The heat has got us all down and fall can’t come soon enough. It seems publishers are impatient too as these witch mysteries can’t wait for Halloween. Plus, Kings River Life’s own Lorie Lewis Ham has started a new series as well!
It’s been a scorching, waterless, and fiery summer here on the West Coast. The rest of the country is dealing with heat, floods, hurricanes, and tornados. Covid is making a deadly comeback. This is when a good book is necessary for sanity. Stay well and hydrated!
Here are some reads to take with you. Don’t forget sunscreen!
It’s the 4th of July in Salem, Massachusetts. There’s to be a play about the historical town, and Charlene Morris is there to film, along with her housemate, Jack—a handsome ghost who shares the Victorian bed-and-breakfast with her and her Persian cat. When the star (who might be a witch) is killed by what was supposed to be prop gun, Charlene finds plenty of suspects.
After running away from a marriage proposal and fleeing to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Lucy Richardson finally found her dream as the Assistant Director for the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library. Lucy even met her soulmate and is now engaged to the town’s mayor/dentist Connor McNeil. While they have not yet set an exact date or made any wedding plans, their friends and family are enthusiastically throwing them the perfect engagement party on Coquina Beach. Definitely not on the invitation list but arriving late anyway are Richard Lewiston the Third, his mother Evangeline, and her very barky bichon frise Fluffy.
Despite her declarations that she is not a Consulting detective, Gemma Doyle has proven to be remarkably successful at it. That shouldn’t be too surprising, as Gemma and her great-uncle own the Sherlock Holmes Bookstore and Emporium in West London, Massachusetts, with that same uncle adamant that they are descendants Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It takes considerable will for Gemma to resist the plea by adorable young Lauren Tierney to find her lost kitten, but Gemma proves unable to turn off the astounding observational skills that lead her directly to the appropriately named white kitty Snowball.
It’s always good to start a series with the first book, so this month I’m announcing four new ones by authors you might recognize. Enjoy!
This week we have a group of Christmas mysteries for holiday reading-Dying in a Winter Wonderland: A Year-Round Christmas Mystery by Vicki Delany, The Gift of the Magpie: A Meg Langslow Mystery by Donna Andrews, Mistletoe, Moussaka, and Murder: A Kebab Kitchen Mystery by Tina Kashian, and Mrs. Morris and the Ghost of Christmas Past: A Salem B&B Mystery by Traci Wilton.
Here is the latest installment of our new column, Top 5 Mysteries I Have Read During the Pandemic, this one from mystery author Marilyn Levinson (Allison Brook). As we continue to spend most of our time at home, we are all looking for book suggestions so we asked mystery authors and reviewers to share the top 5 mysteries they have read during this pandemic.
Pastry chef Lily Roberts always dreamed of opening her own traditional teashop. The opportunity to help her British grandmother Rose run her own Bed and Breakfast – not to mention Lily’s boyfriend chef coming at her with a chef’s knife – spurred Lily into finally opening Tea By the Sea in Cape Cod’s Outer Cape. Rose seems to view Lily as both her favorite relative and a lowly servant, but Lily adores being able to experiment with innovative teas and traditional British pastries. It also allows her to share a tearoom experience with her best friend Bernadette Murphy, who similarly left her corporate life in Manhattan to pursue her own dream as being a writer.
This week we have a group of mysteries set in the world of books-3 bookstores and a library-Bound for Murder: A Blue Ridge Library Mystery by Victoria Gilbert, Verse and Vengeance: A Magical Bookshop Mystery by Amanda Flower, Bookmarked for Murder: Mystery Bookshop series by VM Burns, and There’s a Murder Afoot: A Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery by Vicki Delany.
