News Break: Crystal is the lucky winner of the giveaway! Crystal, please check your emajl, and congratulations.
Edith/Maddie north of Boston, taking January as it comes.
I’m so excited to introduce you all to Murder in a Cape Cottage, Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery #4! I loved writing it, and now have both a cover and a release date. It will hit the bookshelves – actual and virtual – on September 27 (which is four days after what would have been my mom’s 97th birthday). Read down for a giveaway.
Here’s the blurb:
Cape Cod bike shop owner Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida and her book club sleuths uncover a case that strikes too close to home . . .
ʼTis the week after Christmas. It’s just as well Mac’s Cozy Capers Book Group’s new pick is a nerve-soothing coloring book mystery, especially because she has last-minute wedding planning to do. But all pre-wedding jitters fade into the background when Mac and her fiancé, Tim, begin a cottage renovation project and open a wall to find a skeleton—sitting on a stool, dressed in an old-fashioned bridal gown . . .
As Mac delves into the decades-old mystery with the help of librarian Flo and her book group, she discovers a story of star-crossed lovers and feuding families worthy of the bard himself. Yet this tale has a modern-day villain still lurking in Mac’s quaint seaside town, ready to make this a murderous New Year’s Eve . . .
And here’s the pretty cover!
It looks like a Christmas book, but it’s a post-holiday ticking clock story, instead, although Mac does attend a Hanukkah party at Zeke and Stephen’s home. It was so fun to include one of Krista Davis’s adult coloring book mysteries for the book group to read – not that Mac ever finds time to actually do any coloring.
I loved learning about how a corpse might be preserved after ninety years inside a wall, researching clothing from 1940, and so much more. And to include the happy occasion of a wedding at the end.
The release date also marks ten years since my first book was published, almost to the day. Champagne, please! Here is the re-issued version of Speaking of Murder with its gorgeous new cover.
Lauren Rousseau, a college linguistics professor, also lives in a coastal town in Massachusetts, but one a bit farther north than Cape Cod.
Readers: Do you like a little history mixed in with your contemporary mystery? What are your favorite books that bring the past into the present? I’ll send one commenter one of the first three Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, your choice!
I love mystery and suspense. Thanks for the chance.
I really like the artwork. The light house is well done.