by Sunny Frazier

Details on how to win a copy of 2 books from a past Coming Attractions column-Out of the Dying Pan by Linda Reilly and All Murders Are Final by Sherry Harris, at the end of this column.

Along with May flowers come starter books. No time like the present to “spring” into a new series!

It’s A Front Page Affair when the Lusitania sinks, a shooting occurs at JP Morgan’s mansion and the Great War is on. Kitty Weeks aspires to be a real journalist but is stuck writing fashion and society gossip on the Ladies’ Page. Luckily, a man is murdered at a high society picnic. Determined to prove her worth as a journalist, Kitty is plunged into a wartime conspiracy set to disrupt her privileged life. Radha Vatsal authors this new series.

Darcie Wilde offers up a Regency Mystery. Heiress, Rosalind Thorne, was nearly ruined after her father abandoned the family. To survive, she manages the affairs of some of London’s most influential women. When an aristocrat is found dead in a ballroom, Rosalind uses her skills and connections to uncover the killer from a list of suspects. She’s definitely A Useful Woman.

It’s One Dead, Two to Go for PI Edwina Schultz, aka “Eddie Shoes.” After taking incriminating photos of a man and mistress for the wife, the mistress is dead and the wife is missing. Is her client the killer? Also investigating is a detective she has a past with when they lived in Seattle, and her mother comes along, uninvited, for the adventure. Author Elena Hartwell makes things tricky for her sleuth. (this one actually came out mid April)

Illinois State Police detective Evie Blackwell is good at her job and would like to get married, but the job comes first. When she arrives in Carin, Illinois, to launch a cold-case task, she unearths surprising connections between the sheriff and a missing persons case. Traces of Guilt is the first of Dee Henderson’s Evie Blackwell Cold Case Mysteries.

Recipes abound in the next six offerings. First up, Chef Laurel Inwood finds herself in Hubbard, Ohio, helping her aunt run her restaurant. Terminal at the Tracks is a run-down greasy spoon in an old railroad station. Laurel cooks up a plan to feature ethnic cuisine, but first there’s the body in the booth to take care of. An investigative reporter for local TV news is found with a receipt spike impaled in his head. Laurel sets out to track down a killer, but as she turns up the heat, will she end up in the soup herself? Irish Stewed is Kylie Logan’s first Ethnic Eats mystery. Recipes included.

Robbie Jordan has transformed a country store in South Lick, Indiana, into Pans ‘N Pancakes. At a homecoming party in the store, a randy widow winds up dead and the police suspect Robbie’s friend who closed up the restaurant. Now Robbie has to take off her apron and find the real killer in short order. Maddie Day’s Grilled for Murder is the second book in her Country Store Mysteries.

March is maple sugar season on Barton Farm. Kelsey Cambridge organizes a Maple Sugar Festival with school visits, pancake breakfasts, and tree tapping classes. Kelsey hires an expert to teach the classes. It’s a decision she ends up regretting when he turns up dead. This death threatens to shut down the festival and the farm. Kelsey must solve the murder to get out of a sticky situation. Final Tap is Amanda Flower’s second book in the Living History Mysteries.

In the second Cranberry Cove Mystery, the town on the shores of Lake Michigan is ready for the first annual Winter Walk, and Monica Albertson is baking cranberry goodies. But when the mayor’s body arrives in a horse-drawn sleigh, both Monica’s mother and stepmother become prime suspects. Seems the mayor was dating both of them. It’s up to Monica to find out who really put the mayor on ice. Peg Cochran offers cranberry recipes in Berry the Hatchet.

We not only get recipes but also decorating tips from Kathleen Bridge in her second Hamptons Home & Garden mystery, Hearse and Gardens. Meg agrees to help her friend inventory and clear out furniture from the estate of a wealthy art broker. When Meg discovers a real skeleton in a hidden room, the remains of the son who went missing 20 years ago with a Warhol painting, Meg gets drawn into the sketchy goings-on and family drama. But she makes no bones about solving the crime, making her the killer’s next target.

The Happy Hoofers are kicking off Carnival by entertaining at the most elegant hotel in Rio de Janeiro. The party is cut short for the ‘fab five’ when their Brazilian companion is found dead in her room. As the samba-loving sleuths sift the evidence, they realize that even in beautiful Rio murder can steal the show. You get recipes with Bossa Novas, Bikinis, and Bad End, and Mary McHugh adds travel tips.

Do you want wine with those books? Nadine Nettmann is Decanting a Murder with her first Sommelier Mystery. Only two things are important in Katie Stillwell’s life: her work and getting her Sommelier Certification. All of that gets disrupted when a body is found at a Napa Valley winery party. The evidence points to Katie’s best friend. It takes deductive wine skills to track down the real killer.

How about a nip of moonshine? Carol Miller offers An Old Fashioned Murder in her third book in the Moonshine Mysteries. Daisy McGovern knows it isn’t easy being a small-town waitress at a diner in Virginia. She’s trying to convert the diner into a bakery. When a robbery happens in the back room, one of the thieves ends up dead with a chef’s knife in his chest. The sheriff is out of town so Daisy decides to follow up on clues. She meets a handsome geocacher while at the same time trying to avoid the charms of a moonshiner. A second murder takes her to Appalachian mountaintops. Now she must figure out how her bakery is involved.

Author Amy Reade whisks us away to the Big Island, Hawaii, in her newest stand-alone. Native Kailani Kanaka leaves the D.C. winters and an obsessive boyfriend behind when she goes home. She becomes the personal chef of the Jorgensens at The House of Hanging Jade. But the idyllic life she’s found is rocked by a shark attack, a corpse, and the ex.

The wedding for Pepper Pomeroy’s sister starts with dearly beloved, but it ends with dearly departed when the bartender drops dead from a lethal nightcap. Authorities think it’s an accident, but the woman’s past reveals a secret sorority, well-connected enemies, and an unsolved murder involving high society. Pepper’s event planning business depends on outsmarting a killer in Newlywed Dead, the third book in Nancy J. Parra’s A Perfect Proposals Mystery.

Former reporter Sunny Coolidge can’t help noticing the new seafood shop in Kittery Harbor, Maine, is going belly up. But checking on the owner she finds a man in the freezer. Sunny’s friend and chief investigator figures the owner is the prime suspect. But the open-and-shut case seems fishy. Now it’s up to Sunny to get Neil off the hook. Author Claire Donally offers Catch as Cat Can, the fifth in the Sunny & Shadow Mysteries.

Carolyn Hart warns Don’t Go Home in the twenty-fifth outing of Annie Darling and the Death on Demand mystery bookstore in Broward’s Rock Island, South Carolina. She’s hosting a party for a Southern literary icon. After the local paper announces that the author will reveal the real-life inspirations behind his characters, not everyone is happy. Her friend gets into an argument with the author, and he turns up dead. Although Annie promised husband Max to stop sleuthing, she’s not going to let the police throw the book at her friend. (this is the paperback release of last year’s hardback)

To enter to win copies of Out of the Dying Pan by Linda Reilly and All Murders Are Final by Sherry Harris, from a past Coming Attractions column, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “may flowers” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen after May 7, 2016. U.S. residents only.

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & short stories in our mystery section. Check back every month for Coming Attractions!

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Sunny Frazier worked with an undercover narcotics team in Fresno County for 17 years before turning her energies to writing the Christy Bristol Astrology Mysteries. Based in the San Joaquin Valley of California, the novels are inspired by real cases and 35 years of casting horoscopes.