Mother's Day Mysteries

Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 12 or thereabouts (depending on what country you live in). There’s no better time to treat yourself to a Mother’s Day-Themed mystery.


Margaritas & Murder by Cece Osgood

In honor of Mother’s Day, meet Marsha, Sunny Truly’s mom. Marsha doesn’t like her daughter’s new job as a rookie private eye. She was so proud of Sunny being a history teacher but then that awful You Tube “incident” got Sunny fired.
Now, Marsha has a lot more to worry about — like her daughter’s penchant for solving mysteries and encountering creepy killers.

Filigrees, Fortunes and Foul Play by Emily Selby

Katie is busy enough as a single mom with a series of dead-end jobs. She barely has time for her passion-paper crafting.
But when one of her housecleaning clients turns up dead, stabbed with a paper crafting tool, Katie is in trouble.
She has her own ideas about who the real murderer is, but the lead inspector won’t listen.
Can she dig up evidence before another victim drops dead? Or will she take the fall for a crime she didn’t commit?


Mother’s Day (A Professor Molly Novelette)

Pregnant Professor Molly is battling morning sickness, a meddling mom, and the unwanted “help” of the Student Retention Office.
The last thing she needs on her to-do list is a murder.
But here we are.
 

The Two-Body Problem #SampleSunday

The Two-Body Problem

Professor Gwendolyn Jackson’s husband sends her a voice mail from the road, telling her he’ll be home soon. Just one problem…by the time the message was sent, he was already dead.
When the police dismiss her concerns, Professor Jackson turns to her former student, Fortune Morrow, for help.
Naturally, Fortune, Mary-Alice, and the rest of the Sinful gang are eager to solve the mystery surrounding the death of Professor Jackson’s husband, who owned the French Quarter’s premier joke and novelty shop, Jape & Jest. But the ladies soon find that nothing is as it seems in this case, and an unseen killer might have the last laugh. 

Excerpt

The McCully Inn was a low-slung brick building with a red-and-yellow banner hanging over the front entrance:
NOW OPEN special daily, weekly, & monthly rates.
The motel looked like it had been built in the 1950s, remodeled sometime in the 1980s, and left to its own devices after that. The tile-print vinyl flooring was curling up at the seams, and the lobby smelled like old cigarette smoke.
“You got this?” Ida Belle asked Gertie. Gertie nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. Fortune, Ida Belle, and Mary-Alice followed her, which was safer than hanging out in the lobby and risking someone asking them what they were doing there.
Gertie went into a stall and emerged after a few minutes wearing a black baggy dress, a hat with a veil, black gloves, and a giant cross necklace.
“What the heck are you supposed to be?” Ida Belle demanded. “Madonna?”
“I’m-a Michael’s devoted auntie Fiorella,” Gertie said, in what was apparently intended to be an Italian accent.
“I can’t watch,” Ida Belle covered her face.
“Oh, I’d love to watch,” Mary-Alice exclaimed. “It’ll be like a game of charades.”
“You say charades, I say nightmare of humiliation from which there is no waking,” Ida Belle said. “To-may-to, to-mah-to.”
“Let’s go over to the coffee shop,” Fortune suggested. “If we sit by the entrance we’ll have a good view.”


The Two-Body Problem is available on these platforms

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This story is a licensed work in Jana DeLeon’s Miss Fortune world.

The Blessed Event will be on sale for $0.99 from Monday, 4/15 to Monday, 4/22 #SampleSunday

The Blessed Event

“You may wonder what my least-favorite student was doing in my living room. In a twist of fate that might seem hilarious if it happened to someone else, he was now my stepson.”
Professor Molly Barda is looking forward to a quiet summer in Mahina, Hawaii working on her research and adjusting to married life. But when a visit from her new husband’s relatives coincides with a murder, Molly wonders what she’s married into–and realizes she might have a killer under her roof.

The Blessed Event is the only book in the Professor Molly series published by Amazon’s Kindle Press. It was selected through Kindle Scout, a competitive platform powered by reader feedback.
Here are some of the editors’ comments:

  • Readers clearly loved your work and editors also raved about it.
  • It’s light-hearted, funny, and smart
  • The author does an excellent job making all of the characters likable, even when they do unlikable things…The story is also peppered with a variety of humorous minor characters that greatly contribute to the verisimilitude of the world-building and setting.
  • Very entertaining
  • The humor is great – there were several LOL moments.
  • It’s a light read, but it’s also a smart read. The author’s insights on the characters and the absurdities of their situations are compelling and give the book a sense of satisfying substance.

Excerpt

I knew I should get to work on my book chapter, but as long as I was thinking of it, maybe I’d have another look around for my missing jewelry. I had daylight and might see something I’d overlooked the night before. I took a small flashlight from the kitchen utility drawer, went back into the bedroom, and raked the light over the floor.

There was scarcely a dust mote in evidence, let alone a glittering pair of pear-shaped diamonds or a gem-encrusted necklace. I shone the light behind the dresser, illuminating a light coating of dust on the wall. Alas, no jewelry. I shone the light around the floor again, with the same result.

I hadn’t heard Davison come in. He must have stayed out all night. This was my chance. If I found my jewelry in his room, I could just steal it back. What could he say about it? Donnie certainly wouldn’t approve of my snooping in his son’s room, so I’d have to do it when they were both out of the house.

The guest room door was ajar. I knocked gently. When there was no answer, I knocked harder, and then pushed the door open.

I stood, listening for Davison clumping up the front steps. Or Donnie turning his key in the door. What if one of them walked in on me? I would simply say I was tidying up or looking for a spare fire extinguisher or something.

I tiptoed into the room.

The air was heavy with cloying cologne and a ripe, meaty aroma. Davison’s backpack lay in the middle of the floor, exactly where someone would be most likely to trip on it.

I picked up the backpack and shook it. It was disappointingly light. Inside I found a pen, a yellowed receipt, and a single sock, but no jewelry. I turned it upside-down, shook it again, and then searched for hidden pockets. Nothing.

Then I tried the chest of drawers. I rooted through the anarchy of socks and boxer briefs in the top drawer. Where better to hide something valuable? But I found nothing.

The next drawer down had a few rolled-up tank tops and a couple of pairs of shorts. The shorts pockets contained some loose change, lint, and a few crumbs of what looked like oregano. The next two drawers were empty. The closet was bare except for a few forlorn hangers.

There was one more obvious place to look. If Davison hadn’t already fenced my jewelry, it might be hidden under the mattress. I paused and listened, but didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. A car drove by; a lawnmower hummed in the distance.

I grabbed an armload of blankets and lifted them off the mattress.

I did not expect to see Davison lying on the bed in his boxer shorts.

I yelped and dropped the blankets back down on top of him. He pushed them out of the way and sat up, grinning.

“Eh, just let me brush my teeth first.”

“Davison! What are you doing here? I thought you were out.”

“What are you doing here, Molly?”

“I was looking for something.”

He held his arms out, displaying his hairless chest and his bristling armpits. A baby beer belly pooched out over the top of his boxer shorts.

“You find what you’re looking for?” he asked.

“Stop it. Davison, why didn’t you say anything when I knocked?”

“How come you’re in my room?”

“I’m looking for a fire extinguisher. I don’t have to explain myself.”


The Blessed Event is available on Kindle and in paperback

Amazon

 

Judging a book by its cover: What does your face reveal about your personality?

What do Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism look like? Now we know, thanks to Science.
Composite photos of individuals high in narcissism were in fact judged as narcissistic. Same with psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
“The results indicated that unacquainted observers reliably detected the dark triad composite… not only is the dark triad a set of psycho-social characteristics — it may also be a set of physical — morphological characteristics.”
Here are the photos.

Click to go to the full text article

I tried these on my students and they were indeed able to tell who was what, especially the female psychopath.

Probably wouldn’t get many babysitting jobs

What do you think your face says to the world?
Me, I think I’d rather not know. I just keep smiling and hope no one notices anything bad.
By the way, the “narcissist” in the featured photo is the composite on your right.
An earlier version was published on Jane Reads

Let's talk about campus murder mysteries

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.”

From The 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.
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

Paddletics

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

Truth is Boring

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

A New Trouble in Paradise Mystery: The Scent of Waikiki by Terry Ambrose

Honolulu landlord Wilson McKenna can smell a scam from across the room. So when one of his tenants loses everything in a work-at-home scam involving a new perfume, he’s shocked. With his wedding just weeks away, McKenna has to make a tough decision. Does he evict a woman who’s down on her luck? Or take time out from wedding planning to help his tenant?


Turning the case over to his PI-in-training friend Chance Logan seems like the perfect solution—until Chance tells McKenna he needs a wingman for a visit to fragrance entrepreneur Skye Pilkington-Winchester. McKenna’s sure he can keep everyone happy by helping Chance this one time. But nothing is ever as easy as it seems, and soon McKenna’s up to his board shorts in hot water. His tenant’s simple fragrance scam might involve industrial espionage, Skye’s assistant is murdered, and McKenna’s bride-to-be accuses him of having cold feet.
As McKenna and Chance dig deeper, it seems so much of what they’re being told doesn’t pass the sniff test. And the only way to get his life back is to find the dead girl’s missing boyfriend, unmask a killer, and finish up in time for the wedding. Other than that, it’s just another day in paradise.

Enter to win
Enter to win a copy of The Scent of Waikiki plus a Starbucks gift card

 


About the Author


Terry Ambrose is a former skip tracer who only stole cars when it was legal. He’s long since turned his talents to writing mysteries and thrillers. Several of his books have been award finalists and in 2014 his thriller, “Con Game,” won the San Diego Book Awards for Best Action-Thriller. He’s currently working on the Seaside Cove Bed & Breakfast Mystery series.

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Where everyone has a green thumb

I really did have a lot to learn about gardening. I was not one of those persons gifted with a green thumb. In fact, I seemed to have the opposite of a green thumb, whatever that would be. A red thumb? That didn’t sound right, although green and red opposed each other on the color wheel. A brown thumb? A black thumb? Was that racist? Maybe a skeleton thumb, like the Grim Reaper.
The Black Thumb, a Professor Molly Mystery
I have the proverbial black thumb. I am the worst gardener in the world. I’m not simply incapable of coaxing a living thing out of the ground; I’ve had actual cactus perish in my care.
I am death, destroyer of flora.
Or so I thought, before I moved from Southern California to the rainy side of one of the Hawaiian Islands.
It turns out that I am not the plant kingdom’s answer to the Grim Reaper. In fact, now that I’m here, I’m surrounded by thriving, vigorous verdure. How do I do it?
Simple: sun plus rain. Hawaii generally has the highest ultraviolet index in the United States (13.2 today, on a scale I’d always assumed only went up to 10). And the eastern, or windward, sides of the Hawaiian islands get soaked, with up to 10,271 mm or over 400 inches of rainfall per year. Notoriously damp Seattle, by comparison, gets barely 50 inches.
 

Mean Annual Rainfall Hawaii
Source: University of Hawaii

I live in one of the soggy blue spots on the map. Here the default landscape is jungle. Gardening mostly involves beating back nature with gallons of herbicide and powerful weed torches (basically flamethrowers for your garden).
A brief visual comparison:

This is a vacant lot in California.
This is a vacant lot in California.

This is a vacant lot in Hawaii.
This is a vacant lot in Hawaii.

So now you know my gardening secret: Year round sunshine + buckets of rain + neglect gets you a lush, green landscape every time.
Just don’t forget the mosquito repellent.
First published for The Black Thumb release at Brooke Blogs