#MidweekMystery: Mistletoe Cake Murder (All-Day Breakfast Cafe Mystery) by Lena Gregory

’Tis the season for celebrating when Gia Morelli’s holidays include both a wedding and yuletide festivities. Until someone naughty delivers a most unwanted Christmas gift—murder. . .

Mistletoe Cake Murder (An All-Day Breakfast Cafe Mystery) by Lena Gregory
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For a native New Yorker, palm trees and warm temperatures don’t equal winter, much less Christmastime. Nevertheless, Gia Morelli’s friends have decked the halls and trimmed the trees to truly welcome her into their “family” with an old-fashioned Boggy Creek, Florida holiday season. Even more joyous, Savannah Mills is getting married on Christmas Eve—the greatest gift Gia could ever wish for her best friend.

But when Gia and Savannah stop by the caterer for a final tasting a week before the wedding, they overhear another bride arguing with her son about her husband-to-be. Moments later, the woman is sampling a piece of wedding cake—gorgeously decorated with mistletoe frosting—then suddenly dies.

Now Gia’s caterer friends are the prime suspects in what appears to be murder by poisoning. To clear their names and ensure Savannah has a merry matrimony will require Gia to conjure up a Christmas miracle . . .

Includes recipes from the All-Day Breakfast Café!

About the Author

Lena Gregory

Lena grew up in a small town on the south shore of eastern Long Island, but she recently traded in cold, damp, gray winters for the warmth and sunshine of central Florida, where she now lives with her husband, three kids, son-in-law, and four dogs. Her hobbies include spending time with family, reading, and walking. Her love for writing developed when her youngest son was born and didn’t sleep through the night. She works full-time as a writer and a freelance editor and is a member of Sisters in Crime.

Visit her website and BookBub and sign up for her newsletter.

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#MidweekMystery: Sand Trapped by Joanna Campbell Slan

Cara Mia Delgatto was looking for a lost ball when found Jocelyn “JJ” Johnson face down in a sand trap. Gave a whole new meaning to “take a drop.”

It wasn’t a surprise. The neighbors hated JJ for the reckless way she drove her golf cart. Sure, she lived on the grounds of a swanky golf club, and yes, she had tons of money, but JJ ruined flowerbeds, terrorized grandkids, and made a nuisance of herself.

Except…except…she’s quiet now. Lying there in the dirt at Hole #6. Someone bashed in JJ’s head. (Who would risk ruining an expensive Homna golf club like that?)

Cara doesn’t want to get involved. But when Gerta Hunsickler is named the prime suspect, and Gerta’s husband is so angry at his wife that he’s starting divorce proceedings, Cara can’t sit on her hands. She knows what it’s like to be unfairly accused. So she promises to take a swing at it and see if she can hit a long drive down the fairway of justice!

Meanwhile, back at The Treasure Chest, Cara’s friends are busy creating fabulous and fun Mother’s Day gifts. There are two brides-to-be working for Cara, and their two mothers-in-law-to-be have decided not to play nice. Can you say, “Mama’s boy” ten times really fast? I thought you could.

If you love warm-hearted, clean books, that feature female amateur sleuths, fur babies, family, and friends, you’ll love this charming DIY/recycling/upcycling series set on the Southeast Coast of Florida.

Joanna Campbell Slan

Joanna Campbell Slan

Kiki Lowenstein Mysteries

“Our best friend, our next-door neighbor, and ourselves with just a touch of the outrageous.” That’s how RT Book Review describes Joanna’s protagonist, Kiki Lowenstein. The truth is that’s a pretty good description of Joanna Campbell Slan as well.
Joanna is a New York Times Bestselling, USA Today Bestselling, and Amazon Bestselling author as well as a woman prone to frequent bursts of crafting frenzy, leaving her with burns from her hot glue gun and paint on her clothes. And the mess? Let’s not even go there.
Otherwise, Joanna’s a productive author with more than 80 written projects to her credit. Her non-fiction work includes how to books, a college textbook for public speakers, and books of personal essays (think Chicken Soup for the Soul).
Currently, she writes five fiction series: The Kiki Lowenstein Mystery Series (Agatha Award Finalist, contemporary, St. Louis setting, crafting), the Cara Mia Delgatto Mystery Series (contemporary, Florida setting, DIY, and recycling), the Jane Eyre Chronicles (Daphne du Maurier Award Winner, 1830s England, based on Charlotte Brontë’s classic), the Sherlock Holmes Fantasy Thrillers (late 1800s, based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s books), and the Zen Cozy Mystery Series (launch 2021).
A former TV talk show host, college teacher, and public relations specialist, Joanna was one of the early Chicken Soup for the Soul contributors. She won a Silver Anvil for her work on the original FarmAid concert to benefit farmers.
In her ongoing quest never to see snow again, Joanna lives with her husband and their Havanese puppy, Jax, on an island off the coast of Florida. You can email her at [email protected] or visit her website at https://linktr.ee/jcslan
Website Http://www.JoannaSlan.com
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Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/joannaslan/
Purchase Links – Amazon 

Featured Image: A Florida Golf Course where as far as we know, no dead bodies have turned up

Whole Latte Murder by Lena Gregory #MidweekMystery

Ex-New Yorker and local diner owner Gia Morelli is still getting used to the sweltering Florida sun. But this summer she’ll have to deal with a more dangerous kind of heat—when she’s hot on the trail of another murderer . . .

Summer in Boggy Creek has arrived, and Gia’s best friend, successful real estate agent Savannah, is getting hitched. Now she’s enlisted Gia’s sleuthing talents in a desperate search for the perfect wedding dress. But when Savannah mysteriously vanishes after showing a mansion to a bigwig client, Gia investigates the house Savannah was trying to sell. The first clue she finds is Savannah’s car in the driveway. Inside the house, they stumble on Savannah’s potential buyer—dead. Someone had apparently closed the deal—with a two by four full of nails to the client’s head. Soon afterward, a woman’s body is fished from the lake near the same house. The townsfolk are now sweating bullets over the murders, and the heat comes down on poor Gia to find her missing friend, and track down the killer . . .

Lena Gregory

About the Author

Lena Gregory is the author of the Bay Island Psychic Mysteries, which take place on a small island between the north and south forks of Long Island, New York, and the All-Day Breakfast Café Mysteries, which are set on the outskirts of Florida’s Ocala National Forest.
Visit her website and sign up for her newsletter.

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#MidweekMystery The Key Lime Crime by Lucy Burdette

National bestselling author Lucy Burdette’s tenth Key West Food Critic mystery is piping hot with pie-enthusiasts and murder suspects.

When a fierce rivalry between key lime pie bakers leads to a pastry chef’s murder, food critic Hayley Snow is fit to be pied.

Between Christmas and New Year’s, the year-round population of Key West, Florida, faces a tsunami of tourists and snowbirds. It doesn’t help that outrageously wealthy key lime pie aficionado David Sloan has persuaded the city to host his pie-baking contest. Every pie purveyor on the island is out to win the coveted Key Lime Key to the City and Key Zest food critic Hayley Snow is on the scene to report it.

It’s bad enough that Hayley’s too-curious mother-in-law is cooking up trouble. Now, the murderer is out to take a slice out of Hayley. Can she handle the heat of a killer’s kitchen?


Author Lucy Burdette

Lucy Burdette

The Key West Food Critic Mysteries

Clinical psychologist Lucy Burdette (aka Roberta Isleib) has published 16 mysteries, including the latest in the Key West food critic series, KEY LIME CRIME (Crooked Lane Books, July 2020.) Her books and stories have been short-listed for Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She’s a member of Mystery Writers of America and a past president of Sisters in Crime. She blogs at Jungle Red Writersand shares her love for food with the culinary writers at Mystery Lovers Kitchen She lives in Madison CT and Key West FL. Read more at www.lucyburdette.com.

The Cha-Cha Babes of Pelican Way by Frances Metzman

Would you move a dead body for the sake of your best friend? Ask cha-cha babe Celia Ewing, a sixty-five-year-old widow who has just settled into Boca Pelicano Palms, the Florida retirement community of her dreams. When Celia’s best friend Marcy calls her and their friend Deb for help in the middle of the night, they find a naked Marcy trapped under the body of her beau, the community’s board president, Melvin.
And he’s dead. 

The three friends secretly move Melvin back to his apartment setting off a chain of events that will threaten to tear their community apart and send them to jail. Melvin is one of a number of residents who are dying under suspicious circumstances; and soon Celia becomes an amateur sleuth in an attempt to identify what she suspects is a serial murderer.
A thoroughly entertaining,lighthearted murder mystery. –Kirkus Review

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About the Author


Frances Metzman is a graduate of Moore College of Art and has a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  In 2009 she was nominated for the Dzanc Books award, “Best of the Web.” In addition to publishing numerous short stories in literary journals, she has published The Cha-Cha Babes of Pelican Way and Ugly Cookies. She has taught creative and memoir writing at various institutions including Rosemont College and Temple University.

Interview and Giveaway: Marla Bradeen, author of Murder in White Sands

One dead body, one interrupted marriage proposal, and too many suspects to count.
On the night of her engagement, Rae Lynn Dobbs stumbles across a dead body on the beach of White Sands, Florida. Not only does she recognize the murder victim as one of the retirement-home residents where she serves dinner, but it looks increasingly likely that someone there also killed him.
To her fiancé’s dismay, Rae Lynn launches her own investigation. Between the gossipy widows, the home’s last surviving bachelor, and her coworkers, Rae Lynn doesn’t have any shortage of suspects. But the more she learns, the more it seems anyone could be guilty. And if she doesn’t find out “whodunit” quickly, her fiancé might just become fed up enough to leave.


 

 
Rae Lynn Dobbs has just accepted her boyfriend Caleb’s marriage proposal (and the hideous ring that accompanies it) when the couple come upon a body face-down in the sand. When the deceased turns out to be someone Rae Lynn knows, she finds herself compelled to try to solve the case herself, which causes more than a few difficulties in both her personal and her work life.
Murder in White Sands is a fun (and funny) read.  Rae Lynn, the narrator and main character, is sympathetic without being saccharine. A retirement-home worker, Rae-Lynn can be understandably exasperated with her demanding boss, her pillock of a fiance, and her sometimes-tedious job, but she’s unfailingly kind to the elderly residents of the White Sands Retirement Village.
The murder was well-plotted, deftly interwoven with other plot elements. While the murderer’s identity wasn’t obvious at all before the reveal, it made sense in retrospect, striking the perfect balance between too much foreshadowing and too little. One of my favorite elements of the book was Rae Lynn’s ongoing struggle to be balance truth and tact on the topic of her fiance’s taste in wedding jewelry. I envisioned the ring as looking something like this

except with cats’ paws instead of human hands.
The various plotlines in this sweet and good-natured story wrap up nicely. If I were to make any suggestion, it would be to shorten the first chapter and jump right into the second, with its entertaining description of Rae Lynn’s encounter with White Sands’ finest.
Murder in White Sands is a funny, readable cozy mystery with a satisfying conclusion. Highly recommended for readers who are looking for a light, funny, and engaging mystery with a likable protagonist.


 
Q: Marla, thanks for stopping by! I really enjoyed reading Murder in White Sands. For those who haven’t yet read it, tell us about your protagonist, Rae Lynn.
A: Rae Lynn Dobbs is a 36-year-old retirement home waitress who has just gotten engaged when she finds the dead body of one of the home residents. She’s a little curious by nature, but who wouldn’t be if someone they knew died mysteriously? She doesn’t like cats, and she really doesn’t like engagement rings that feature cat paws. Overall, she’s basically a good person who wants to do what’s right.
Q: How much of you is in Rae Lynn? How would you feel about her if you met her in real life?
A: Rae Lynn is similar to me in the way she thinks. We’re both sarcastic. I used to be a waitress in a retirement home too, so we share that. However, I didn’t set out to model her after me, and we differ in a lot of respects too (I love cats, for the record). If we met in real life, I’m sure we’d get along great. Since I have control over everything she does, I could make her fold my laundry, wash dishes, etc. Seriously though, I’m fond of all my protagonists. If they weren’t fictional, they would be the type of people I’d like to hang out with.
Q: Do your characters change and evolve throughout consecutive books, or do you prefer to write stand-alones?
A: My novels are all stand-alones. I do like my main characters to evolve somewhat throughout their individual stories, even if that’s just to become more aware of themselves and their own motives. I mean, there has to be more to life than finding dead bodies, right?
Q: Have you ever thought of killing someone that you know in real life–on the pages of a murder mystery, I mean?
A: Never! Everyone I murder is completely fictional (in name, anyway).
Q: How true to life is the town of White Sands? 
A: White Sands is a fictional town, but it’s roughly based on Sarasota, Florida. The original setting was going to be Sarasota, but the story needed more of a small-town feel so I made up a place. For my novels that take place in real cities, I try to stay true to the city layout, but I make up most businesses. I will say though, when my Seattle characters drive around, traffic moves much more quickly than it does in real life.
Q: When the movie or TV series is made, who plays the major parts?
A: I’m going to really date myself here because I don’t watch much TV and I have no idea what a lot of the recently famous actors look like. Personally, I love Sandra Bullock, and I think she’d be great as Rae Lynn (although I think she’d be great in any role). Betty White would be fantastic as one of the retirement home residents. She has the right mix of energy and humor. That said though, I’d really like to see a lot of unknowns cast. As an indie author I know how hard it is to gain public attention, and I’d love for my book’s movie version to pave the way for some lesser-known actors. Now if only someone offered to buy the film rights!
Q: What’s the worst and best advice you’ve heard or received as an author?
A: This is a tough one because I’ve learned so much from other authors since I started self-publishing. I suppose the best advice would be to write every day, whether you feel like it or not. Establishing a routine is the only way I can ever finish a book. I haven’t really received any bad advice. I’ve tried a lot of things that haven’t been very effective, but I think that’s part of the process of figuring out what works for you and your stories.


About The Author  

Marla Bradeen previously worked as a software consultant and analyst. In 2012, she gave up a traditional job for no other reason than to have more time to pursue personal interests, such as sleeping in late and taking naps. Although she misses seeing regular deposits into her bank account, she hasn’t once regretted that decision.
She didn’t initially intend to begin writing novels, but after several weeks of doing nothing, she realized sleeping all day isn’t as easy or enjoyable as her cats led her to believe. Over the ensuing months, she wrote Lethal Injection, which she self-published in 2013.
Join her readers’ group to receive a free copy of her cozy, chick-lit mystery novel Lost Witnesshttp://hyperurl.co/rg2
Keep up with Marla

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