Day at the County Fair by Amanda Flower

by Barb, in Maine, where the decorating is finished and the cookie baking has begun

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Old Home Week here at the Wickeds. Today, Friend of the Blog, Amanda Flower is here to tell us about her latest novel Dating Can Be Deadly, the fifth book in her Amish Matchmaker Mystery Series.

Over to you, Amanda!

I love county fairs. My husband and I go to our local county fair every year. It’s a great place for unhealthy food, people watching, and getting up close and personal with farm animals. I always wanted write a cozy set at a county fair, and I knew that Amish Matchmaker Mysteries would be the perfect series for it. This is why Dating Can Be Deadly, the latest book in the series, is set at the Holmes County Fair.

Both the Amish Candy Shop Mysteries are the Amish Matchmaker Mysteries are set in the same world of fictional Harvest, Ohio. However, Harvest is set in a real place, Holmes County, where we have Ohio’s largest Amish population. I have been writing about the Amish in Holmes County for well over a decade now, but Dating Can Be Deadly is the first time that I have written the Holmes County Fair, which is one of the biggest events in the rural county every year.

One of my favorite ways to research is to go to the places where my novels are set, so there was no question that I would go to the fair to research this novel. As soon as I stepped onto the fairgrounds I knew it was the perfect setting. There were people, both Amish and English, from all walks of life there, and within ten seconds, I found the perfect murder weapon.

Just as my husband and I came into the gate, we saw a cage on top of a trailer. A woman inside the cage was teaching a young man how to throw an axe at a target. A light bulb went off. The axe was the perfect murder weapon for my book. Now before you grow alarmed, I still write cozies, so the murder is not gruesome and takes place off page. However, it was nice to have a new idea for a murder weapon after writing so many books (over 50!).

While at the fair, I had to try my hand at the axe throwing too. I can’t say I was great at it, but I managed to hit the target once after many tries.

I hope you will give Dating Can Be Deadly a try!

Readers: Have you been to a county fair, or a similar type of gathering? What did you think?

About Amanda Flower

Amanda Flower is a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author of over fifty mystery novels. Her novels have received starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Romantic Times, and she had been featured in USA Today, First for Women, and Woman’s World. Her first Emily Dickinson Mystery, Because I Could Not Stop for Death, was a Agatha Award winner and Mary Higgins Clark Nominee. A former librarian, Flower and her husband own a farm and recording studio, and they live in Northeast Ohio with their eight adorable cats.

About Dating Can Be Deadly

Set in the fan-favorite Amish village of Harvest, Ohio, the latest novel in USA Today bestselling author Amanda Flower’s Amish Matchmaker Mysteries brings back the unlikely sleuthing duo of a widowed Amish matchmaker and her zany, four-times-divorced Englisch best friend as they must solve the murder of a quilting competition judge.

Perfect for fans of cozy mysteries, small-town mysteries, wholesome romance, inspirational fiction, and readers of Jennifer Beckstrand, Charlotte Hubbard, Rachel J. Good, and other authors of Amish fiction.

It’s August in Holmes County, and that means it’s time for the Holmes County Fair. It’s the county’s biggest annual event, drawing tourists and locals alike to see livestock, eat too much fried food, and watch the rodeo and speed racing contests. This year, Millie has entered the quilting competition—while her very not Amish best friend, Lois Henry, is distracted by her new dating app and her search for husband number five. In a place where quilting is a way of life, the competition is fierce—especially this year, when an anonymous donor doubles the winning cash prize. Amish and English women are up against each other, and some will do anything to win—even murder . . .

When someone attacks the quilt barn by slashing the quilt display, it’s unsettling enough. But when a quilting judge is found murdered, Millie knows it’s time to for Lois to get off her app and help her hunt for a killer instead—before the competition is wiped out for good . . .