by Ellie Alexander ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2017
Alexander (A Crime of Passion Fruit, 2017, etc.) kicks off a new series that takes the passion for wine-related cozies in a...
Beer is king in a Washington town tarted up to look like Oktoberfest on steroids.
Leavenworth has succeeded in making itself into a beer lover’s vacation destination full of breweries of all sizes and shops selling German-flavored products from wurst to pretzels. But it offers no comfort to Sloane Krause, who’s caught her husband, Mac, with a newly hired barmaid. After growing up in foster homes, Sloan finally found a loving family with Otto and Ursula Krause, who cherish both her and her unrivaled nose for beer. Sloane still lives in the family home and helps her adoptive parents with their brewery, but now she’s taken a job with Garrett Strong, who’s transformed the restaurant/hotel he inherited from an aunt into Nitro, the town’s only nanobrewery. Garrett, a born brewer, needs Sloane’s advice about Nitro’s food and design. Despite the ardent wish of April Ablin, the town gossip and guardian of kitsch, to transform Nitro into a Bavarian beer hall, Garrett and Sloan manage to keep it modern. All goes well until Sloan discovers the body of Eddie Deluga, the brewmaster at Bruin’s Brewing, floating in a tank of Nitro’s best beer the morning after their successful opening. The murder doesn’t seem to hurt business, but Garrett and Sloan have their hands full purchasing the hops they need for a new batch from a hops grower with his own priorities. A glowering Mac’s failed at every attempt to win Sloan back, but when he’s arrested for the murder, Sloan finds herself looking for other suspects. Mac may be a bad husband with more charm than substance, but she’s sure he’s not a killer.
Alexander (A Crime of Passion Fruit, 2017, etc.) kicks off a new series that takes the passion for wine-related cozies in a new direction with oodles of beer lore, plenty of pleasant characters, and a stronger mystery than usual.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-10863-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by Lorna Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 2019
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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