It’s Release Day!

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Edith/Maddie here, so excited to celebrate the release of Murder at the Lobstah Shack with all of you.

It’s the third Cozy Capers Book Group mystery. When I was casting about for an opening, I knew I wanted the body to be found in Tulia Peters’s Lobstah Shack restaurant. It’s a modest but popular business near protagonist Mac Almeida’s bike shop. Being a restaurant, it has a walk-in cooler. And Tulia is a member of the Cozy Capers book group.

The group is reading its way through cozy mysteries set in each state. So of course they’re reading Barb’s Fogged Inn, set in Maine.

I’ve always loved Barb’s first line in the book, which has restaurant owner Gus yelling upstairs: “Jule-YA! There’s a dead guy in the walk-in.”

Isn’t that just the best?

In my book, Tulia calls Mac in a panic one morning. Mac rushes over to find, yes, a body in the walk-in.

“It’s exactly like in the book, Mac,” Tulia whispered.

Our Cozy Capers group wasn’t going to discuss Annette’s death in a light-hearted banter about motive and suspects. In real life, right here, right now, there was definitely a dead person in Tulia’s walk-in.

As you can imagine, I had so much fun with this opening.

I also ate my first lobster roll a couple of months ago. I figured I needed to try one, since the new book includes Tulia making them after she can reopen her restaurant. When better to grab a lobster roll than out to lunch with Barb herself in Portland, Maine? Believe me, the lobster roll from DiMillos was delicious.

I hope you love Murder at the Lobstah Shack! I’ve sent in book four, Murder in a Cape Cottage, which will release next October, and I’m delighted to have signed a contract for three more books in the series. Book five will be Murder in a Cape Bookstore.

Readers: What’s your favorite way to eat lobster? Or would you just rather not?

Please join me and other authors tonight and tomorrow night in the following fun release events:

Tonight a few other cozy mystery authors and I appear in a Cozy Mystery Jamboree hosted by Fountain Bookstore at 6 pm EST! It costs $5, but gives you a $5 discount on books sold by the bookstore. Buy a ticket here.

I’ll be part of a Kensington Authors’ party on Facebook, also tonight, that I hope you can join us for. It runs from 7-10 pm EST and each author is offering giveaways.

Tomorrow, my good friend author Ellen Byron (aka Maria DiRico) and I are going to present the virtual Edith and Ellen show, hosted by Belmont Books at 7 pm EST, with chat, prizes, and lots of laughter. Please register for it!

See you there!

Published by Edith Maxwell

Agatha Award -winning author Edith Maxwell writes the historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries (Beyond the Page) and short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she writes the Country Store Mysteries series, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries (all from Kensington Publishing). She lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and cat Martin, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook.

48 Thoughts

  1. I LOVED this book!! I’ll eat lobster just about any way it can be fixed except with tomato sauce. Hot lobster rolls are the best!

  4. Your new book sounds wonderful. Congratulations! I’m not a fan of lobster, either.

  5. May all your dreams and goals for your book release come true! As for eating lobstah, serve mine with buttah!

  6. Congratulations on your book birthday, Edith!
    I am surprised you ate your first lobster roll only a short while ago!! They are so delish.

    I love eating lobster so much so I made sure to eat lobster rolls in Prince Edward Island (PEI) and Halifax NS during my first trip in 1987, and on subsequent visits. And there is a real good place in Ottawa (Meatpress) that serves generous lobster rolls for a few weeks in the summer/fall.

    But I also distinctly remember eating my first authentic Maine lobster roll at a small lobster shack on the coast in 2005. A friend drove me around MA and ME after I attended my first Crime Bake in MA.

    I will be online at tonight’s Kensington authors book event. I wish I could make the Dec 1 event with you and Ellen but I have already signed up for the live Zoom book launch for my mystery author friend, Melissa Yi, at the same time. She will be in 1920s costume and a mixologist has made a signature cocktail for the event called a Corpse Reviver.

    1. I’m not sure why it took me so long, Grace. Sherry Harris always has one when we’re in Maine together!

      See you tonight. And now I feel like a slacker compared to Melissa…

      1. You a slacker? You’re joking…I saw your schedule tonight and tomorrow!
        Melissa’s mystery series is set in Montreal & Ottawa but in the latest book, her sleuth Dr. Hope Sze goes to Windsor ON a weekend getaway at a 1920s inn…so speakeasies, 1920 costumes and a customized cocktail are all part of her book launch. She is going all out for this book.

  7. Congratulations and much success to you! Crazy as it sounds, I’m born and raised in Maine, and I do not care for lobster lol. Hubby does though, so we meet the annual quota intake!

  8. Congratulations on the new book! I love lobster BLTs which I had for the first time in Maine a couple of years ago. Or a lobster roll with butter instead of mayo.

  9. Three cheers to you on the new release, Edith! I’m not a fan of seafood, so I’ll let everyone else enjoy their lobster. Cheers!

  12. Congratulations, Edith! I am so happy to have supplied a small bit of inspiration, but literary and culinary, for this book. Author Kaitlyn Dunnett tells a story about how she, Lea Wait and I all wrote books inspired by a real life story about a body in a freezer. As you might guess, the stories are so different you would never recognize they are related.

  13. Congratulations on your book launch, Edith! I can’t wait to read it! I love eating lobster rolls on the patio of Blue Collar Lobster Co. in the harbor of Gloucester, MA! There’s nothing better!

  14. Congratulations on the latest release – I can’t wait to indulge.

    Favorite way to eat lobster – anyway, as long at it’s out of the shell – I had a traumatic experience eating whole lobster at Joe’s Pier 52 when I lived in New York. I lost my grip while cracking a claw – it shot from the cracker and hit the man at the next table. Never ate anything I had to shell after that!

    1. No doubt more traumatic for him than for you. I hope you all got a good laugh out of it.

  15. Yaay for the release day of MURDER AT THE LOBSTAH SHACK! My copy is on order and I hope it shows up soon.

    As for lobster, it’s not my thing so I don’t have a favorite way to eat it. I just avoid it.

  16. Can’t wait to read it. You all should make more of the puzzles and sell them. I would buy one.

  17. Congrats on the book! The beginning to Fogged Inn was wonderful, and I love that you paid tribute to it.

    I’m not a sea food fan, so I’ll let you enjoy the lobster roll.

  19. I love lobster out of the shell, getting it out is too much work! I like lobster rolls with cold lobster, watermelon salad on the side. Congratulations on the new book!

  20. Congratulations! No lobster for me (husband is allergic to shellfish) but I love the setting! All good wishes for the new book!

  21. I like mine Glosta style. Cold with mayo on a white Wonder bread hotdog bun with maybe a little bit of lettuce under the lobster meat. Another book launch for you Edith! You amaze me. Multiple series, You garden, You bake pies. You do conferences. You have a good man. You are active in your church. I expect to see you in one of those Balance of Nature Commercials any day now!

  22. Congratulations on the release of “Murder at the Lobstah Shack”! Know it’s an awesome book cause you wrote it. Can’t wait for the opportunity to read it.

    Sorry so late in the day to post, but been on the road all day. 🙂

    My favorite lobster dish is – any way I can get it! Living so far from a lobster source means we get them when we travel. My preferred way is steamed in the shell with butter, but I’ve never been known to turn down anything lobster.
    2clowns at arkansas dot net

  23. The few times that I have had lobster, it has been with butter. Thank you for the opportunity.

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