A popular trope in cozy mysteries is “Let’s put on a show.” The spring community theater production of The Wizard of Oz is, surprisingly, Britton Bay’s inaugural play. All the parts are being filled by local thespians, but the out-of-town director’s reputation precedes her. It turns out former soap opera actress Magnolia Sweet is anything…
After an Irish vacation, Tricia Miles and her quasi-boyfriend Marshall Cambridge are back in Stoneham, New Hampshire. The trip was a dud. It was a working vacation for Marshall, who was leading a tour of elderly travelers, and he was never off the clock. Back at the Haven’t Got a Clue Bookstore, Pixie Poe, the…
Let’s just lay it out here: this is one of the best cozy mysteries I’ve ever read. Not only was Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody a smart and suspenseful mystery, it was a funny and moving novel as well. Barbara Ross has long been my favorite culinary cozy author with her terrific Maine Clambake series, but…
Lady Cecilia Bates of Danby Hall is a delightful heroine, level-headed, curious, persistent, and kind. Cecilia had a taste of being of service, someone of value, when she solved a murder in her own home but that was months ago. After the excitement at Danby last spring, investigating a terrible murder in her own dining…
“Find my heart, and you will spy my treasure.” —”Gentleman George’s Lost Hoard” from Sugar and Vice Lost treasure. The phrase conjures up chests of gleaming gold, crates of sparkling gemstones, and every wish granted. In Sugar and Vice, the discovery of a pirate skeleton—one who was rumored to have been buried with a…
Chapter 1 As schooner-sized white clouds sailed high across the turquoise South Florida sky, Kate McGuire tugged at her green gardening gloves. Despite what the label proclaimed, one size definitely did not fit all. “So what happens if I ditch the gloves?” she asked, pausing, as her friend rhythmically scooped wet sand. “Nothing super horrible,”…
Describe the first time you pictured Kate McGuire in your head. In my mind (and my very first, toss-away draft), I showed a bit of Kate’s life in Manhattan—including that one momentous day when the restaurant where she’d worked for two years shuttered (embezzlement), she lost her tiny, homey apartment (gone condo), and she broke off…
Describe the first time you pictured Lucy Lancaster in your head. Lucy first popped into my head when I was at a writers’ conference in Austin, Texas. I was listening to a panel about writing characters with interesting day jobs and this idea for an amateur sleuth who was a professional genealogist kept going around…
Our title heroine, Mimi Lee, has just opened the business of her dreams, a pet grooming salon in Los Angeles, with the help of rich investor Pixie St James, whose dog she saved from drowning. Sure, business is a little slow to start, but she’s sure that once word spreads of how good she is…
Fall may only have just begun, but the crisp autumn air and ever-darkening sky are but a precursor to the next change: Winter, inevitably, drawing near. And, just as one season transitions to the next, soon pumpkin spice and apple cider will recede into the background as peppermint and hot chocolate reclaim their transient glory.…
