Lucy Berberian has taken over her family’s Mediterranean restaurant on the Jersey Shore after an unsatisfying stint at a Philadelphia law firm. It’s great to be back in her old beach town, even if she’s turning into a seasoned sleuth . . .
Catering a high-society wedding should bring in some big income for Kebab Kitchen—and raise its profile too. But it’s not exactly good publicity when the best man winds up skewered like a shish kebab. Worse yet, Lucy’s ex, Azad—who’s the restaurant’s new head chef—is the prime suspect. But she doesn’t give a fig what the cops think. He may have killer looks, but he’s no murderer. She just needs to prove his innocence, before he has to go on the lamb . . . Recipes included! Enter To Win a Copy of Stabbed in the Baklava
About The Author
Tina Kashian spent her childhood summers at the New Jersey shore, building sand castles, boogie boarding, and riding the boardwalk Ferris wheel. She also grew up in the restaurant business where her Armenian parents owned a restaurant for thirty years. She worked almost every job—rolling silverware and wiping down tables as a tween, to hosting and waitressing as a teenager.
After college, Tina worked as a NJ Deputy Attorney General, a patent attorney, and a mechanical engineer. Her law cases inspired an inquiring mind of crime, and since then, Tina has been hooked on mysteries. The Kebab Kitchen Cozy Mystery series launched with Hummus and Homicide, followed by Stabbed in the Baklava and One Feta in the Grave by Kensington Books. Tina still lives in New Jersey with her supportive husband and two young daughters. Visit www.tinakashian.com and join her Newsletter to enter free contests to win books, get delicious recipes, and to learn when her books will be released.
Let’s talk about campus murder mysteries.
I love reading them and writing them. What is it about academia that sparks thoughts of murder? Of course there’s the old saying that “campus politics are so nasty because the stakes are so small.” But that’s more of an observation than an explanation. I have some ideas: Clashing agendas. Professors want to enlighten the world with their teaching and their research, and deplore the duplicity of administrators. Administrators, on the other hand, need to keep the dollars flowing in, and the legislators and trustees off their backs, and they don’t want some self-righteous faculty Speaking Truth to Power and messing everything up. Late-twentieth-century postmodernists have nothing on administrators when it comes to having a complicated relationship with Truth:
“Our position is, yes, Mister Yamada, your wonderful idea for a Golf Course Management major is going through, and before you know it, we’ll be putting out graduates who are ready and willing to work at your resort. And also, no, Senator Kamoku, of course we’re not considering offering a major in golf as a taxpayer-subsidized sop to our most powerful trustee. The very idea.”
FromThe Invasive Species Same words, different meanings. Naturally, everyone on campus agrees on striving for “excellence.” It’s in the University Strategic Plan, after all. Unfortunately, not everyone has the same definition of “excellence.”
“Dr. Rodge,” as he tells his students to call him, doesn’t give midterms or final exams, assigns no homework, and gives A’s to everyone who signs up for his Human Potential class. I can’t force Rodge to “maintain academic standards worthy of our university” (Hanson’s words) or “teach a real college class and knock off that feel-good bull****” (Hanson’s contemporary, Dr. Larry Schneider). As long as Rodge shows up when he’s supposed to and stays out of trouble with the students, there’s not much else I can do. Especially not when the Student Retention Office keeps nominating him for the campus-wide teaching award every year.
From The Cursed Canoe The student as customer. But not the kind of customer you actually listen to. To cater to students (and their tuition dollars), administrators are forever coming up with new programs and bringing the latest edu-fads to campus. The student is the customer, and you know what they say about the customer.
Oddly enough, when students ask for more course sections, lower tuition, affordable childcare, and job placement, what administrators hear is “Can you impose some punishing new regime on the faculty that will make their lives harder without actually improving my education? Also hire more administrators pls.”
A few weeks after the Student Retention Office remodel was finished, the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Engagement attended an ed-tech conference. Upon his return, we were directed to record our class sessions and post them online, so that students could watch them at their leisure. The problem was that we were “guides on the side” now, and the Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Engagement didn’t want to post hour-long videos of students sitting in circles talking. So we all had to go back to being “sages on the stage,” lecturing to the video camera, but this time we were cautioned to act as “facilitators of experience” rather than “providers of knowledge.” We’re still stuck with the immovable round tables.
From The Musubi Murder
And not only does academia provide plentiful motives for murder; it’s populated by nosy obsessives with library access who will drop everything to chase the faintest of clues. (This is also known as “research.”) So we have Christa Nardi’s Sheridan Hendley, Sarah Caudwell’s Hilary Tamar, Amanda Cross’s Kate Fansler, Joanne Dobson’s Karen Pelletier, R.T. Campbell’s John Stubbs, Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen, and of course Mahina State University’s Molly Barda.
In my view, the only mystery is why there aren’t even more academic detectives.
An earlier version was published on Christa Reads and Writes
The Miss Fortune mysteries are novellas written under license in Jana DeLeon’s Miss Fortune World. If you want to get acquainted with the characters, the first book in the Miss Fortune series is Louisiana Longshot, available for free on Amazon, Kobo, Apple, Google, and B&N.
Supernatural Sinful
A graduate student from Hawaii visits the tiny bayou town of Sinful, Louisiana to investigate the effects of the oil spill on the local wildlife. Sinful resident Fortune Redding, who happens to be a CIA operative hiding out from a ruthless arms dealer, worries that the nosy newcomer might blow her cover. But when he makes a gruesome discovery, he unleashes forces that will go to any lengths to protect Sinful’s darkest secret. Sinful Science is my first and only paranormal mystery, and was a lot of fun to research and write. Will there be more? It depends on the readers. You want it, I’ll write it!
Hair Extensions & Homicide
The Hair Extensions and Homicide books follow the original Miss Fortune format. They are told in first person, from Fortune’s point of view.
The Mary-Alice Files
The Mary-Alice Files are told in third person and feature Mary-Alice Arceneaux, Celia Arceneaux’s sweet-natured cousin by marriage. Mary-Alice always tries to assume the best of people. Her disarmingly sweet nature and natural curiosity make her a perfect amateur sleuth.
In The Cursed Canoe, Professor Molly Barda’s best friend Emma Nakamura practices with her crew for the “Labor Day Race.”
Emma’s big race was Saturday morning. I wasn’t actually planning to attend in person. If I wanted to catch Emma and her crew before they left, I’d have to be down at the water before dawn. The dark beach would be packed with team supporters and tourists, and, of course, plenty of little kids careening through the crowd. There would be a live Jawaiian band, or a noisy DJ setup. After their registration and last-minute checks, the paddlers would pile into their various canoes and stroke out to sea. Emma’s canoe and dozens of others like it would disappear over the horizon before the sun was even up.
The women’s crews would leave the bay, paddle the tough eighteen miles down the coast, and disembark. The women would get out and the men’s teams would climb into the same canoes and paddle back up the coast, where they would arrive at the starting point many grueling hours later. A spectator on the beach wouldn’t see anything after the canoes sped off. I’d be staring out at the empty blue water.
The Labor Day Race is a big deal—so much so, that all seven women on Emma’s crew want to participate. (Unfortunately, the canoe has only six seats…) Man in Outrigger, Hawaii by Charles Bartlett 1923-27 Source: Wikimedia Commons
The Labor Day Race is inspired by a real event: The Queen Lili’uokalani Canoe Race, which takes place every Labor Day weekend in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. Started in 1972 by the Kai Opua Canoe Club, and named in honor of the last queen of Hawaii, the Lili’uokalani Canoe Race now welcomes over 2,500 paddlers from all over the world. The big day is Saturday, when the teams paddle 18 miles between Kailua and Honaunau. The women’s teams start first, racing the canoes from Kailua south to Honaunau. Saturday’s canoe race on the west coast of the Big Island. Source: qlcanoerace.com
The men’s teams meet the women in Honaunau and race the canoes back up to Kailua. Tiny Kailua’s hotels (the town’s population is less than 12,000) are packed with paddlers the entire weekend.
Even if you’re not a canoe paddler, or much of an outdoorsy person at all, the Queen Lili’uokalani Canoe Race is worth a trip. Canoe paddlers are easygoing, hard-partying, and fun to be around. And the Big Island is a world away from the more touristy parts of Hawaii. Check out the schedule for the upcoming Labor Day weekend here! Featured image oil painting by Arman Manookian, c. 1929. Originally published on Brooke Blogs
After a rough semester, Professor Lyssa Pennington just wants to post her grades and join her husband, Kyle, in Cornwall for Christmas. First, though, she’s expected to host an elegant dinner for Emile Duval, the soon-to-be Chair of Languages at Tompkins College.
Too bad no one told Lyssa murder is on the menu. And, by the way, Emile Duval is an imposter. Who is he really? And who wanted him dead? Without those answers, the Penningtons can kiss Christmas in Cornwall goodbye. Enter to Win a copy of Sipped
The Dark Side of the Ivory Tower
by C. T. Collier
For decades, authors have written murder mysteries set on university campuses, but how believable is that? Do highly educated people, such as professors and college presidents, really get hot enough under the collar to kill? Or dastardly enough to be killed? Surely not. After all, such people are the crème de la crème in an institution dubbed The Ivory Tower. Naturally, the elite experience strong emotions such as personal ambition, a desire for more money, and anger at discovering a colleague has plagiarized their work. But strong enough to murder?
What could possibly go on in academia that would motivate murder? In my experience, plenty! Just as plenty happens in Miss Marple’s lovely English village that results in murder.
In many ways a college or small university is similar to Miss Marple’s English village. The academic departments (Math and Science, History and English, Languages, Business) range around the campus Quad, much like the homes around a village green. Set slightly apart, like the village church, the college’s administration building is the symbol of ultimate power and leadership.
Within each academic department, personal ambitions play out in the battle for plum committee assignments, preferred courses and schedules, the better offices, salary advances, public kudos, and, possibly, ascendance to the powerful position of department chair. The faculty member who survives six years, jumps through every hoop, and ultimately wins the endorsement of everyone in his or her pecking order is awarded tenure and has the job for life. Tenure is a messy process, and the battle for tenure is fierce. Failure to achieve tenure means you’re out of a job, disgraced, and starting over somewhere else. No one takes it lightly.
Beyond the politics of the academic department, the college as a whole has parallels with an English village. Just as the village Sewing Circle, Church Choir, and Festival Committees play important roles in the operation of the village, so do the college committees—promotion and tenure; budget and operations; research and grants; library and curriculum; policy and ethics; academic discipline. The committees operate at the behest of the administration, draw their members from various departments, and carefully consider matters of importance to the college community. Who is deserving of tenure? Which departments will receive budget increases? Committee recommendations greatly impact departments and individuals. Committees hold power.
In short, there are many opportunities within and across academic departments for individuals to seek and wield power and, sadly, many people with Ph.Ds and other advanced degrees are both mean-spirited and very clever. Some enjoy the sport of exploiting the vulnerabilities of colleagues for their own amusement. Others play off the prejudices and fears of those in power, to advance their own agendas. Some are geniuses at finding and exploiting weaknesses in college operation. As a result, these ill-intentioned elite exercise invisible power that destroys careers, siphons off resources, and targets whole groups of people to be marginalized and disenfranchised.
This dark side of the college is more like the underbelly of a city than the charming cottages and flourishing gardens of a village. Like any dark side, there you’ll find desperation, fury, simmering hatred, and other intense emotions that fuel murder. Ask any victim if they’ve thought about murdering their tormentor, and you might get an honest affirmative.
In reality, there aren’t many murders at colleges and universities, just as there probably weren’t many murders in the typical English village of Miss Marple’s day, not nearly as many as her investigations would have us believe. Curious about the actual data on campus murder, I used a tool provided by the US Department of Education, College Safety and Security (https://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/) to search crime statistics for the many institutions I have attended or worked for or both over the years.
There were only two murders or willful killings reported, total, for more than a dozen institutions, ranging from small college to large university; these occurred at two different universities; neither was committed on the college campus itself. Frankly, the very low number of real murders year after year surprised me, given the backstabbing, undercutting, and vicious cruelty I’ve witnessed in the ivory tower. But I respect the data.
I’ve been reading academic mysteries for decades, from authors like Amanda Cross, Louise Penny, Peter Lovesey, Joanne Dobson, the list goes on and on. I’m currently writing the fourth book in my academic mystery series, The Penningtons Investigate, whose setting is fictitious Tompkins College right here in the Finger Lakes of Upstate New York. While none of the plots are actual events they do draw from the endless intrigue of my higher education experience and the brazen exploits of highly educated colleagues who surely knew the consequences of their misdeeds. I wonder how similar my experience has been compared with others working in academic settings.
About the Author
C. T. Collier was born to solve logic puzzles, wear tweed, and drink Earl Grey tea. Her professional experience in cutthroat high tech and backstabbing higher education gave her endless opportunity to study intrigue. Add to that her longtime love of mysteries, and it’s no wonder she writes academic mysteries that draw inspiration from traditional whodunits. Her setting is entirely fictional: Tompkins College is no college and any college, and Tompkins Falls is a blend of several Finger Lakes towns, including her hometown, Seneca Falls, NY (AKA Bedford Falls from It’s a Wonderful Life). Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon Paperback | B&N Paperback|Kindle|Nook
In The Cursed Canoe, Professor Molly Barda’s best friend Emma Nakamura is the captain of a paddling crew. With seven women on the crew and only six seats in the canoe, things get a little competitive.
In fact, there’s a word for this kind of infighting:
Paddletics.
“We call it paddletics,” Yoshi said. “When paddlers get too competitive within their crew, and turn on each other.”
Yoshi has mellowed a lot since he first moved here with Emma as a freshly minted MBA. At first, he didn’t like living in Mahina. He claimed there were no decent jobs to be had, and would say things like, “I can’t live in a place where no one can tell I’m wearing a two thousand dollar suit.”
Tired of his grumping around the house, Emma got him into canoe paddling, which he embraced with the zeal of a convert. Most of his time is now spent paddling and hanging out at the beach. Today he wore board shorts, a souvenir t-shirt from the previous year’s Labor Day canoe race, and a cap with the logo of a local paddling shop.
One thing that hasn’t changed about Yoshi is his need to be the Expert. His favorite pastime is explaining things to people.
“Paddletics!” Pat exclaimed before Yoshi could expound further. “Molly, isn’t that one of those words you hate? What do the Word Police have to say?”
Pat knows I hate sloppy neologisms: Homophobe. Anything-gate. The worst of the bunch is the suffix –holic, which got snapped off the end of ‘alcoholic’ and now is attached to any word you can think of to indicate addiction or even mere affinity. Normally I enjoy arguing etymology with Pat, but right now, I wasn’t in the mood.
“I’ve heard worse. Paddletics could mean affairs of the paddle, in the same way that politics means affairs of the city.”
–The Cursed Canoe
It’s not just at the office or in the PTA that people vie for position and undermine their colleagues. Paddletics (derived, as you might guess, from “Paddle” and “Politics”) describes all of the infighting and backbiting that comes with a competitive endeavor. Paddlers have been known to talk down teammates, undermining the coach, or even threaten to leave for a competitor club.
So does this mean you should avoid canoe paddling?
No. The blog LiveScience tells us that spending time around the ocean can improve your health and well-being. Some paddlers describe their experience as almost spiritual:
“I’ve learned that sometimes I can’t change things, but I can go with the flow. I’ve learned to harness nature’s energy and use it to my advantage. I’ve learned not to get in Mother Nature’s way. I’ve learned to listen when she speaks. I’ve learned to respect, love and celebrate nature and her ocean.” (source)
And if you’ve been yearning for shapely, muscular arms, you can’t beat the hours of repetitive upper-body work required to push a four-hundred-pound canoe through the waves.
What if you live far from the water? You can get a taste of Hawaiian outrigger paddling from The Cursed Canoe, a Professor Molly mystery.
Originally published on Lynda Dickson’s Books Direct
In tracing her ancestry, quilter Martha Rose discovers a ritzy half-sister, a stash of family secrets, and a decades-old mystery that only she can unravel . . .
Manhattan, 1938. Tired of being trapped in the gilded cage of her family’s expectations, Elizabeth Adams has done what no self-respecting socialite would think to do: She’s gotten herself a job. Although Elizabeth’s dream is to one day see her photographs on the front page of the Daily Trumpet, for now she’s working her way up as the newsroom’s gal Friday.
But fetching coffee isn’t exactly her idea of fun. So when veteran reporter Ralph Kaminsky needs a photographer to fill in for a last-minute assignment, Elizabeth jumps at the chance. At the Waldorf Hotel, Elizabeth is tasked with tracking down the season’s “It girl,” Gloria DeWitt, who will be making her society debut. Working her own connections to New York’s upper crust, Elizabeth manages to land an exclusive interview with Gloria.
Then Gloria’s stepmother is shot dead in a Waldorf bathroom, placing Elizabeth at the scene of a headline-worthy scandal: “Murder of a Society Dame.” Now Elizabeth will have to get the scoop on the killer before her good name gets dragged through the gossip columns—or worse. . .
The featured image is the mosaic over the entrance of the High School of Fashion Industries, 225 West 24th Street, in Manhattan. Construction of the building began in 1938 as part of the Works Projects Administration (WPA).
One question that I get is, “Am I in your book?”
I can see why people might ask this. The setting is a public university in Hawaii, similar in some ways to my own workplace. The main character is Molly Barda, who teaches in the Mahina State University College of Commerce. I teach at a university, in Hawaii, in the business school.
But I must insist: I am making most of it up.
In my author bio, I try to make this clear:
Like Molly Barda, Frankie Bow teaches at a public university. Unlike her protagonist, she is blessed with delightful students, sane colleagues, a loving family, and a perfectly nice office chair. She believes if life isn’t fair, at least it can be entertaining.
I have sacrificed Truth on the altar of Art.
Why? Because Truth is boring.
If I were really writing about myself and the people I know, my stories would feature kind, capable people doing their jobs competently and without incident. Snore.
So I punch it up a little: Ruinous budget cuts. Reckless, showboating legislators. A powerful and well-funded Student Retention Office staffed by self-assured dimwits.
Molly, my protagonist and narrator, is neurotic and socially awkward. Her bottom-line-obsessed dean won’t let her report cheaters, because he refuses to scare off paying customers. Her next-door colleague is the reason she’s not allowed to close the door when she has a student in her office (it’s called the “Rodge Cowper Rule”). Her students don’t know what “plutocracy” means, but they’re pretty sure it has something to do with planets.
So no, you are (probably) not in my book. I promise. Now go read and enjoy!
Originally posted on Brooke Blogs
When a wealthy theater owner is killed by a falling art glass chandelier, glass beadmaker Jax O’Connell’s boyfriend, Detective Zachary Grant, quickly determines it was no accident.
Jax and her friend Tessa try to carry on with a charity fashion gala at the theater, but with only a few days before the big event, they have to scramble to keep things from falling apart. The emcee quits, and to make matters worse, Tessa’s daughters are suspects in the murder.
As the chaos unfolds, Jax discovers new suspects at every turn, including an edgy glass blower, an agoraphobic socialite, and a hunky former-cop-turned-actor. Can Jax piece together the clues to find the killer and uncover the dark secrets behind the victim’s family or will it be curtains for her? Enter to win a set of the Glass Bead Mystery Series by Janice Peacock (Paperback) (U.S. Only)
About The Author Janice Peacock decided to write her first mystery novel after working in a glass studio full of colorful artists who didn’t always get along. They reminded her of the odd, and often humorous, characters in the murder mystery books she loved to read. Inspired by that experience, she combined her two passions and wrote High Strung: A Glass Bead Mystery, the first book in a new cozy mystery series featuring glass beadmaker Jax O’Connell.
When Janice Peacock isn’t writing about glass artists who are amateur detectives, she makes glass beads using a torch, designs one-of-a-kind jewelry and makes sculptures using hot glass. An award-winning artist, her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the permanent collections of several museums. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two cats, and seven chickens. She has a studio full of beads…lots and lots of beads.
C. T. Collier was born to solve logic puzzles, wear tweed, and drink Earl Grey tea. Her professional experience in cutthroat high tech and backstabbing higher education gave her endless opportunity to study intrigue. Add to that her longtime love of mysteries, and it’s no wonder she writes academic mysteries that draw inspiration from traditional whodunits. Her setting is entirely fictional: Tompkins College is no college and any college, and Tompkins Falls is a blend of several Finger Lakes towns, including her hometown, Seneca Falls, NY (AKA Bedford Falls from It’s a Wonderful Life).
Mystery writing lets Peg indulge her curiosity under the guise of “work” (aka research). As a kid, she read the entire set of children’s encyclopedias her parents gave her and has been known to read the dictionary. She put pen to paper at age seven when she wrote plays and forced her cousins to perform them at Christmas dinner. She switched to mysteries when she discovered the perfect hiding place for a body down the street from her house.
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