beautician-cum-rookie-reporter. She is a divorced single mom, self-described as a "Polish-Lithuanian

Polish-Lithuanian

Polish–Lithuanian can refer to:* Polish–Lithuanian union * Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth * Polish-Lithuanian as used to describe groups, families, or individuals with histories in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth...

 Barbie doll in Lehigh

Lehigh Valley

The Lehigh Valley, known officially by the United States Census Bureau as the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ metropolitan area and referred to locally as The Valley and A-B-E, is a metropolitan region consisting of Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, and Carbon counties in eastern Pennsylvania and...

, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

," a town based loosely on Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Bethlehem is a city in Lehigh and Northampton Counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 74,982, making it the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie,...

. She appears as a kind of hybrid between Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

 and Columbo.

She has an ex-husband, "Dan the Man", and a daughter, Jane, a rebellious teenager with Kool-Aid colored hair and black lipstick. Bubbles has a degree in journalism and is a freelance reporter for the local newspaper, The Lehigh News-Times.

The series covers adventures and misadventures with Bubbles and other characters - Steve Stiletto (a photojournalist and Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson

Mel Colm-Cille Gerard Gibson, AO is an American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter. Born in Peekskill, New York, Gibson moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia when he was 12 years old and later studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art.After appearing in...

 look-a-like), Lulu Yablonsky (Bubbles's mother), Genevieve (a gun-toting septuagenarian), Sandy (her best friend and salon owner), and Lorena Ludwig (a photographer with The News-Times with anger management issues).

Books in the Bubbles series

• Bubbles Unbound - 2001 - Dutton
  E. P. Dutton
  E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. In 1986, the company was acquired by Penguin Group and split into two imprints: Dutton Penguin and Dutton Children's Books.-History:Edward Payson Dutton founded...
  
   Adult, ISBN 0-525-94580-6
• Bubbles In Trouble - 2002 - Dutton Adult, ISBN 0-525-94649-7
• Bubbles Ablaze - 2003 - Dutton Adult, ISBN 0-525-94738-8
• Bubbles a Broad - 2004 - Dutton Adult, ISBN 0-525-94798-1
• Bubbles Betrothed - 2005 - Dutton
  E. P. Dutton
  E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. In 1986, the company was acquired by Penguin Group and split into two imprints: Dutton Penguin and Dutton Children's Books.-History:Edward Payson Dutton founded...
  
  Adult, ISBN 0-525-94864-3
• Bubbles All The Way - 2006 - Onyx, ISBN 0-451-41227-3