I kill people for fun. In books.
Why am I (along with over fifty fellow mystery and thriller authors) giving away our work for free? The main reason we write is to share our stories and entertain readers. If you enjoy the free stories, that’s great! But if you do like what you read, there’s more where that came from. We hope you might look into more books in the same series!
The Unknown Caller Group Giveaway is happening now on Prolific Works!
This giveaway has all types of mystery, crime, and thriller books. Claim as many as you’d like and enjoy your new reads!
Here are a few that caught my eye.
Look no further! These mystery authors have teamed up to offer a delightful selection of whodunnits, all set within a school or a library. Escape from the mundane of everyday life and see if you can solve the mystery before the sleuth.
The Prolific Works team is proud to present the In The Library With The Candlestick Group Giveaway! This giveaway has all types of crime, mystery, and thriller books. Claim as many as you’d like and enjoy your new reads!
Why would mystery authors give away our books for free? We love to tell stories and we hope you enjoy them. If they’re not your cup of tea, no harm, no foul. If you like the freebies, great! And if you want more…we have sequels.
Kent Lovely was well into middle age, and dressed in defiance of the plain fact. His midnight-black hair was gelled to a crisp. His aloha shirt was unbuttoned low enough to show off his wiry physique and his cinnabar tan. A tiny zircon stud sparkled in one leathery earlobe.
“Ciao, Molly.” Kent caught Emma and me in a hug, one in each arm. “Emma, Ai watashi kon’nichiwa.”
His culturally-sensitive salutations out of the way, Kent released us from his cologne-drenched embrace and pushed ahead of us. He pulled two plates off the stack, and started loading them up. Emma and I took one plate apiece, and followed Kent as he mowed his way through the salads, to the hot dishes, and finally over to the dessert table. He was William Tecumseh Sherman, and the buffet table was Atlanta.
Kent paused his historical re-enactment to turn back and address us. “So, ladies.” (Here he paused to lick his fingers.) “Who do you think is gonna get the teaching award today?”
“Who else was nominated?” I asked. “Besides you?”
Kent helped himself to the last two slices of haupia cheesecake, balancing them atop the mounds of pastry, roast pork, rice, waffles, and fruit piled on his plates.
“Let’s see.” One of the slices of haupia cake started to slide off its summit. Kent pushed it back up into place and licked his finger again. “It was me, Bob Wilson from history, and that minority chick from the psychology department.”
Emma stared at him in disbelief.
“Sorry Emma-chan, minority lady. Wish me luck, girls. Oh look, brownies.”
Professor Molly feels more relief than grief when Mahina State’s one-man hostile work environment keels over at a faculty retreat. She has no desire to get involved with the case, so it's an unpleasant surprise to find she already is involved. Now Professor Molly has to fight to keep the wrong person out of prison—and herself off the unemployment line.
If you like Dorothy Parker, Sarah Caudwell, P.G. Wodehouse, or E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia stories, you’ll enjoy this tale of passion, pilferage, and petty politics in the middle of the Pacific.
A group of mystery writers have gotten together to offer a huge selection of free and 99 cent mysteries here.
Why?
In Dorothy St. James’s third delectable Southern Chocolate Shop mystery, a new batch of chocolate and troubles of the heart cause a string of disasters for the Chocolate Box’s new owner, Charity Penn.
The vintage seaside town of Camellia Beach, South Carolina seems like the perfect place for romance with its quiet beach and its decadent chocolate shop that serves the world’s richest dark chocolates. The Chocolate Box’s owner, Charity Penn, falls even further under the island’s moonlit spell as she joins Althea Bays and the rest of the turtle watch team to witness a new generation of baby sea turtles hatch and make their way into the wide ocean.
Before the babies arrive, gunshots ring out in the night. Cassidy Jones, the local Casanova, is found dead in the sand with his lover Jody Dalton—the same woman who has vowed to destroy the Chocolate Box—holding the gun. It’s an obvious crime of passion, or so everyone believes. But when Jody’s young son pleads with Penn to bring his mother back to him, she can’t say no. She dives headfirst into a chocolate swirl of truth and lies, and must pick through an assortment of likely (and sometimes unsavory) suspects before it’s too late for Penn and for those she loves in Dorothy St. James’s third rich installment of the Southern Chocolate Shop mysteries, In Cold Chocolate.
Dorothy, welcome to Island Confidential! Can you tell us about the protagonist of In Cold Chocolate?
Charity Penn (just Penn to her friends) is chocoholic living her dream. She owns a chocolate shop on the small beach-side community of Camellia Beach in South Carolina. She’s a little nutty. She owns a small Papillon dog (Stella) who will occasionally bite her and anyone else. Because of her rocky past, she is slow to trust others. But she’s generous and always willing to lend a helping hand.
Are you and Penn anything alike?
Probably the only thing I have in common with Penn is that we both have trouble in the kitchen. I don’t know what it is. I try to follow a recipe, but things seem to go wrong on their own.
How would you feel about meeting her in real life?
I think that’d be awesome. I hope we’d get along. Maybe become best friends even. I’d love to get some free chocolates from her shop.
Do your characters change and evolve throughout consecutive books in the series?
My characters change quite a bit from book to book. Charity Penn most of all. She starts out in book one quite broken and lost. In every book she learns more about her purpose in life and gains more confidence. Like in real life, our experiences change us.
Have you ever thought of killing someone that you know in real life–on the pages of a murder mystery, I mean?
Well, yeah! Hasn’t everyone? There’s one person in my life that really gets under my skin. I decided not to kill her, but translate her crazy and hurtful actions into the actions of a character in my books. I’m not going to kill her. No, that’s too good for her. I’m going to keep her alive and torture her a bit instead. (Rubs hands together with maniacal glee.)
Well now I have to try to figure out who that is! And speaking of using real life in fiction, do you take liberties with your setting, or is it fairly realistic?
My Southern Chocolate Shop Mysteries are set on a fictional island, Camellia Beach. The place is loosely based on the real town of Folly Beach, which is located near Charleston, SC. I chose to set the book in a fictional town so I could turn back time and depict the town as it had existed before it turned so touristy. I lived on Folly Beach for 20 years and love its quirky, artsy ways. I always knew I wanted to set a series there.
What’s the worst and best advice you’ve heard or received as an author?
The best advice I’ve ever gotten as an author is to write. If you write one page every day, by the end of the year, you’ll have finished a book. Everyone can write at least one page. The worst advice I’d ever heard was that an author needed to buy this or that advertising campaign in order to guarantee success. Yes, some ads are worth the price. But there are plenty of pathways to success. And since every book is different, no one can guarantee what it takes to get your book noticed. Just keep talking with people and your passion. The readers will eventually find you.
A lover of puzzles and perhaps a bit too nosey about other people’s lives, Dorothy St. James is a former Folly Beach beach bum. She now lives in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina with her husband, precocious daughter, slightly (OK, terribly) needy dogs, and the friendliest cat you’d ever meet. She has degrees in Wildlife Biology and Public Administration and as an urban planner, worked for many years telling the stories of small southern towns.
Author of a dozen novels, Dorothy enjoys writing both cozy mysteries and romance. Her works have been nominated for many awards including: the Southern Independent Bookseller’s Alliance Southern Book Prize, Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, Reviewers
International Organization Award, National Reader’s Choice Award, CataRomance Reviewers’ Choice Award, and The Romance Reviews Today Perfect 10! Award. Reviewers have called her work: “amazing”, “perfect”, “filled with emotion”, and “lined with danger.”
Author Links
Website: www.dorothystjames.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/dorothystjames
Twitter: www.twitter.com/dorothymcfalls
Purchase Links
Indie Bound Amazon Kobo Google Play Barnes & Noble BookBub
Choose from twenty-five free cozy mysteries.
What is a cozy mystery? Cozies generally feature amateur sleuths, small towns, humor, minimal sex or violence, and brains over brawn.
My Professor Molly short, Trust Fall, is in there. Trust Fall is for anyone who loves mysteries and loathes team-building retreats.
Over fifty short stories in a variety of genres: mystery, romance, thriller, speculative, true adventure, science fiction, humor, and more. My Professor Molly short, Trust Fall, is in there too. Trust Fall is for anyone who loves mysteries and loathes team-building retreats.
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