by Cynthia Chow, Sandra Murphy, Becky Sue Epstein, & Terrance McArthur

This week we have 5 more cozy and historical mysteries all with a magical or spooky side making them perfect for Halloween reading-A Fatal Feast at Bramsford Manor: A Food and Spirits Mystery by Darci Hannah, Booked on Murder by Allison Brook, Furever After by Sofie Kelly, a Magical Cats Mystery, Six Stunning Sirens by Lynn Cahoon, and Death and the Visitors by Heather Redmond. Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of all 5 books and links to purchase them from Amazon at the end of each review.

A Fatal Feast at Bramsford Manor: A Food and Spirits Mystery by Darci Hannah
Review by Cynthia Chow

Bridget “Bunny” MacBride is thrilled when she learns that she will finally be leading her own cooking show on the Mealtime Network, but she should have known that Food and Spirits would come with strings. After arguing with the network’s star over Halloween ideas and then perhaps being a little too popular with the audience, Bunny finds herself now leading exactly what she didn’t want, a cooking show with ghosts. Brett Bloom and Giff McGrady were part of the ghost-hunting show Ghost Guys until it got cancelled due to an Instagram-captured gruesome discovery, and now they are joining Bunny for a food-themed ghost-hunting show. It’s too late for Bunny to turn down the job, so she and the ghost hunting team are assigned to hunting down the Mistletoe Bride of Bramsford Manor in Hampshire, England, where hundreds of years ago Ann Copeland was found trapped in a storage chest by her groom on their wedding day.

While Giff admits to being a charismatic host who only pretends to be a medium – he believes that all psychics are fake, of course – Bunny has a secret that she has been running from since she was 16. Ever since her twin brother tragically died in a car accident, Bunny has been haunted by visions of a white rabbit. While it’s not the reason for her nickname – that comes from a pet bunny she loved as a child – the hauntings forced her to leave Scotland for America, where she thought she had finally escaped them. Unfortunately, during a dinner with the manor owners Sir Charles Wallingford and his sister Morgan Wallingford-Green, the apparition of a white rabbit leads Bunny to a corpse once again left in an antique chest. Since her chef’s knife also happens to be the one plunged into Marcus Dean’s back, police unsurprisingly arrest her on suspicion of murder. At least one of the benefits of filming a reality television show is that her alibi of cooking in the kitchen was all caught on tape, but Bunny learns this after calling her grandmother Emma MacBride for help. And while Brett was initially suspicious of his new co-host, Giff nudges him into joining Bunny and her Granny Mac in an investigation to solve the mysteries of the Mistletoe Bride and the much more recent death of the historian.

This first in the series does an excellent job at introducing a fun set of main characters along with a fascinating backstory for Bunny. Fans of Victoria Laurie’s Ghost Hunter series will fall in love with this new cooking ghost-hunting trio, but this new entry is still very distinct as Bunny, Giff, and Brett get to know and trust one another. After the introduction of the Food and Spirits crew, more is gradually revealed about them and readers will love the evolving relationships between the ghost hunters and the clairvoyant chef.

Traditional English food recipes are included in the end, but most of the fun comes with the practical investigation and questioning of suspects by Brett, Giff, Bunny, and Granny Mac. The blend of a classic English manor mystery with paranormal elements satisfies those looking for just one or both, meaning that the prolific author should gain even more fans of her witty dialogue and genuine likable characters.

You can click here to purchase the book from Amazon.

Cynthia Chow is the branch manager of Kaneohe Public Library on the island of Oahu. She balances a librarian lifestyle of cardigans and hair buns with a passion for motorcycle riding and regrettable tattoos (sorry, Mom).

Booked on Murder by Allison Brook
Review by Sandra Murphy

Carrie Singleton is the special events coordinator at the public library and soon-to-be bride of Dylan Avery. The date is just a few weeks away and final decisions are being made, dress fittings done, and the seating chart and playlist of songs perfected.

There is one more thing to do—solve a murder. The gazebo is part of the wedding plans. The dead guy next to it is not. He’s Billy Carpenter, a bank robber, recently released from prison. The money was never recovered so it’s thought it was buried near the gazebo and he came back for it. His two buddies were in on the heist but one is murdered and the third has disappeared. Did he kill the other two or is he in hiding from an unknown person?

Carrie thinks the only way to take the curse of the two deaths off her wedding so it can be the perfect day is to solve the murders. With help from the library ghost, Evelyn, she’s able to piece together the men’s background.

Of course that’s not all that’s going on. A diary of a “witch” is found, and almost stolen. Carrie writes a newspaper article about the woman, and a semi-secret organization, the Wise Women, invite her to join. And then there’s a new house and its mysterious occupants…

Will she get everything done in time? Including finding the killer? Will this really be her happy ever after?

This is book eight in the series. Readers first met Carrie as a Goth young woman who comes to live with her aunt and uncle and then followed her as she met Dylan, grew to love her job, acquired a cat, was elected to the city council, and is now about to be a bride. It’s been a long journey but well worth the trip. Be sure to wear something nice for the wedding!

You can click here to purchase the book from Amazon.

Furever After by Sofie Kelly, a Magical Cats Mystery
Review by Sandra Murphy

On a day when the most exciting thing planned was to taste test a variety of cakes to choose one for her wedding cake, Kathleen receives a shock when she opens the library for the day. A glimmer of light catches her attention and once the main lights are on, it’s an even bigger shock to discover a dead body—and she knows who he is.

He was the contractor hired to renovate the library a few years prior, but before the job was completed, he was arrested for assaulting Kathleen and breaking her wrist. Now he’s out of jail and dead in the library. Nothing was out of place except a painting crooked on the wall.

There begins a complex mystery—why would an ex-con be interested in a painting that had been donated for the library’s fundraiser years before? There was no one else in the library when Kathleen arrived—and the alarm was still on when she came into the building. It seems the painting that sat in the library’s storage for several years might have been part of a collection stolen years before—and it’s valuable.

Although it’s a job for Marcus to find the killer, Kathleen often has insights that help. This time, in addition to that worry, she has the final details of the wedding to plan, a bridal shower to attend, and a decision to make—where will they live after the wedding? There are the cats to consider too. Owen and Hercules won’t let anyone except Kathleen touch them. Micah, who lives with Marcus, isn’t so picky—and of course, all three have magical skills.

This is book 16 in the popular series. Owen still loves his catnip toy, Fred the Funky Chicken, who is beheaded and replaced often while leaving Owen in a ‘nip stupor. Hercules is above that kind of thing and spends his time sitting outside with Fifi, the dog from next door. As for the humans, there are Big Changes in store for them all. It would be a spoiler to tell more but you’ll enjoy reading about them. I’m looking forward to more cat-filled tales.

You can click here to purchase the book from Amazon.

Sandra Murphy lives in the shadow of the Arch in St. Louis Missouri. She’s the editor for the upcoming Yeet Me in St Louis, an anthology with stories from twelve St. Louis writers. Her own short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Magazine, and anthologies such as The Perp Wore Pumpkin and I (Almost) Died in Your Arms. ‘Lucy’s Tree’, published in The Eyes of Texas, won a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. She lives in St. Louis with Ozzie the Westie Impersonator and his sidekick in crime, Louie the Cat.

Six Stunning Sirens by Lynn Cahoon
Becky Sue Epstein

Upon opening this book, a first-time reader encountering this long-running series is thrown into a complex cozy plot. Yet author Lynn Cahoon has mastered the art of interweaving just the right amount of backstory to make her world understandable, without making it obvious, and without spoiling it for anyone who wants to go back and start at the beginning of the series.

The main character, Mia, has a job at the local hotel until she makes enough money to work full-time in her own recently restored catering/event space—a former schoolhouse in her small town of Magic Springs, Idaho. This week’s event at her renovated schoolhouse will be a beauty pageant. But not your ordinary (fight-dirty) pageant. This one is a competition between high school seniors where the parent of the winner gets to serve on the all-important local council. And the local council is not actually the town council, it’s the coven’s council.

Dirty fighting, with witches involved, can get people killed – in the most inexplicable manners. One of the pageant mothers dies, right in Mia’s schoolhouse – which serves as Mia’s home, as well as her place of business. So now the threat is personal. Mia must figure out who, why, and how – in order to protect her home, save her job and the lucrative catering event, and try to prevent further crimes there.

Somehow, the magical beings in this contemporary Kitchen Witch mystery series co-exist with the non-magical citizens, intermarrying and interacting as if it were totally normal. Which I guess it is in this town. Yet despite all the spells, counter-spells, charms, and protection wards in play around the local pageant, more people are threatened. Mia and her cohorts have their work cut out for them.

Further enjoyable complications involve Mia’s and her roommate’s romances with two handsome brothers, whose mother now works with Mia. There’s also Mia’s familiar, a cat whose personality has been taken over by a former boyfriend of her grandmother’s and is waiting to be liberated. Cutest of all is the adorable Maltese puppy Cerby (aka Cerberus, a “hellhound”!) who has to be housebroken, as well as taught how to use his magical powers. No, don’t help the nice UPS guy by levitating his packages, Cerby…

You can click here to purchase this book from Amazon.

While traveling the world and writing about wine and spirits, Becky Sue Epstein reads cozy mysteries to relax. One day it occurred to her that she could combine the two pursuits. She recently began to write wine-themed cozy mysteries. Hopefully, her agent will love them.

Death and the Visitors by Heather Redmond
Review by Terrance McArthur

In Death and the Visitors, the second Mary Shelley Mystery by Heather Redmond, stepsisters Mary and Jane join forces to discover who killed a Russian noble and stole the diamonds promised to their parents to get them out of debt.

Redmond likes to set her books in the past. Her first mystery series featured a young Charles Dickens as a sleuth. Redmond’s current series stays in the early 1800s, but focuses on another author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (then Mary Godwin), author of Frankenstein. Her stepsister Jane is better known as Claire Clairmont. They both adore Percy Bysshe Shelley, even though he is married with children. Shelley joins them in the search for the diamonds and the murderer. Jane’s vocal lessons introduce Lord Byron into the storyline. All of this is several years before Frankenstein is written and published.

Redmond fills her well-researched book with the people, places, and stinks of 1814. (The Godwin’s’ bookstore stands near a prison.) Mary’s stepmother threw their cook into prison, and Mary is put to preparing meals for the family without pay, which she resents. (Of course, she resents everything done by her stepmother who prefers Mary’s step-siblings over her.)

A suitor for Mary, Robert Baxter, arrives from Scotland, determined to become a lawyer and marry her. A moneylender––with brutish thugs in tow––wants the money Mr. Godwin owes. Could he have been involved? Money suddenly appears in the house. What did Jane do? Baxter doesn’t like Shelley. What does he know . . . or suspect?

Knowing the historical facts about the characters doesn’t detract from the mystery, but it does make the reader anticipate events that are a matter of academic record. Maybe it will create reader interest in the works of Mary, Percy, and Lord Byron. Death and the Visitors is an interesting historical-cozy mystery with teen sleuths pitted against the grown-ups, and offers glimpses into the minds of the famous.

You can click here to purchase this book from Amazon.

To enter to win a copy of all 5 books, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “Halloween reading” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen October 26, 2024. U.S. residents only, and you must be 18 or older to enter. If entering via email please include your mailing address in case you win. You can read our privacy statement here if you like.

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Terrance V. Mc Arthur worked for the Fresno County Public Library for three decades. He is retired, but not retiring. A storyteller, puppeteer, writer, actor, magician, basketmaker, and all-around interesting person, his goal is to make life more unusual for everyone he meets.

Disclosure: This post contains links to an affiliate program, for which we receive a few cents if you make purchases. KRL also receives free copies of most of the books that it reviews, that are provided in exchange for an honest review of the book.