By Leslie Meier
Hardcover
295 Pages
List Price: $24.00
My Price: $12.00
First Paragraph:
Diana Ravenscroft was shivering but told herself it was not fear, but simply excitement. She had absolutely nothing to dread from the people standing in the circle, waiting for her. They were all Wiccans and had pledged perfect love and perfect trust. No, it was excitement...and the cool weather.
Inside Flap:
With planning the town's annual Halloween Party, the drought wreaking havoc on her garden, and her brood of four children, Lucy Stone's got her hands full this fall...
As the air turns crisp and the trees blaze red and gold in the tiny town of Tinker's Cove, Maine, a newcomer arrives who seems to suit the Halloween season. Diana Ravenscroft has just opened Solstice, a charming little shop featuring candles, crystals, jewelry, and psychic readings. But after an unnervingly accurate reading by Diana, Lucy starts to get more than a little spooked...
Then there's the dead body Lucy finds, way up on one of the old logging roads behind her house. The deceased is identified as Malcolm Malebranche, a seemingly harmless magicion who worked at children's birthday parties.
When it turns out that Diana knew the murder victim, Ike Stoughton, a prominent local businessman, starts a campaign against Diana, blaming "the witch" for everything from the unseasonal dry spell to his wife's illness and his pumpkins' lack of plumpness. But Lucy's not so sure that Ike himself is innocent. Still, as the town Halloween party approaches, Lucy's more concerned abou the costume competition, pin-the-nose-on-the-pumpkin, and baking three dozen orange cupcakes and Beastly Bug cookies. But as the October moon rises, a killer plans a lethal celebration of his own--and Lucy's the guest of honor...
Birthday Party MurderBy Leslie Meier
255 pages
Price: $3.00
First Paragraph:
Sherman Cobb wasn't feeling well. In fact, he hadn't been feeling well for quite some time. He couldn't even remember the last time he woke up in the morning feeling rested and refreshed, ready to face whatever the new day brought. That was why he was sitting in Doc Ryder's waiting room, expecting the worst.
The Back Cover: The whole town of Tinker's Cove is looking forward to the celebration marking former librarian Julia Ward Howe Tilley's ninetieth birthday. Lucy Stone, Miss Tilley's closest friend, dreamed up the party idea--at about the same time she decided she's not getting old without a fight.
That sounds like a plan--until Lucy realizes her daughter's fourteenth birthday bash, a coed sleepover, may turn her hair white overnight. What was she thinking when she agreed to let Sara have the party? On her mind, instead, was the shocking death of Sherman Cobb, the town's oldest attorney, an apparent suicide. His law partner, however, thinks Sherman was murdered.
Poking about in Sherman's papers, Lucy turns up an intriguing tie between the dead man and Miss Tilley. Meanwhile Miss Tilley's own past has come back to haunt her in the form of a mysterious niece named Shirley and a biker great nephew named Snake. Soon no one can get to see the elderly librarian because the brash, bossy Shirley says she's "failing." Now, as a killer's ruthless plan rushes toward a conclusion, Lucy needs answers fast--or else she and Miss Tilley won't live long enough to make a wish and blow out the candles on this year's birthday cake...
Cooking Up MurderBy Miranda Bliss
233 pages
Price: $3.50
THIS BOOK INCLUDES RECIPES FOR A FULL-COURSE GOURMET MEAL!
First Paragraph:
I was in the kitchen burning a pot of water when Eve leaned on the buzzer down in the lobby of my apartment building.
The Back Cover:
Cooking and love. Too bad Annie Capshaw stinks at both. Once she almost burnt the house down--boiling a pot of water. Anda year ago, her husband ran off with the dry cleaner. SInce then, Annie's put love on the back burner and leftover Chinese takout on the front. Until her bubbly best friend Eve signs them both up for cooking lessons.
On the first night, Annie and Eve see their fellow student Beyla arguing with a amn--a man who later turns up dead int he parking lot. Now, with the police bungling the investigation and Beyla acting more suspicious every day, the friends feel bound to uncover whatever secrets she's hiding before Somone else's goose, perhaps one of their own, gets cooked.
Murder at the Monks' Table
By Sister Carol Anne O'Marie
236 pages
Price: $3.00
First Paragraph:
The long black hearse came speeding out of the driveway, nearly careening into the hackney. Don't tell me this is going to be one of those days, Sister Mary Helen thought, grabbing the car door handle.
The Back Cover:
Sister Mary Helen is in luc, depending onhow you look at it. She ans Sister Eileen are in Ireland to attend the weeklong Oyster Festival in the little village of Ballyclarin. They make their first stop at a central oasis of food and drink called the Monks' table, where Mary Helen overhears a woman saying to the man with her, "I am surprised someone hasn't killed you already." The next night, mary Helen finds the same man in the pub's ladies' room, murdered. Coincidence? Divine intervention? Heaven only knows...which is why Mary Helen must find out--even though the Irish police warn her not to get involved. But sometimes Fate will just not listen to reason...and soon this septuagenarian nun is on the case in one of her bravest adventures to date.
Death Goes On Retreat
By Sister Carol Anne O'Marie
263 pages
Price: $3.25
First Paragraph:
"We'll be there in a jiffy!" Sister Anne took one hand off the steering wheel and pointed to the mud-spattered road sign. "Santa Cruz County. Elevation eighteen hundred feet."
The Back Cover:
Sister Mary Helen and her Irish friend, Sister Eileen, need some R&R away from the pressures of their inner city vocation. A week at the idyllic St. Colette's Retreat House, snuggled amidst towering rewoods 65 miles from San Francisco, sounds like heaven. Unfortunately the muddled sisters mistakenly arrive a week too early and find that St. Colette's is hosting a convention of hard-drinking, high-spirited priests. And when the serenity is further shattered by the murder of a former seminary student, suspicion falls on the holy fathers. But Sister Mary Helen has another theory about the perpetrator, and in her inimitable way she intends to uncover the deadly secrets and passions that the flesh is heir to.
By Rhys Bowen
307 pages
Listed Price: $7.99
My Price: $4.00
First Paragraph:
The alarm clock woke me this morning at the ungodly hour of eight. One of my nanny's favorite sayings was "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." My father did both and look what happened to him. He died, penniless, at forty-nine.
Back Cover:
Baked beans and boiled eggs. That's what my houseguest, the Bavarian princess, will have to eat if I don't get help posthaste. The Queen of England has requested I entertain said princess, placing her in the playboy prince's path, in hopes he might finally marry.
But queens never consider money, of which I have little. And which is why I moonlight as a maid-in-disguise. My plans:
1) Clean house in manner of palace.
2) Blackmail brother, Binky, into sending a few quid.
3)Unteach Princess Hanni English from gangster movies--lest she address the queen as "old broad."
4) Keep eye on princess at parties, where she drinks like a fish.
Then there's the matter of the body in the bookshop and Hanni's unwitting involvement with the communist party. It's enough to drive a girl mad...
By Rhys Bowen
214 pages
List Price: $6.99
My Price: $3.50
First Paragraph:
The bus groaned its way up from the coast, belching out a cloud of diesel smoke before it came to a halt outside the first house of a small village.
The Back Cover:
Constable Evan Evans was glad to trade city life for idyllic Llanfair, a Welsh village that time forgot. But this little town has its share of eccentric characters-two ministers vying for the souls of their flock, one lascivious barmaid, and three other Evanses: Evans-the-Meat, Evans-the-Milk, and Evans-the-Post.
But before Evan-now known as Evans-the-Law-can enjoy Llanfair's tranquillity, he's called to the scene of a crime as brutal as any in the big city. Two hikers have been murdered on the trails of the local mountain, and now Evan must hunt down a vicious killer-in a town where one of these lovable new neighbors could prove to be deadly...
By Rhys Bowen
259 pages
Hardcover
My Price: $10.00
First Paragraph:
Do I remember anything of those days? It's as clear as if it was yesterday. I remember the first time she noticed me. It was at Johnny Morgan's going-away party. He'd just joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers and he was being sent to France. I thought he looked the cat's whisker in that uniform. All the girls did, too. They were all clustering around him, giving him their addresses and promissing to write to him. Then She came into the room. I didn't recognize her at first. Then someone said, "Mwfanwy? It's never Mwfanwy Davies."
The Inside Flap:
Constable Evan Evans, sole police officer in the charming Welsh village of Llanfair, is assigned to assist an expedition to raise a World War II German bomber plane from a lake. The whole venture is being filmed for a documentary on World War II, and Evans tries to assist the film crew by finding them local people with stories to tell. Little does he realize that resurrecting the past can sometimes mean opening old wounds. After some unhappy confrontations, it is not just the villagers who are upset by the filmmakers. Evans's own life is thrown into turmoil as he discovers his girlfriend Bronwen's past relationship with someone from the film crew.
Tensions build until one of the filmmakers disappears and is eventually found dead in a nearby slate mine. The case grows more complex as Evans slowly uncovers evidence that the victim had many enemies. In the process Evans also exposes an elaborate World War II scheme to hide paintings from the National Gallery. Do these paintings have something to do with the filmmaker's have something to do with the filmmaker's disappearance? How could he be connected to events that took place over half a century ago? With this fifth addition to her critically acclaimed series, Rhys Bowen creates a colorful, page-turning mystery set in two eras against the backdrop of a uniquely appealing small town filled with unforgettable characters.
By E.J. Copperman
325 pages
List Price: $7.99
My Price: $4.00
The First Paragraph:
"I don't get it, Mom. If this is our house, why are other people going to live here?" My daughter, Melissa, nine years old and already a prosecuting attorney, looked up from the baseboard near the window seat in the living room, which she was painting with a two-inch brush and a gallon can of generic semigloss white paint. Never use the expensive stuff when you're letting a fourth grader help with the painting.
The Back Cover:
Newly divorced Alison Kerby wants a second chance for herself and her nine-year-old daughter, so she's returned to her hometown on the Jersey Shore to transform a fixer-upper into a charming-and hopefully profitable-guesthouse. But when a bump on the head leaves her seeing not only stars but spirits, Alison realized the real challenge she's facing is out of this world.
The two residing ghostas are Maxie Malone, the foultempered former owner of the house (who has definite opinions about Alison's design plans), and Paul Harrison, a private eye who'd been working for Maxi--both died in the house on the same night. The official cuase of death was suicide, but the ghosts insist they were murdered, and they need Alison to find out who killed them--or the next ghost in the guesthouse will be Alison herself...
