“No, no, a thousand times no!” Polly Pure crossed her hands over her rather generous bosom and looked with defiance at the man confronting her. “I’ll never marry you, Barty Backstabber!”
The cook’s screams preceded her as she ran from her kitchen toward the front of the old manor house. For the newly arrived guests assembled in the grand foyer, her screams put a definite damper to the start of the Thanksgiving holiday at Farquhar Farms. The mood was further diminished when the elderly cook staggered into the foyer from the back hallway and collapsed in a floury heap on the polished oak floor.
Margo Power, publisher of Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine founded a Short Story Mystery Fiction Society in 1996. The magazine, Mysterical-e was a spin-off from this and resulted in the Derringer Awards for stories up to twenty thousand words. The society has now grown to around one thousand six hundred members.
Miranda the Mermaid hovered in the water and adjusted the top of her sequined swimming suit. A chorus of catcalls came to her ears and she looked out the clear glass of the tank. A small crowd of young men gazed up from the dance floor in appreciative adoration of her nearly naked beauty. Miranda smiled and blew them a kiss and they shouted their approval in return.
This week in honor of Earth Day we are once again featuring only ebooks. Here are four more mystery ones-Murder in a Good Neighborhood by K.K. Chalmers, A Deadly Denial by Kathy Bennett, The Hollow House by Janis Patterson, Halloween Thirteen: A Collection of Mysteriously Macabre Tales by Bobbi A. Chukran, and The Case of the Murderous Mermaid and Others by Andrew MacRae.
While the term “cozy-noir” may seem contradictory, it does make perfect sense in this collection of thirteen stories that embrace the mix of dark moodiness within familiar suburban settings. While the stories often take place in the small communities familiar to most cozy mysteries, often simmering just beneath the surface is a sense of menace and betrayal that edges them over to the noir side of fiction.
Gregory Smith, aka The Kid, used to be a professional pickpocket. He’s given up that life for a fresh start with his bride, Lynn, at their bookstore. He doesn’t miss picking pockets. Much.
It's Molly MacRae's first LCC and she'll be joining her brother Andrew in the festivities. She’s launching the third book in the Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery series, Spinning In Her Grave. Kath Rutledge's Weaver's Cat fabric store comes with gloomy ghost Geneva in residence.
It was Saturday morning at the Evans house. Mom was making bread in the kitchen; twelve-year-old Paul sat at the table with her and worked on the comic book he was drawing.
The Kid has just returned from Louisiana where he first kept Fast Eddie company and then stood as sole mourner at Eddie’s funeral. It’s what you do for the man who mentored you, pretty much raised you and made you who you are today. It also cost a lot of money The Kid didn’t have so he borrowed from the people who charge high rates, rather insist on getting their money back and don’t bother with reporting to the credit bureau.
