It was nearing Thanksgiving 1969. America had put a man on the moon in July, Kennedy had been dead six years, Nixon was president, and for most of us, it was the Age of Aquarius. For me, after graduating Alabama and spending months banging on doors in New York, I’d come back home and was covering the political beat for my dad’s paper, the Wahoo Times.
Thanksgiving season seems a perfect time for food mysteries, and if you have them for Thanksgiving dinner you will have a lot less calories! From Kensington we have By Cook or By Crook by Maya Corrigan and Chorus Lines, Caviar and Corpses by Mary McHugh, and from Penguin we have The Chocolate Book Bandit by JoAnna Carl.
If Dickens Hart intended to get himself murdered, he couldn’t have planned better than to invite his possible progeny, and their mothers, to spend Thanksgiving weekend with him. Notorious for being an unapologetic, and exceedingly wealthy, Lothario, who often dallied amidst the "fawns" of his Playboy-like gentleman’s club, Dickens has an extensive Black Book list recording his affairs. This wouldn't be a problem for former Wisconsin reporter AnnaLise Griggs, if she hadn't just taken the distasteful but very well-paying job of writing Dickens' memoir. Well, that and also recently discovering that she herself is the first, so far, declared illegitimate daughter and legitimate heir of Dickens Hart.
Sally and Tom Clarkson thought they were born to the manor. The problem was – they weren't. In fact, they were poor as church mice, always living over their heads, always in debt. Now that they were in their forties and there had been no change for the better in their financial condition, they decided to do something about it.
In this fourth collection of short mystery stories celebrating Thanksgiving, you truly can judge a book by its cover. The cartoonishly adorable illustration perfectly captures the spirit of these ten tales of families who unite, sometimes unwillingly, for a day of food, dysfunctional interactions, and an occasional murder or two. Interspersed between the stories are recipes that will have readers drooling in anticipation of a meal that takes a week to prepare and ten minutes to consume.
This Thanksgiving, I promised my family I would be a different person. From the moment I woke on Thanksgiving Day until–well, until–I agreed to be the new and improved me. If I failed, I would not be trusted again, and next year, I could be the sacrifice.
It all started when Uncle Frankie yelled across the table to my younger brother Tommy, “Toss me a roll, will ya?” Tommy launched it in an overhand throw. It landed in Grandma’s gravy-covered mashed potatoes and Grandpa spilled his red wine all over my mother’s pure white tablecloth trying to catch it. My father gave Tommy a look that silenced the table, and we all watched as he downed a mug of beer. “Get me another one,” he said to no one in particular.
The Great Food Search has been an interesting experience, with FoodQuests exploring Chinese restaurants, taco wagons, chain diners, burger joints, donuts, grilled cheese sandwiches, pumpkin dishes and summer cool treats. This time, the suggested subject was…Turkey. What was I going to do? Go to different submarine sandwich places? I tried to think of ways to approach the article, and what came to me were memories of Thanksgivings Past. They crowded out any new ideas, so I am going to share with you two of these memories: The Thanksgiving Without a Pie, and The Slow-Cooker Turkey.
The comforting scent of Thanksgiving turkey wafted through the dining room. Corinne glanced at the clock, mentally judging her dinner’s progress with the anticipated arrival of the children. She pulled a silver fork from the rosewood box and gave it a swipe with the polishing cloth. With the rewarding gleam returned to its tines, she placed it on the counter beside the growing stack of polished silver forks.
Working most holidays, Darren discovered, was one disadvantage of his job as a government spy. Those Cold War enemy agents operated on the days when most loyal Americans were safely at home, feasting with their families. He’d spent last Christmas on surveillance, holed up in a grimy apartment–Fourth of July chasing a would-be bomber through Chicago during a heat wave–and Labor Day in a cheap motel room, deciphering an intercepted coded message. This year he could enjoy a scrumptious Thanksgiving dinner with his family, even though he was on the dodge from a double agent.
