Read to Death is BIG!!! And a Giveaway!

By Sassy Cabot from the Read ’Em and Eat Mysteries by TerrieFarley Moran

Here on Fort Myers beach, there is much excitement in the Read ’Em and Eat café and bookstore. In our last adventure, chronicled in the book Read to Death, Bridgy went from witness to suspect in thirty seconds flat when a local van driver is murdered in our parking lot. We’d just returned from an outing with the Cool Reads/Warm Climate Book Club made up of local residents and snowbirds. We visited the Edison and Ford Winter estates where Thomas Edison and Henry Ford spent their winters a hundred years ago. Everyone had a fabulous time---right up until the murder.

 I am mega excited to let you know that today, July 19^th, is the release day for the LARGE PRINT EDITION of Read to Death. When my father visits me in Fort Myers Beach, we always go to the library. He heads right for the large print section and he is not alone.

To celebrate this momentous event, our author, who has just returned from Ireland and Northern Ireland, is holding a wee giveaway of this lovely refrigerator magnet depicting two of the famous Georgian Doors of Dublin.

To enter for a chance to win please comment below and tell us anything at all about large print books. You love to read them, you hate to, your mom reads them, you have never seen one—we want to know. Please include your email in this format: yourname (at) your server(dot) com—so the spambots can’t pick it up.

Comments close at midnight on Friday, July 21^st.

Hey, It's Joe!

by Joe Nash, of the Cuppa-Joe's family restaurant in Knobcone Heights, California, and a friend of Carrie Kennersly, whose adventures are memorialized in the Barkery & Biscuits Mysteries by Linda O. Johnston

Hi, everyone.  I know that my young buddy Carrie Kennersly has been blogging here sometimes, and so have some of her other friends from Knobcone Heights and even her dog Biscuit.  Me?  This is my first time here.

My wife Irma and I own Cuppa-Joe's.  Our restaurant's name makes sense 'cause we sell some good coffee there--and, hey, I'm Joe.  Carrie calls both Irma and me the Joes sometimes.  She's a really nice person, and we sometimes treat her as our daughter.  Plus, she seems to enjoy us, too, and treats us as her parents.  Of course we also have a real daughter, Gina, who works at our place.   We also have a son.  He's a lawyer.  Love 'em all.

We admire Carrie for how busy she is.  Not only is she a veterinary technician, but she also owns Barkery & Biscuits, where she bakes and sells dog treats she developed for her veterinary clinic, as well as Icing on the Cake, the barkery's  adjoining bakery.

And if we didn't already love her, we certainly would now because she introduced us to Sweetie, our adorable little dog who looks a bit like Biscuit--gold in color, looks like a poodle-terrier mix.  Sweetie was living at Mountaintop Rescue when Carrie found her.  Carrie let us know about Sweetie, and of course the sweet dog is now a member of our family.

Of course we worry about Carrie.  She always seems to be involved in murder investigations.  I guess she's pretty good about figuring them out, but I'm concerned about her staying safe.

Anyway, her most recent adventure was memorialized in Bad to the Bone, which came out in May of this year.  Yes, Irma and I are mentioned, too--and so's Sweetie. 

Hey, this has been fun.  Maybe I'll ask Carrie if I can blog here again sometime.

BAD TO THE BONE, the third Barkery & Biscuits Mystery by Linda O. Johnston, was a May 2017 release.  And yes, there are more to come.

www.LindaOJohnston.com

Beat Stress. Bake.

by Chloe Ellefson, Historic Site Curator

From the Chloe Ellefson Mysteries

by Kathleen Ernst







I have a maniacal boss, a rewarding but demanding job as curator at a living history museum, and a complicated relationship with a man I adore but don't always understand. I've had lots of practice managing stress.

My stress level has inched a bit higher recently. In the middle of trying to plan a special event about the role German immigrants played in the Civil War, a reenactor turned up dead. On site.

Not good.

When I'm this stressed, there's only one thing to do. Bake! Since I'm working on the German program for Old World Wisconsin, I've been trying recipes from that group.

I recently discovered that the Milwaukee Public Library has a huge collection of recipes published in  city newspapers from the 1960s into the 1980s. Librarians kept the file because so many people called the Reference Desk looking for particular recipes.

My latest find is a recipe for Bavarian Plum Flan (Milwaukee Sentinel, August 30, 1973). It's a great way to make use of luscious summer fruit!

Bavarian Plum Flan
10 plums
1/3 c. butter
1/3 c. sugar
2 eggs
1/4 t. vanilla
1/8 t. almond extract
3/4 c. flour
dash salt
**
1-1/2 T. sugar
1/4 c. almonds
1 T. soft butter
1T. brown sugar
1 T. flour

Wash and halve plums. In small bowl, cream butter and 1/3 c. sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add extracts. Blend in 3/4 c. flour and salt.

Spread batter evenly in a buttered 9-1/4" flat pan with removable bottom. Arrange plums, cut side down, over surface. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake in 375 degree oven 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, whirl almonds in blender or grind through fine blade of food chopper. Combine ground almonds with soft butter, brown sugar, and flour.  Sprinkle over surface of cake. Return to oven and bake an additional 10 or 15 minutes or until cake tests done. Serve warm or cold.

What do you do to relieve stress? I'm open to all suggestions!

* * *
Note:  In Chloe's time (1983), librarians maintained files of brittle yellowing clippings.  Happily, today you can access thousands of vintage recipes in the Historic Recipe File, part of the Milwaukee Public Library Digital Collection. It's searchable!

To learn more about the award-winning Chloe Ellefson series, see Kathleen's website or follow her on her Facebook Author Page.

A Southern Summer

Auntie KiKi here and its summer in Savannah. Savannah gets a bum wrap for the summer with everyone saying how hot it is and how humid and don’t you dare go to Savannah in the summer as it’s just terrible.

Well, I’m here to tell you that’s a bunch of hooey. Here are ten great reasons to visit Savannah in the summer.

First off you’re never far from the water and that in it self is a mighty big plus. There’s a breeze and just looking at the wet makes you feel cool and if you get too hot you just jump right on in.

Second because of all that there water you can do whatever floats your boat. You can rent one of your own or just hop on board someone else’s.

Third there’s the beach. I ask you, is there anything more fun than play in sand? You can build with it or play on it and when you get too hot there’s that there water to jump right on in.

Then there’s the food!! Oh, Honey, the food! Down-home Southern cooking to the ever-present pralines, you won’t go home hungry. In the summer, it’s water-to-table coastal cuisine that takes top billing and should be at the top of your to-do list. A cool treat goes a long way in a Savannah summer, which may explain why Leopold’s Ice Cream has been doing such good business since 1919.

And Savannah comes highly recommended. Before he hit the big time. Sixty years ago, Elvis Presley shook his hips at a Savannah audience for the first time.

And they there’s the night life. Savannah doesn’t hide from its well-earned reputation as America’s most haunted city — and ghost tours help bring these legends to life. If you don’t believe in ghosts when you come you will when you leave.

And then there’s Slow-vannah to consider. You don’t have to be in a hurry to see Savannah. It’s the perfect place to stroll past the red-brick mansions and wrought-iron fences of Jones Street or the boutiques and galleries in City Market.

There’re plenty of other reasons to come to Savannah in the summer and with a little luck you won’t come across any of those pesky bodies that Reagan and I keep running into. You all have a great summer now, ya’ hear.

Auntie KiKi

Sally Stark here . . .

I’ve been coordinating weddings most of my life.  And even though some people have found me rather harsh, I get the job done.  No matter what emotional nonsense people or their families and friends are going through, everything is done to a T.  I will brook no interference.

I thought I had seen everything but I was wrong.  The Leary family really takes the cake and I don’t mean the wedding cake.  Interfering maid of honor, lackadaisical brother, angry boyfriend.  Not a problem.  I just swept them out of my way.

But when a bridesmaid doesn’t show up for the wedding march and the ceremony . . . what can I say?  It’s appalling, just appalling.  I mean it’s my reputation that’s on the line here.  If every little thing doesn’t go smoothly, without a hitch, no one at that event will say, “What a lovely courtyard.”  “How romantic.”  “I’ll have to tell my best friend, or sister, or daughter, or . . .”  Whatever.  "This is where you should hold your wedding.  It’s the loveliest ceremony I’ve ever attended.”    

We did find the missing bridesmaid . . . much later.  I don’t want to tell you where or what sort of condition she was in.  You’ll just have to read about it in All Signs Point to Murder.  I was disgusted, completely disgusted.  In  spite of my trials and all the aggravation I went through, that ceremony did go off without a hitch.  

Although . . . I think the harpist  missed a few notes.  I’ll have to have a word with her.  

 

All Signs Point to Murder will be out soon -- August 8, 2017!  And it's available for pre-order now. 

You can read about San Francisco astrologer Julia Bonatti's latest adventure.  And visit my author at her website, at Facebook or Twitter @askzodia.

OUR RESIDENT WRITER

By: Rowena Flowers

From: The Bad Luck Cat Mysteries
Author: Kay Finch

My name is Rowena Flowers, and I own the Around the World Cottages in Lavender, Texas. I named each cottage for a city I visited abroad – the Paris cottage, the Barcelona cottage, the Madrid cottage, you get the idea. I make a good living renting out my cottages to Texas Hill Country vacationers, especially in hottest months – which here in Texas are about March through November – but I'm more than happy for my niece Sabrina Tate to live in one of them full-time.

 

 

Sabrina's a writer at heart and what better place for an aspiring mystery author to create stories and bring magic to her pages than sitting in the lovely Monte Carlo cottage with the sparkling Glidden River right outside her door? She may be creating the next great American novel in this very cottage.

I have my fingers crossed that Sabrina will be offered a publishing contract soon. She's a wonderful wordsmith. Her biggest problem with writing is that she gets distracted easily and even more since her feline friend, Hitchcock, came to live with her. She claims the suspense in her writing has improved with him around, but his antics take her away from the writing way too often. 

Charming as our town might be, everything is not wine and roses here in Lavender. We have our share of not-so-nice visitors, and sometimes there’s a murder to solve. Of course, we have sheriff’s department to handle such things, but Sabrina is not one to sit idly by with a killer on the loose. Even though it’s not her job to solve crimes, I think she’s better at it than the average person. Maybe because of her mystery writing experience.

 

While I’m busy at the annual festival with the pumpkin cannon, Sabrina is out there trying to prove her new friend, Tia, had nothing to do with the death of a jewelry vendor. Hitchcock is helping, too, as usual, because he’s a master of sleuthing. With their help, Tia should have nothing to worry about.
                                                                                                                         
You can read more about Sabrina and Hitchcock’s latest investigation in The Black Cat Sees His Shadow, book three in the Bad Luck Cat mystery series, published by Berkley.

About The Black Cat Sees His Shadow:           

The town of Lavender, Texas, is buzzing with tourists, and local businesses are pulling out all the stops for the fun-filled fall event. On the eve of opening day, Sabrina comes face-to-face with her doppelganger, Tia Hartwell, a caricature artist at the festival. The similarities between the two women are striking, including their matching black cats.

 

Kay Finch is the National Best-Selling Author of the Bad Luck Cat Mysteries, Black Cat Crossing, The Black Cat Knocks on Wood, and The Black Cat Sees His Shadow. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the State Bar of Texas Paralegal Division. Kay lives with her husband and their rescue pets in a Houston suburb. Visit the author at kayfinch.com.

And it all started with a knock on the head.....

A couple of years ago I was laying poor Ruthie Sue Payne to rest as the undertaker of Eternal Slumber Funeral Home. It'd been determined that Ruthie had fallen down the steps of the Sleepy Hollow Inn Bed and Breakfast since she not only co-owned it with my Granny, Zula Fae Raines Payne, but also lived there.

As you can see, my Granny and Ruthie share the same last name since they shared the same deceased husband. Yep. Granny stole Ruthie's ex-husband, as Ruthie sees it. When he died, he left them both the inn. Can you imagine?

Regardless, poor Ruthie had expired and it was her turn to meet the big guy in the sky. I had a hankering for lunch at Artie's Meat and Deli while I was fixing Ruthie's casket in the prettiest window of the funeral home when I decided to walk down the street to get my lunch.

We'd just had a big snow storm but today was unbelievably warm and all the snow was melting off the boutique stores in our little town of Sleepy Hollow, Kentucky. Like any other shop, Artie's was all decked out for Christmas and the big plastic Santa sat right on top of the deli roof.

Just as I was walking up to the deli, that Santa slid off and whacked me in the head leaving me with a gift I can't give back....the gift of seeing dead people. Not just any dead people. Murdered dead people.

And there was Ruthie Sue Payne standing next to me in her housecoat and kitty-cat slipper, claiming she was murdered!

A couple of years later and now my gift, Betweener ( I help people get between here and there), it's not just limited to the people in our small town. Now I've got a little girl and a cat that appears to have had some trouble in the world of the living and breathing.

If that wasn't enough to keep me busy, Jack Henry Ross my boyfriend and local sheriff has taken a six-month job with the Kentucky State Police. Unfortunately, he's the only one that knows about my Betweener gift. . .at least that's what I thought.

Welcome to the south where secrets don't stay for very long. . .

 Preorder Book 7
Publishes 7/25/17
Kindle: http://amzn.to/2qPma9y
Nook: http://bit.ly/2rCvxvl
Read Chapter One at Tonyakappes.com under the Front Porch Sittin' Tab!

Have you read any of my southern cozy mysteries?
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To celebrate the release of A GHOSTLY SECRET, the 7th book in the Ghostly Southern Mystery Series, I'm giving away either a measuring spoon or Southern Mystery tote. Be sure to scroll down and fill out the form and head over to my website, tonyakappes.com, under the Front Porch Sittin' Tab to be entered to win.

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