Librarian and secret provider of contraband books Trudell Beckett – Tru to her friends – is having second thoughts about giving a speech to the Arete Society, Cypress, South Carolina’s most exclusive book club. For a start, her boss Lida Farnsworth is a member, and has no idea of Tru’s clandestine operation, running a lending…
Rogue librarian Tru Becket is certain she’s successfully established her illicit bookroom beneath the Cypress Public Library, having salvaged a good number of the physical library books the town had previously chosen to discard in favor of going electronic-only. Known only to a select circle, the bookroom serves those who favor the feel of books…
My favorite prickly heroine, Charity Penn (or Penn, as she prefers to be known since her given name was chosen as a reminder of her family status as unwanted foundling), is starting to settle into life running her late grandmother’s chocolate shop in the South Carolina island town of Camellia Beach. Her newfound maternal family…
Charity Penn is not your usual cozy mystery heroine. As an heiress of somewhat dubious parentage, her entire life before the novel’s open is primarily one of distrusting others, from the family that keeps her at arms’ length to the many people willing to lie to her to gain access to her fortune or otherwise…
I’m kind of sorry I started the Southern Chocolate Shop Mystery series with this third installment because it’s so awesome that I wish I’d jumped in from the start! Charity Penn—or Penn, as she’s better known—is the owner of The Chocolate Box, a specialty chocolate store located in the quiet island town of Camellia Beach,…
A new release that caught my attention this month is Dorothy St. James’ Flowerbed of State, the first in St. James’ White House Gardener Mystery Series, and it quite simply blew me away. St. James does so many things right in this book, but the thing I admire most is the way she uses…
