by Sunny Frazier

Details on how to win a copy of 2 books from a past Coming Attractions column-an e-book copy of Murder On Wheels by Lynn Cahoon, and a print copy of Hearse and Gardens by Kathleen Bridge, at the end of this column.

Time for BBQs, sunscreen, and reading on the beach. Why not start a new series and take a mental vacation back in time and to foreign shores with these titles:

It’s 1881 Chicago and the idea of a female detective—unheard of! But when Pinkerton opens his agency’s doors to women, actress Lilly Long is up for the job. When she was 11, her mother was murdered. Now at 22, she’s lost her savings to a scoundrel. Time to exit stage right into reality and save others from the same fate. First in the Lilly Long series, An Untimely Frost by Penny Richards is a way to stay cool in the sun.

An old showboat has crashed in an Ozark mountain lake, not in the 1800s but in modern day Branson, Missouri. People are trapped aboard, and new sheriff Hank Worth is in for a long winter day of getting people to shore. Finding the body of a young high school girl locked in the captain’s dining room turns the accident into a murder investigation. Along the way he uncovers dark and tangled small town secrets. The Branson Beauty is the first in the Sheriff Hank Worth mysteries by Claire Booth.

Emily Cavanaugh travels to the village of Stony Beach, Oregon, to claim her inheritance. Not only has she inherited a Victorian estate called Windy Corner but also a substantial portion of the real estate of the whole town. But there are hints that her aunt may have been murdered. Emily herself experiences a near-fatal accident. Underneath the rocks of Stony Beach lurk jealousies. Sit down with tea and enjoy Arsenic With Austen, the first Crime With the Classics series by Katherine Bolger Hyde.

Don’t we readers love books about books? At their seaside Read ‘Em and Eat bookstore café in Ft. Meyers Beach, Florida, Sassy Cabot and Bridgy Mayfield offer fresh scones, great books, and excellent detective work. When they decide to take their reading group on a day trip, upon their return to go home, their driver is found dead in the van. The sheriff’s deputies have some questions of their own for the group, and if the ladies don’t find some answers soon, the next book they read might be from a prison library. Read To Death is the third Read ‘Em and Eat Mystery by Terrie Farley Moran.

As Snoopy says, it was A Dark and Stormy Murder, and author Julia Buckley agrees with him in the first Writer’s Apprentice Mystery. Aspiring suspense novelist Lena London lands a job as assistant to the author who inspired her to write. She also gets to live rent-free in the woman’s Victorian home in quaint Blue Lake, Indiana. But truth is stranger than fiction when a corpse is found on the boss’s lakefront property. Trained from all the mystery novels she’s read, Lena turns sleuth tracking down clues connected with the mysterious estate.

It’s a Most Curious Murder for Jenny Weston when she moves home to Bear Falls, Michigan, after a divorce. But she realizes the town has changed when her mother’s little library is destroyed. The prime suspect is found dead, and the trail leads back to a neighbor, a little person. Believing the woman’s innocence, the two team up to investigate the richest family in town when a second murder happens. This is the first in the Little Library Mysteries by Elizabeth Kane Buzelli.

Let’s stay in Michigan for Nancy Coco’s fifth Candy Coated Mystery. Fudge shop owner Allie McMurphy is making treats for the annual Mackinac Island yacht race, but bichonpoo, Mal, decides to pull a body out of the marina. When her sister’s boyfriend become the prime suspect, Allie finds All You Need Is Fudge to solve a murder.

Something’s Knot Kosher for Martha Rose when she supports her friend transporting the body of the husband killed in a bank robbery. Too late she discovers there’s a stranger in the casket. Now Martha and her quilting group have to figure out the mix up. This is the fourth in Quilting Mystery by Mary Marks.

Every October, thousands of monarch butterflies flock to California’s Monterey Peninsula for winter. Cadbury by the Sea holds a weeklong festival complete with a butterfly queen and her court. Casey Feldstein finds herself fluttering back and forth setting up a yarn retreat and helping out at the festival. But when a former queen is found dead with a knife in her back, Casey must set her loom aside to hook a killer. Gone With the Wool is the fourth in A Yarn Retreat Mystery by Betty Hechtman. Includes knitting patterns and a recipe!

I’ve got 5 ‘woo-woo’ reads to give you fun chills in the heat. First up is A Grave Prediction by Victoria Laurie. In her fourteenth Psychic Eye Mystery, Abby Cooper is sent to San Diego to help train FBI officers to use their intuition. Her first challenge: a series of bank robberies in which the thieves made off with loads of cash but left no clues. Abby’s sixth sense leads her team to a tract of land recently cleared for development. Instead of cash, Abby gets a vision of four buried bodies.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, witch and vintage boutique owner Lily Ivory, a sorceress, can’t ward off a lawsuit. She’s the temporary leader of the city’s magical community, but after her potbellied pig head-butts a rival clothier, Lily tries to make peace without a costly personal injury case. Any hope of a quiet resolution is shattered when the clothier turns up dead, and Lily is one of the prime suspects. She discovers a cursed trousseau among recently acquired inventory. A Toxic Trousseau is Juliet Blackwell’s eighth Witchcraft Mystery.

Grace Wilde is headed to New Orleans for her first real case as an animal telepath. Intending to help a woman find her missing sister, but when she tries to communicate with her client’s cat, Grace gets distracted by the presence of another animal. The cat confirms that a monkey is swinging around the Big Easy. Can she catch the Capuchin and find the missing sister? Or, is there monkey business going on? Take the Monkey and Run is Laura Morrigan’s fourth Call of the Wilde Mystery.

When the bookshop next to the Honeybee Bakery hosts a signing for a Savannah radio celebrity’s book, magical baker Katie Lightfoot provides desserts to the big turn out. But the final chapter comes for the author when she is found dead at the event. The prime suspect is a former witch whose familiar was once Katie’s own terrier, Mungo. The dog gives a little nudge to get Katie to try to conjure up the real killer. It’s Spells and Scones in the sixth Bailey Cates Magical Bakery Mystery. Recipes included!

It’s a week before Christmas in Milwaukee, but bar owner Mackenzie “Mack” Dalton is hardly in good spirits. Chilled to the core by the murder of a bouncer, she’s determined to use her extra perceptive senses to identify the gunman responsible. Could his death be linked to cryptic letters? With a second case to crack, innocent lives at stake, and a media frenzy in their midst, Mack and her barfly allies have little time to mull over the grim details. Allyson K. Abbott serves up Shots in the Dark in the fourth mystery set in Mack’s Bar. Includes drink recipes!

It’s July in Moosetookalook, Maine, and Liss MacCrimmon Ruskin is getting her wares ready for the Celtic heritage festival. This year’s celebration might prove a wee bit more eventful, and deadly, when a fire ravages the local bookstore. Liss fears the worst for the owner and children who live above the shop. After the fire is out, the family is nowhere to be found. Disturbed by their disappearance and suspecting arson, Liss then hears a gunshot on the festival’s opening day and the selectman is found dead. Are the two incidents connected? Kilt at the Highland Games is Kaitlyn Dunnett’s tenth Liss MacCrimmon outing.

Let’s actually go to Scotland for Hannah Reed’s Dressed to Kilt. Third in the Scottish Highland series, expat and romance novelist Eden Elliott has only a little time left in the country, and she doesn’t care if the village of Clenkillen is snowbound. There’s whisky tasting to do with a handsome date, but it goes sour when a woman is found drowned in one of the vats. Having been pushed into the role of Special Constable, she realizes the killer could be somehow connected to her own Scottish heritage. To put the murderer behind bars, she’ll have to unearth.

Close by but in another century, Kiera Darby and Sebastian Gage are honeymooning in England’s Lake District in 1831. They’re interrupted when her new father-in-law insists they look into the murder of a nun at Rathfarnham Abbey near Dublin. The killer strikes again, in daylight and near a classroom of children. Mother Superior would like to send the students home, but civil unrest in Ireland would make the journey treacherous. Soon, Kiera suspects some of the girls may be hiding a secret. As Death Draws Near is the fifth Lady Darby mystery by Anna Lee Huber.

To enter to win copies of the following 2 books from a past Coming Attractions column-an e-book copy of Murder On Wheels by Lynn Cahoon, and a print copy of Hearse and Gardens by Kathleen Bridge, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “fireworks” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen after July 2, 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.