by Sunny Frazier

Sample a slice of four new series and fill your candy bag with Halloween mysteries. Vampires, ghosts, and murders abound. Be careful out there and wear a mask—even when it’s not Halloween! Some of these are October releases, and some just fit the Halloween season!

It’s a Getaway With Murder in Diane Kelly’s new Mountain Lodge Mystery series. How do you celebrate a fiftieth birthday? If you’re Misty Murphy, you get a divorce and buy a lodge in the Blue Ridge Mountains. When a yoga group rents it for a week-long retreat, it’s all very zen—until the yoga instructor is found deceased. Namaste.

At thirty-eight and divorced, Bonnie Balfour returns home to Bliss, Georgia, with her cat Clyde. She opens Bless Her Heart used clothing store in the town square. When a widow turns up dead in a pile of clothes, she’s the main suspect. Bonnie must turn amateur sleuth to stitch clues together in Burden of Poof, first in the Bonnie & Clyde Mysteries by Julie Anne Lindsey. (this was a September release that we missed)

She’s a woman who lost her job. He’s a guide dog who flunked out of school. After inheriting an inn, Maureen Doherty and Finn relocate to Haven, Florida. What she discovers is a corpse on the property and ghosts finding a final resting place in the inn. Be My Ghost is the first in Carol J. Perry’s Haunted Haven mysteries.

Manhattan artist Chloe Abbington has relocated to Whisper Cove, New York, and opened Paint with a View. When she receives a nasty review and the critic is found behind her shop with a painting knife in her neck, Artisan Alley becomes a crime scene. A detective tries to paint Chloe into a corner as a suspect. It’s A Brush with Murder in this colorful Paint by Murder Mystery series debut by Bailee Abbott.

Halloween brings out the fall colors in Georgetown, D.C. Florrie Fox, manager of Color Me Read bookstore, is bringing in a psychic author to do read ghost stories. The woman arrives in hysterics, claiming she saw a bare foot sticking out of a rolled-up carpet. The carpet has disappeared as well as a local book lover. Crimes are afoot in Murder Outside the Lines, third in her Pen & Ink mystery by Krista Davis.

It’s the second Halloween for Charlene Morris in Salem, Massachusetts. Her B&B is booked for the annual Witch Ball. It’s all fun and fangs until a Romanian vampire vanishes at midnight. The next morning a naked man with a hole in his chest washes up on the shore. Now Charlene and ghost Dr. Jack must do a stake-out to find the killer. Mrs. Morris and the Vampire is the fifth adventure in Traci Wilton’s Salem B&B mystery.

Novelty baker Sally Muccio usually loves Halloween. But this year she’s asked to cater a party at her dad’s funeral home. Also, a competing bakery has opened up across the street from Sally’s Samples, and the woman is intent on making Sally’s bakery crumble. But the plan explodes when the woman is killed. Recipes are included in Dessert is the Bomb in the eleventh Cookies & Chance Mystery by Catherine Bruns.

We’re Reading Between the Crimes in Kate Young’s second Jane Doe Book Club Mystery. Lyla Moody works as a receptionist in Sweet Mountain, Georgia. It’s Halloween and the Jane Doe Book Club is reading an Agatha Christie whodunnit. When Lyla and her grandma arrive at a charity event, they find a corpse in the library killed with a candlestick. Now the book club must find clues before the widow is convicted.

Meanwhile, in Kathi Daley’s Inn at Holiday Bay series, Abby Sullivan, Maine Coon cat Rufus, dog Ramos, and drifter Georgia live contentedly in Maine. In book sixteen, Abby has a chance to participate in an author event. When the guest author turns up dead, Abby discovers Portent in the Pages from clues in the author’s unreleased book.

The women of Loma Vista have fallen under the spell of a charismatic preacher. When a sheriff’s detective sends a woman to Toni Carey’s lodge, the woman is found dead at the Plato Institute, a think tank. The main suspect is a charming sleep doctor. Medium Dead is the second in Kate Thornton’s Toni Carey Mysteries.

Enjoy a Halloween Party Murder hosted by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross. This anthology came out in August but is a perfect October read.

BEST OF THE REST

Ellie Alexander—The Cure for What Ales You: A Sloan Krause Mystery #5
Samantha Silver—Nixed in Notting Hill: Cassie Coburn Mysteries #9
Kathi Daley—A Geek Thing: Cottage on Gooseberry Bay #7
Adele Abbott—Witch is Where Unicorns Cry: Witch P.I. mystery #41
Kathi Daley—The Ghostly Groundskeeper: A Tess and Tilly Cozy Mystery #12
Mildred Abbott—Yowling Yetis: Cozy Corgi Mysteries #22
Amy Vansant—Pineapple Circus: Pineapple Port Mysteries #13
Eva Belle—Pumpkin Pie or Die: An Autumn Cozy Paranormal Mystery #1
Paige Shelton—Cold Wind: Alaska Wild Mysteries #2
Rita Mae Brown—Claws for Alarm: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery #30
Rita Mae Brown—Out of Hounds: “Sister” Jane #13

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. Be sure to check out our new mystery podcast too with mystery short stories, and first chapters read by local actors. A new episode goes up next week.

Or click on this link to take you to Mysterious Galaxy’s website where you can purchase any of these books & a portion will go to help support KRL:

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.

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