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CHINA ROSES

Fueled more by sadness and moral outrage than mystery—but fans won’t mind that a bit.

The latest round of unrest in the English Midlands town of Norbold revolves around two women. One of them is dead, and the other just won’t go away.

DC Hazel Best, a friend of Peregrine, the 28th Earl of Byrfield, recognizes the man PC Wayne Budgen has found beaten unconscious as archaeologist David Sperrin, the illegitimate son of the 27th Earl. Sperrin’s injuries have inconveniently shut down his memory, but unbidden and unnerving snapshots return to him as he lies in the hospital. A woman had been running toward him. She was crying that she wouldn’t become a China Rose because she was a Vietnamese citizen. She was shot in the back and died in his arms. But he can’t remember her name or explain what brought them together in the first place or why no one can find her body. As Hazel and her mates at the Meadowvale Police Station labor to fill in the blanks in Sperrin’s story, her quirky bookseller friend, Gabriel Ash, must deal with an equally troublesome woman: his estranged wife, Cathy, who’s popped up out of nowhere in defiance of a warrant for her arrest for murder, ostensibly to spend some time with the children Ash wants sole custody of, but almost certainly bent on some more sinister errand. Emerging hints that Rose Doe, as the police dub the victim pulled from the Clover Hill Dam—the woman David remembered—had been smuggled into the country by human traffickers deepens both the mystery and the menace for Hazel and makes it even more imperative that Ash send Cathy on her way regardless of every threat she makes to his family’s quiet life.

Fueled more by sadness and moral outrage than mystery—but fans won’t mind that a bit.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-7278-5065-2

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Severn House

Review Posted Online: June 15, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021

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A KILLER EDITION

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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THE DIVA SERVES FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Lots of recipes, household tips, quaint locals, and sometimes sharp squabbles—but the big story here is bling.

The DIY Festival Sophie Winston’s been asked to plan for Alexandria’s Old Town goes off the rails when someone starts killing off her neighbors.

It would be hard to imagine a more inoffensive victim than Lark Bickford, but the widowed socialite takes a fatal tumble that looks very suspicious only a day after returning from a guided tour of Portugal. Her family members are instantly scandalized—not that she may have been murdered (her body has barely cooled when they start selling off her period furniture and pricey china), but that her will includes a spendthrift trust that will keep her grown children, Bennett and Paisley, and Paisley’s husband, self-styled advice guru Frank Eames, from liquidating the rest of her assets any time soon. Even more dismaying is the news that the trustee is Humphrey Brown, the secret lover whom a neighbor spotted leaving her house shortly before her corpse was discovered. The family’s outrage is soon complicated by the remarkably similar death of Dulci Chapman, art therapist–turned–food blogger, who’d taken the same guided tour as Lark. So had assistant medical examiner Dr. Peter Chryssos, Sophie’s friend Nina Reid Norwood, and Sophie’s ex-husband, Mars Winston. Wonder how safe they are? In between complimenting most of the DIY exhibitors and fielding Greer Shacklesworth’s endless complaints, the unflappable Sophie asks everyone who’ll listen what the design Lark scrawled as she was dying might have meant.

Lots of recipes, household tips, quaint locals, and sometimes sharp squabbles—but the big story here is bling.

Pub Date: May 25, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-4967-3273-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Kensington

Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021

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