As with all the Josie Prescott Antiques Mysteries, Hidden Treasure, the thirteenth entry in the series, uses genuine antiques to tell a fictional story. The questions that surround antiques are fraught with mysteries. Who designed it? Why? What was going on in their world that made this artifact appropriate or desired? Who produced it? Who…
Glow of Death by Jane K. Cleland is the 11th Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery (Available November 29, 2016). As a warm ocean breeze ruffles the tall grass along Rocky Point’s sandy dunes, Josie Prescott visits the house of a wealthy local couple, Edwin and Ava Belcher. She’s been called in to appraise their Tiffany lamp,…
Rex Stout’s beer-drinking, reclusive, genius detective, Nero Wolfe, was introduced to the world in 1934 to immediate and overwhelming acclaim. During the next 41 years, Mr. Stout wrote 33 Nero Wolfe books and 39 novellas. The stories, which might properly be classified as soft-boiled detective fiction, are narrated by Mr. Wolfe’s assistant detective, the dapper…
Ornaments of Death by Jane K. Cleland is the 10th installment of the Josie Prescott Mysteries Series surrounding a mystery of missing antique collectibles that leads Josie to learn the true meaning of Christmas and family (available December 1, 2015). Christmas lights twinkle throughout the cozy coastal town of Rocky Point, New Hampshire, and Prescott's…
To Lily and Sally and all Rex Stout’s Gals who try to do the right thing. This is the 75th anniversary of the publication of Rex Stout’s Some Buried Caesar, the first time we meet Lily Rowan, one of the great hottie-totties in crime fiction literature. Lily is Archie’s main squeeze. You know Archie, right?…
Blood Rubies by Jane K. Cleland is the 9th Josie Prescott Mystery about the antiques expert who is hired by a celebrity chef to appraise what turns out to be a fake, and deadly, heirloom (available December 2, 2014). Ana Yartsin is on the verge of becoming a celebrity chef. Her custom Fabergé egg-shaped cakes have…
Just as the Bible tells us that it’s not money per se that leads to evil, but rather the love of money, so too it is with antiques: It’s not that antiques can lead to murder, it’s the emotions that swirl around them, emotions like greed, jealousy, revenge, fear, love, or hate. When you deal…
Mystery author Rex Stout was, by all reports, a flirt. He loved beautiful women, and to him, most women were beautiful. According to his daughter, shortly before he died at age 87, Mr. Stout engaged in some charming repartee with his hospital nurse—he flirted with her and she flirted back. How lovely, and to me,…
An excerpt from Dolled Up For Murder by Jane K. Cleland (available March 27, 2012). On a sparkling spring day in the cozy coastal town of Rocky Point, New Hampshire, with the lilacs in full bloom and the wisteria hanging low, antiques dealer Josie Prescott is showing a stellar doll collection she’s just acquired to…
