Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 100

Wicked Wednesday-Anticipation

Jessie: In New Hampshire, working on the next draft of my sixth Beryl and Edwina novel!

This month our topic is anticipation. We’ve all been anticipating life allowing for travel, visits and group gatherings of all sorts. What are you eagerly anticipating? If the events of the past year had occurred in your fictional words what would your sleuths be most eager to see arriving?

Edith/Maddie: I will reach two weeks post-second-vaccine on Friday, and I can’t wait to gather maskless with a few also-vaccinated dear friends, and with my kids once they are eligible. And get a real haircut! I know Robbie Jordan would be eager to fill her country store restaurant to full capacity again, and Mac Almeida to allow more than three customers at a time into her bike shop. Rose Carroll would have been attending births all along, but would be happy to ditch the cotton mask that kept her and her laboring mothers safe.

Sherry: As soon as I hit my two weeks after my second shot, I’m flying to Florida to see my mom. I confess I’m a little anxious about traveling after not being on a plane for over 14 months. But I can’t wait to give my mom a hug. Fortunately, my fictional world doesn’t have a global pandemic so my protagonists, Sarah Winston and Chloe Jackson, live in a blissful world — well except for the murders that occur.

Jessie: I am anticipating a visit from my mum in late June! I haven’t seen her since the beginning of February 2020. And I am holding out hope that a trip to the UK in the autumn might be possible! My sleuths have lived through an influenza epidemic in the early 1900s and are anticipating greater roles in the public an professional sphere for women on both sides of the pond!

Barb: My granddaughter is here with us in Maine now, where we’re supervising remote school. (I always have anxious moments until she’s safely signed on in the morning.) Next week we’re in Massachusetts with my daughter and her family. My son and his wife will travel from Virginia, the first time we’ve all been together since June of 2020 and only the second time our three granddaughters have been together. So much anticipation! There was no pandemic in Busman’s Harbor, but if there had been, Julia would now be happily planning for a tourist season without last year’s 25% capacity restriction for their tour boat and clambakes. I have no doubt Jane Darrowfield has risen to the occasion and helped many friends and neighbors find appointments for their shots.

Readers, what are you anticipating the most over the next weeks and months?

Guest-Lauren Elliott

Jessie: In New Hampshire where things are gloriously turning to spring!

I am delighted to welcome Lauren to the Wickeds today. I loved learning about her research and hope you will too! Over to you, Lauren!

Happy spring and a huge thank you to all the wonderful Wicked authors for inviting me to be a guest on their blog today. I don’t know about you, but I have to say spring truly is my favorite season. It’s also the time of the year when love blossoms, and couple’s hearts jump with joy in anticipation of wedding bells and vows of undying love. It is said that spring is the official kick-off to the wedding season and one of the most popular times during the year to tie the knot. It is also perfect timing in the relationship development for one of my secondary characters, Serena Chandler, and her beloved Zach Ludlow, which happily coincided with the scheduled spring release of Under the Cover of Murder, the sixth book in my Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery series. 

Before I began penning Under the Cover of Murder, I conducted a great deal of research on luxurious super-yachts, wedding dresses, hair styles, flowers, and all things wedding related by reading numerous wedding planning blogs including Martha Stewart’s and Emily Post’s. Of course, my intention was to best describe Addie Greyborne’s best friend’s big day, and call to mind images of the perfect yacht wedding—despite the challenges Serena faced from a soon-to-be, overbearing, step-mother-in-law. However, I also came away with a greater insight as to the whys of some of those seemingly small rituals that are included in today’s ceremonies that are taken for granted because we assume that those rituals are just the way it’s done. 

For example, were you aware that bells were traditionally chimed at Irish weddings to keep evil spirits away and to ensure a harmonious family life? The wedding veil is rooted in beliefs of the ancient Roman Empire and was worn to “protect” women by “confusing” demons that fought to possess them during the wedding ceremony. Bridesmaids wearing similar dresses today also comes from the ancient Romans, who believed those pesky demons needed to be confused even more and used the bridal attendants, all dressed in the same way, as decoys to protect the bride from possession.

 As far as the actual wedding dress goes, the traditional white or cream we generally think of today wasn’t popular until Queen Victoria started the trend in 1840. Before then, brides simply wore their best dress. Today’s tradition of tossing the wedding bouquet came out of England where it was believed the bride was extra lucky on her wedding day. In order to avoid her unwed friends and guests ripping pieces off of her dress for a bit of her good luck, the bride would toss the bouquet and run away from them. The single lady who caught the bouquet would inherit that luck and be the next to marry. 

Then there’s the little-known fact as to why, the bride stands to the grooms left during the ceremony. It seems, this tradition came about because it was felt the groom needed his right hand free to fight off other suitors or evil spirits that might want to challenge the marriage union. It appears those annoying spirits played a big role in the development of many of the rituals followed today since the ritual of the groom carrying the bride across the threshold was also to protect her from any evil spirits lurking around.

In spite of following these good-luck traditions, in addition to many others commonly practiced today. In Under the Cover of Murder, nothing seems to help protect Serena from a mean-spirited step-mother-in-law or stop an uninvited guest and two dead bodies from making an appearance at her wedding. Addie, however, following the centuries-old challenge of doing what every maid-of-honor does best, protects her charge at all costs and allow nothing to add to the stress of the bride’s big day—which, in Serena’s case—might prove a truly Herculean task. Since a clue found in Agatha Christie’s first Hercule Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles proves the killer may still be on the ship and not finished piling up the dead bodies… 

Readers, have you ever attended a wedding where something very memorable and unsual happened? Have you ever been a member of a wedding party? Do you like wedding cake or do you think most are more for looks than for their taste?

ABOUT LAUREN

Lauren Elliott is the USA Today bestselling author of the Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery Series. She grew up devouring Nancy Drew, graduated to Agatha Christie, and then began writing her own mysteries, as well as bringing her passion for storytelling to careers in professional theater and journalism. She can be found online at

LaurenElliottAuthor.com

https://www.facebook.com/laurenelliottauthor/

Guest- Ellery Adams and a Giveaway

Jessie: In New Hampshire enjoying the sounds of the cheerful birds in my back garden!

I am so pleased to welcome Ellery Adams to the Wickeds today! I know many of you will be familiar with her books and all the hours of reading pleasure she has created. Take it away, Ellery!

The Novelist’s Test Kitchen

I don’t know about you, but I can’t relate to characters that don’t eat. There’s something incredibly human about sitting down to a meal with another person—even if that person is fictional. I’m intrigued by how they take their coffee, if they have breakfast for dinner, and which candy they have stashed in a desk drawer. 

I enjoy describing food, but I had no idea how time-consuming creating food for a mystery series could be. I got my first taste (sorry, I couldn’t resist) of what it was like to come up with original recipes when I wrote The Supper Club mysteries. When I started The Charmed Pie Shoppe mysteries, I couldn’t keep up with all the emails focused on baking.  Feeling like I was becoming more food blogger than novelist, I decided not to include recipes in future books.

My love for baking was renewed after I saw an episode of The Great British Bake Off. I was hooked! Chopped, Top Chef, Cupcake Wars, Zumbo’s Just Desserts, Nailed It!—I don’t think there’s a TV cooking competition I haven’t watched. 

Eager to try some of these recipes, I put on my apron and recruited my daughter to be my sous chef. These photos show a small sample of the many things we’ve made together. 

Between watching TV shows, reading chef memoirs, and working in my own test kitchen for the past decade, I’ve learned a bit about what it takes to craft a memorable dish.

In Murder in the Cookbook Nook, the seventh installment in my Book Retreat Mysteries, I combined my love of food with my love of literature (along with a dash of murder) to show the darker side of a cooking competition. And did I ever have fun! Sometimes, a writer’s passions form a perfect pairing. I hope that passion shines through the pages when you read this mystery. 

Murder in the Cookbook Nook hits the shelves April 27th, but you could win a copy now (along with a culinary-themed surprise)!

How? Just share something you discovered by visiting my website: www.elleryadamsmysteries.com.

Guest – Annelise Ryan

Jessie- In New Hampshire wondering when the blackflies will arrive!

I am delighted to host Annelise Ryan on the Wickeds today! In addition to her mystery writing she has written scores of articles for publication and is a competive Scrabble player! Take it away, Annelise!

Change is something many people dislike and avoid at all costs, and the last year has brought plenty of it to all of us. I’ve always liked change, but perhaps that’s because my entire life has revolved around it. It’s what I’m used to. (Or maybe I have ADD.) Growing up, my father held a government job that meant a lot of moves, so I was often the new kid in school. That meant a change of address, a change of scenery, a change of friends, and sometimes a change of lifestyle. These changes sometimes happened multiple times in a school year. (It didn’t help my popularity any that I looked like this in grade school, the result of a self-inflicted change when I gave myself a haircut! Look close and you can see where my hair was penciled in in places.)

I chose a career in nursing because it offered me tons of options for jobs in varied settings with different patient populations. My experiences with impermanence growing up may have influenced the many career changes I made, because I worked in every nursing field from birth (obstetrics) to death (hospice). I finally settled in and spent my last twenty years working in the ER, a setting that is nothing but change and unpredictability. 

I loved it. Now that I’m retired from nursing, I find I miss it. A little. 

There’s an adage that says you should write what you know, so it’s no surprise, given my history, that the heroine in my Mattie Winston Mystery series has also undergone a lot of change, some of it by choice, some not so much. She always does her best to embrace change, wherever, whenever, and however it comes, though the outcomes vary. In the first book of the series, WORKING STIFF, Mattie is a nurse working in the operating room of a small-town hospital and married to a surgeon who also works there. When she happens upon her husband and a coworker conducting intimate physical exams on one another, she flees both her marriage and her job. She ends up taking on a new job as assistant to her friend, medical examiner Dr. Izzy Rybarceski, and meets a hunky new detective named Steve Hurley in the process. The only consistency in Mattie’s life from here on out is inconsistency. 

DEAD EVEN (released 3/30/21) is the 12th book in the series, and change is still dogging Mattie in her personal and professional lives. In this outing, she has to deal with an entitled, clueless family whose wealthy patriarch has been stabbed in the chest with a broken piece of his own cue stick. When she isn’t assisting with autopsies or trying to find killers, Mattie is struggling to balance her home and work life, dealing with the demands of raising a toddler and a teenage stepdaughter, and trying to keep her second marriage healthy and interesting. Mattie handles the challenges she faces in this book like she always has … with a frequent lack of grace, a streak of stubborn determination, the best of intentions, and a warped sense of humor. 

Change has been a hallmark of my writing career, as well. I’ve changed genres twice (going from paranormal suspense to mystery), publishers three times, agents four times, and I’m published under three different names (check out my six-book Mack’s Bar Mystery series written under the pseudonym of Allyson K. Abbott.)  

Readers: How do all of you deal with change? Do you like it or hate it?

Lee Hollis – Writing Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer

Liz here, happy to welcome Lee Hollis to the blog today! Lee is here to talk about his super fun Desert Flowers series – and his history with the real Golden Girls! Take it away, Lee!

First of all, I am thrilled to be doing a guest post for the Wicked Authors, especially since I am a native New Englander, having been born and raised in Downeast Maine. My Hayley Powell Food & Cocktails Mysteries, which I co-author with my sister Holly (she provides all the columns and recipes), takes place in our hometown of Bar Harbor. Every time I sit down to write a new story, I am transported back to Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park, and the memories of my childhood spent there. This is always therapeutic when I am unable to travel back home, especially this past year during the awful pandemic. But when my editor at Kensington asked me to come up with a new series, this one featuring a team of Golden Girls-like detectives, I decided to set it in my current home town of Palm Springs, California. Palm Springs could not be more opposite from Bar Harbor, although both are bustling tourist destinations, just during completely different seasons, winter and summer respectively.

If you’re not familiar with the Desert Flowers mystery series, the lead heroine is Poppy Harmon, a retired actress from Hollywood who moves to the desert with her fourth husband, Chester. When Chester dies unexpectedly, Poppy discovers he had for years been hiding a crippling gambling problem, and has now consequently left her penniless. Forced to find work, Poppy decides to become a private investigator. How hard could that be? She played the secretary on a long running TV detective show in the 1980s called Jack Colt, PI. Poppy figures she has plenty of formal training. She appeared in every episode, after all. She teams up with her two best friends, Iris and Violet, and they open up shop as the Desert Flowers Detective Agency. Unfortunately, they quickly discover that women of a certain age are not always taken seriously as hard-nosed gumshoes, so they enlist the help of pretty boy Matt, the boyfriend of Poppy’s daughter and an aspiring actor. He adopts the stage name of Matt Flowers so he can be the face of their agency, assuaging any misogynistic concerns. Business picks up, and in a nod to Remington Steele, the ladies do all the work while Matt soaks up all the credit.

After two successful cases, Poppy and the gang return in Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer, which was a joy to write because this case involves the filming of a reboot of the cheesy romantic comedy Palm Springs Weekend, one of my favorite guilty pleasures. A mysterious stalker is shadowing the beautiful young star of the movie, and so she hires the Desert Flowers Agency to protect her and find the creep terrorizing her.  

I have worked for over thirty years in the TV and film business, and so it’s always fun to write about what I have learned in Hollywood. Write what you know, as they say. In this book, when the beautiful young star ends up murdered, smothered by a pillow, the crime scene evokes haunting memories for Poppy of a series of killings that took place during her heyday as an actress in the 1980s. Does this mean the never caught Pillow Talk Killer is back after all these years? As the team dives into the investigation, I do something I’ve never done in a book before. I use flashbacks. By transporting Poppy back to that heady period in her young life, the summer of 1985, I was able to give more context to what was happening in the present.

This brought back so many of my own Hollywood memories. I was 24 years old at the time, when I began my writing career on The Golden Girls in 1988. That show was the first job I ever had that actually paid me to write. And what a show to cut your teeth on. I will never forget the table reading of my first script, co-authored with my writing partner at the time, David A. Goodman, who is these days the president of the Writers’ Guild. Those actors, Bea Arthur, Betty White, Rue McClanahan, women I grew up watching on classic TV shows like Maude and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Estelle Getty, just knocked our jokes out of the park, and made them sound sharper and funnier than they actually were. I remember sitting back in awe, thinking, “My God, how did I get here?”

I assumed at the time that it would always be like that. Ha! There were plenty of shows after that first, some good, many not so good, a few downright terrible, but I will always be grateful for that indelible first experience. Those memories were key in the writing of Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer, which is why this particular mystery has become my favorite book to work on to date. And so I hope you enjoy reading this latest Poppy Harmon installment as much as I loved writing it. And don’t worry, if you haven’t read the two previous books, you can jump right in and start with this one! Just promise me, if you like it, go back and try the others!

Readers, what do you think – love the series? Love the Golden Girls? Leave a comment for Lee below!

Wicked Wednesday – Women in your life

Wickeds, we’re wrapping up this month of celebrating strong women. Let’s talk about the strong women in our lives. Share a picture of one of yours and tell us about her. 

Barb: I’ve been very lucky to have been surrounded with strong women in my life–and it must be said, strong, self-confident men who loved that quality. My mom, both grandmothers, and my mother-in-law were each in different ways role models for me for how women could be in the world. Educating women and viewing them as equal partners in life is a lo-o-ong tradition in my family. I am so grateful for that foundation.

My mom, Jane McKim Ross

Sherry: My sister is an amazing woman. She had two devastating traumatic brain injuries with two months of each other over twelve years ago. Since then she’s started her own consulting business, went through the rigorous training to become a yoga instructor, and is an advocate for other people with TMIs. She also teaches yoga for people who are injured among many other things. She’s a fighter and always has a smile on her face. I wish I was half the woman she is.

Edith/Maddie: I can see that you two are related, Sherry! I’ll pick my mother, Marilyn Flaherty Maxwell Muller. A talented artist with fabric and baking, she was a loving but no-nonsense mom and Girl Scout leader. She might have struck you as soft-spoken, but she survived a bullheaded Irish father, a deep depression after she and my father were divorced, and finding her way in the working world again. She discovered a new love after age fifty (which I also did) and happiness sewing a hundred quilts in her retirement. Oh, and she taught me to love mysteries at a young age – which planted the seeds for this, my last and best career.

Julie: I love these pictures! I’m cheating, and choosing two wonderful women. My mother, and her mother, my beloved grandmother. My mother is a kind, lovely person who passed on her love of reading. My grandmother called grandchildren “the applause of life”. She loved me unconditionally, taught me how to bake and how to knit, and told wonderful stories, which I pass on to my nieces and nephews. My grandmother had some tough challenges, but she got through them and left me a legacy of love.

Liz: These are all so lovely. Mine is my boss and one of my best friends, Riham El-Lakany. She is one of the strongest, kindest, smartest people I know. Like most of your women, she’s been through a lot of tough challenges in her life but prevails with grace, dignity and most importantly, kindness. I’ve known her now for more than a decade, and one of the reasons I love her is for her fierce support of women. She builds people up and helps them see their own potential, and most importantly she always has your back. She doesn’t love photos so I didn’t include one her, but trust me, she’s beautiful inside and out.

Readers, what about you? Share a story of a strong woman in your life and why she’s had such an impact on you.

Welcome Emmeline Duncan, and a giveaway!

By Liz, happy to have Emmeline Duncan join us on the blog today, talking about coffee, mysteries and food carts! Enjoy…

For one beautiful summer years ago, there was a food cart pod with a fantastic coffee cart not too far from my house in Portland, Oregon. Walking to the pod was one of my black lab’s favorite activities since the coffee cart—Ole Latte Coffee–had dog treats. We’d go, and my dog would stand on his back legs with his paws against the counter until Todd (the cart’s owner) gave him a treat or two or three.

I’d like an espresso and a biscuit, please.

One thing I noticed when visiting the food carts is that it was a small community. I’d chat with the owners, who were all committed to serving the best food or drinks possible. Sadly, the lot holding the pod was redeveloped to become an apartment building. Thankfully, you can still find phenomenal food cart pods around Portland, frequently in collaboration with microbreweries in a marriage of small business owners focused on their passions. I’ve followed most of the carts by my house to new locations across the city. (Although I’m still salty one of the carts moved to Nevada.)

Fresh Brewed Murder is the combination of two lifetime loves: coffee and mysteries, along with my stomach’s appreciation for food carts. I’ve done my best to reflect the Portland I know in the novel. It touches on some of the issues Portland struggles with, like gentrification and homelessness. But it also celebrates the DIY sensibility and creativity that infuses the city. Plus bicycles.

The novel is set at The Railyard, an inner-Portland food cart pod that, sadly, only exists in my head. But it is a compilation of my local favorites. It was fun to imagine the food I’d like to see in one spot. I decided the carts needed local flavor, so I gave a few of them a Pacific Northwest spin. PDXJojos serves properly broasted chicken and jojos, while 4 & 20 Blackbirds specializes in a marionberry pie on a gluten-free hazelnut crust. And since it’s Portland, one cart serves falafel that’s both vegan and delicious.

Sage, the story’s narrator, wants to be a force for good in the world, even if she’s still figuring out how. She’s the daughter of a notorious con artist and, in a way, feels like she’s atoning for her mother. (Side note for Leverage fans: I’ve joked before that Sage’s mother is like an evil Sophie Devereaux). When Sages starts Ground Rules, a coffee cart and roastery,  with her friend, Harley, she wants to make everyone’s day brighter with a perfectly crafted coffee drink. She’s really not prepared to find the dead body of a customer next to her cart. It turns out he’s the developer of the new apartment building across the street, and he’s had his eye on the Rail Yard. And Sage is shocked to find out her mother once swindled the developer out of a large sum of money. With Sage as the police’s number suspect and a murderer on the loose, she needs to solve the case before her new business and maybe even her life come to a bitter end.

Launching Fresh Brewed Murder now feels strange, but everything in the world feels off-kilter.  I’m thankful I’m scheduled to do virtual bookstore and library events in multiple states without needing to leave my home. I look forward to saying hi to readers, booksellers, and my fellow writers in person again. In the meanwhile, know I’m toasting all of you with a cup of java. Of course, I brewed the coffee with my favorite Kalita Wave pourover cone, along with locally roasted beans grounded fresh. I added a splash of Oatly barista as the finishing touch.

One silver lining: I get to (virtually) meet Kate Lansing when we talk about wine, coffee, and mysteries at Murder By The Book. Please note the event is BYOU: Bring Your Own Unicorn.

What’s your favorite coffee, tea, or other hot drink to pair with a good read? Two US-based commenters will receive a copy of Fresh Brewed Murder and a handknit coffee sleeve! One international commenter will receive a copy of the novel sent directly from an online bookshop.

Fresh Brewed Murder and an official Ground Rules coffee sleeve.

The first installment in Emmeline Duncan’s hipster Ground Rules Mystery Series, Fresh Brewed Murder, arrives on March 30th, 2021. As Kelly Garrett, she’s the author of the Oregon Book Award-finalist YA thriller The Last To Die and a 2020 Oregon Literary Fellowship recipient. You can find her online at emmelineduncan.com, on Instagram and Facebook as @writeremmelineduncan, and on Twitter as @Duncan_Emmeline. If you look for her in person, you might find her in one of Portland’s coffee shops or on a hiking trail somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, accompanied by her Great Pyrenees, Waylon.

Death at the Salon – Louise-Rose Innes

By Liz, welcoming Louise-Rose Innes to the blog today, coming to us from the UK to talk about her new installment in her Daisy Thorne series, Death at the Salon! I’m glad I got my hair done before the book came out… Welcome, Louise-Rose!

Many thanks to Liz Mugavero, and the wonderful Wickeds ladies for the invitation to their blog. It’s an honour to talk about my upcoming release as well as my love of cozy mysteries. 

I began writing sixteen years ago, when I was pregnant with my son. At that stage I didn’t know what I wanted to write, only that I did. I did a short course and began writing romantic suspense novels. I had some success with these, but then moved into thriller writing, and finally settled on cozies. 

So, what do I love so much about cozies? 

Maybe it’s the quirky but relatable characters who become so familiar during the series they feel like old friends. Or perhaps it’s the small town feel where everybody knows everybody and community spirit flourishes. Or the fact they’re so varied. You find pets, humour, twists and turns, romance, and hobbies that bring folk together. Then, of course, there’s the amateur sleuth who outwits the murderer every time, with or without the help of the police. The crimes are not gruesome or macabre, but the plot lines are often very clever and at the end you feel like you’ve had a satisfying read. 

My protagonist is hairdresser-turned-sleuth Daisy Thorne. As the only hairdresser in the village, Daisy knows everyone, and her Ooh La La salon is a hotspot for village gossip. 

The books are set in the fictitious English village of Edgemead, which is based on the village where I live in Surrey. It’s very quaint, there are cobblestone alleyways and old buildings, tea shops and pubs, a village green with a duck pond, and the Thames flows idly past. 

After the first book, Death at a Country Mansion, Daisy has got a name for herself as the village sleuth, but in the second book, Death at the Salon (out March 30th), she may have bitten off more than she can chew. When a client is found dead outside her salon with a pair of scissors sticking out of her back, Daisy becomes the prime suspect. Suddenly, she’s got to solve the case to prove her innocence – and find the real culprit before he or she strikes again.

Daisy came to me one day while I was waiting for a hair appointment in my local salon. She’s not based on anyone in particular, but as I watched the goings on in the hairdressers, I began putting together the series premise. And by the end of my appointment, I had all the characters firmly mapped out in my head. 

Daisy is bubbly and confident and has more than a passing interest in criminology (she’s studying it in her spare time). Everybody in the village loves her, apart from the person trying to frame her, of course, and her flirtatious relationship with the gruff but handsome detective McGuinness provides a hint of romance. Assisting her in her crime-solving activities are the rather eccentric crew at the salon, as well as her best friend, socialite Floria.  

Death at the Salon is the second book in the Daisy Thorne series, but can be read as a standalone. It’s out tomorrow and is available from all major platforms. 

Unfortunately, due to Covid, I had to cancel my trip to Malice Domestic and other cozy conferences this year, but I’m looking forward to meeting everyone in 2022! 

A question for Wickeds readers… Why do you love cozies so much? Let me know in the comments below. 

Here’s a bit about the book:

After hairdresser Daisy Thorne finds her missing scissors in a customer’s back, she becomes the prime suspect in a murder . . .

When Ooh La La regular Mel Haverstock left the hair salon that morning, no one expected it would be her final parting. But when Daisy closes shop Saturday night, she finds her client dead as the mullet cut. Homicide is back in style in the quiet village of Edgemead in Surrey, England. But who would want to harm a hair on poor Mel’s head?

Suspicions higher than a beehive pile on Daisy when it’s revealed that she and Mel had tangled back in high school, and DNA evidence seems to color her guilty. Handsome DCI Paul McGuinness gives the hairstylist new accessories—a lovely pair of silver handcuffs. To clear her name, Daisy must highlight the real backstabber, or she’ll end up shaving heads in the prison barbershop.

Find out more here.

Welcome Sarah Graves

By Liz, happy to welcome Sarah Graves to the blog today! Sarah’s new book has me dying for some chocolate – and she’s here to share some insights about her small-town Maine locale. Take it away, Sarah!

Murder in Small Town Eastport

A quaint town on an island off the coast of downeast Maine hardly seems a likely locale for murder. But Eastport’s a quirky place, so adding a fictional taste for deadly doings wasn’t a big stretch.

Eastport home cooking, for example, ranges from the sublime – think grilled salmon with Raye’s Mustard sauce, for instance – to the, well, let’s call it unexpected. 

The first time I ate a ‘jitterbug,’ for example, I knew I had to have the recipe. It was tender, tasty, and different from anything I’d ever had, so imagine my surprise at finding that its main ingredient was Spam!

Then there was the night my hostess served a traditional downeast dried fish dinner. Turns out dried fish is also salted fish – thoroughly salted! – and when you serve it, you pour little bits of fried ham over it, along with the fat the ham fried in. I know people who love dried fish dinner, and because I’m the generous type from now on they may have my portion.

The biggest culinary surprise for me in Eastport, though, turned out to be the chocolate. Just down the bay – five minutes by boat, an hour by car – there’s a real, no-kidding chocolatier who makes the stuff from scratch. 

The candy store in Eastport sells this utter ambrosia, and when I tasted it a chocolate-bomb of inspiration went off in my head: Eastport + chocolate + murder…delicious!

So that’s how two Eastport women, Jake Tiptree and Ellie White, interrupted their ongoing careers of snooping into bloody murder (in the Home Repair is Homicide series) to start The Chocolate Moose, a small chocolate-themed bakery on Eastport’s Water Street right across from the harbor.

In their new adventure, Death by Chocolate Snickerdoodle, the pair try to help two active, athletic young teen sisters clear their brother of murder, while also saving the girls from being forcibly “civilized” (into high heels, makeup, and so on) by their bossy aunt.

But the tasks prove more daunting and dangerous than Jake and Ellie expected, and when Jake comes suddenly face-to-face with a human skeleton she wishes heartily that she were back in the Chocolate Moose, baking something good…

Because like I said, Eastport’s a quirky place, full of mayhem, mystery, and the occasional dried fish dinner. So if you come here – or read about it — be aware: only the chocolate is as harmless – and delicious! – as it may seem.

Readers, what do you think – chocolate snickerdoodles and murder sounds like a pretty awesome combo to me! Tell us what you’re looking forward to about this book.

Welcome Erica Ruth Neubauer

Happy Friday! It’s Liz, with guest Erica Ruth Neubauer, with some insider info on her latest Jane Wunderly Mystery. Take it away, Erica!

I love an English manor house mystery, don’t you? Something about all that tranquility, all those rolling green hills, grazing sheep and sprawling brick homes interrupted by the darkness of murder that is somehow captivating. It’s one of the reasons I’ve watched every single season of Midsomer Murders (and there are a lot of seasons). So, given the events of my first novel, MURDER AT THE MENA HOUSE, it was something of a no-brainer for my characters to travel to England next to visit some long-lost family. Thus, in MURDER AT WEDGEFIELD MANOR, Jane Wunderly finds herself on a secluded estate, rather bored and filling her time by taking flying lessons. 

But what Jane also finds at Wedgefield Manor is an estate that goes out of its way to hire veterans of the first World War. As a veteran myself—of much more recent nature, obviously—it was important to me to cast a light on some of the difficulties men returning home from war faced, much like men and women do today. I myself never deployed, but I have many friends who did, and the nightmares, the flinching at loud noises, the insomnia and so much more, are things that may take years to fade, if they ever do. Today we offer more services for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the lingering effects remain.

The veterans on Wedgefield Manor are those that perhaps would not have been employable elsewhere, but the Lord of the manor gives them a chance. The gardener, Sergeant Barlow, is a Black man originally from the West Indies who fought for Britain in the war and lost a hand in the process. This was based on history—there were thousands of Black men that fought on the side of England, then returned and found they were not only unwelcome in the country they fought for, but several race riots ensued over Black veterans taking employment from their white counterparts.

Simon Marshall, the mechanic at the estate, also struggled with his own employment after the war. Even though he was young and white, he struggled with PTSD, or “shell shock” as it was known in the 1920’s. Nightmares and restlessness fueled the young man’s hot temper, which in the novel puts him in the way of a murderer. 

While those characters are based on imagination, some of the veterans in the novel are nods to people I actually served with in the military. The flight instructor who gives Jane lessons is a delightful chap called Major Chris Hammond, and is based off of (a little bit, anyway) the real Lieutenant Colonel Chris Hammond that I served with in the Air Force Reserves. (Sorry I demoted you in the book, buddy.) Chris is a man with one of the wickedest senses of humor I’ve ever encountered, and a long-standing friend. I also have a cameo appearance by Air Commodore Ward, based off my old boss Colonel Tim Ward, who was hands down the best boss I’ve ever worked for, and one of the best people. Col Ward’s little white dog Rascal also makes an appearance, and even made the cover. So it’s not all hardship and gloom for my WWI vets. This series is, after all, meant to be a fun escape from reality—with a little touch of murder.

Readers, tell me about your favorite veteran. And if you don’t have one of those, tell me about your favorite mystery set in a manor house.