Posts Tagged ‘cosy mystery’
hops or grapes????
If you owned a bit of property and had a dream of growing grapes, what if the experts told you the property was perfect for growing hops, not grapes?
~
Every good book lets you inside the protagonist’s dreams and intentions. This is the case with Alexa Bowie’s second cosy mystery Death Between the Tables and its heroine, Emma Andrews. When Emma is not pondering the problem of grapes and hops, she is busy solving the mysteries that seem to crowd around her.
~
In this Old Manse Mystery, Emma works to solve the deadly puzzle of why someone seems to have a spite against her and her friends. A murder, thefts, mysterious fires and sinister warnings have Emma teaming up with the tenants of the Manse and characters in the community to identify who is causing all the grief.
~
~
If you love cosy mysteries, Death Between the Tables will be one to settle with on a chilly winter day. You will find characters to love: the precocious, observant child at a corner table in the basement restaurant; the acting town manager who can’t understand why Emma is not charmed by his ways; Trotsky Birch, the elderly man, who sees all and knows all and helps Emma really see the people of the community. The key to my love for this series is the setting — the small New Brunswick town, the old manse with its curious library and labyrinth of rooms and spaces, the riverscape with its waterfront and hops plants growing along the railroad tracks.
I am looking forward to the next volume in this charming series: curious to discover what new mystery will present itself to Emma and her friends at the old Manse; wondering if a pair of blue eyes will get in the way of her relationship with the local carpenter; and, wondering if she will take up the call and grow hops on her bit of property.
~
You can find Death Between the Tables at Westminster Books in Fredericton, or at Amazon here.
~
Enjoy your winter reading!
All my best,
Jane
Book Cover – Land Between the Furrows
I have been working on the cover painting for the new book in the Kaye Eliot Mysteries: Land Between the Furrows.
First, I do a pencil drawing of the idea I have for the cover. In this book, grind stones from a local grist mill figure in the mystery.
~
~
Then I do a painting, based on the pencil drawing. This painting is in acrylics, 16″ by 20″.
~
~
Finally, I create the cover. This is, for me, the hardest step. I take the photo of the painting into GIMP, crop to get the correct dimensions (6″ by 9″) and scale the image to 360 dpi (pixels per inch). Then I bring the image into the KDP Cover Creater and add the text and so on.
~
~
The book will be ready to go live on March 15, 2021.
All my best,
Jane
New mystery novel – How Her Garden Grew
Merry, Merry
Quite contrary
How does your garden grow?
~
Announcement: My new mystery novel ‘How Her Garden Grew‘ is now available on Amazon in paperback. The Kindle version will be available in a few days.
‘How Her Garden Grew’ is the first in my series of Kaye Eliot mysteries. Kaye is a busy mother with a business to run, two active children and an accountant husband who can’t seem to get free of tax time! The books will take us back to the 1990’s, to a time before cell phones and computers were a key ingredient of family life.
‘How Her Garden Grew’ is a novel about coping with stress, the strength of family, the problems of community, a century-old garden and a strange character called the Grinning Tun.
~
~
In the 1990s, Kaye Eliot comes to Acadia Creek to spend a quiet summer with her two children. But instead of passing stress-free days of swimming and hiking, she finds herself embedded in mystery after mystery. A missing vagrant and a gang of thieves have the community worried. Neighbours seem determined to occupy all of Kaye’s time and energy in restoration of an old flower garden. To add to the mayhem, Kaye and her kids have stumbled on a century-old legend of a treasure buried on the property, a packet of forgotten letters from a woman named Maria Merriweather and an old map of the garden. And they dig up a sinister sea shell. A sea shell who looks like a grinning skull and will not stay where he is put. Can Kaye recover her calm or will she be the victim of neighbors, vagrants, thieves and a shell called the Grinning Tun? Restoring Maria’s garden seems a great idea, until Kaye discovers how Maria’s garden grew.
~
So what or who is the Grinning Tun? The Grinning Tun is a sea shell, plucked from the sands of a faraway tropical shore. But this is a sea shell with a difference. It will not stay put! Shove it in the warming oven and, next morning, it sits on top of the stove. Bury it in the ground and it is found in the root cellar. And it grins. It thinks of the possibilities. And it links a mystery in the 1990’s with one in the 1870’s.
~
~
To get your copy of ‘How Her Garden Grew’, go to Amazon here. If you are in the Fredericton area, I will be reading from the book and signing copies at the Authors Coffee House in Nasonworth later in May (more details soon)!
Hope you enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed writing it!
All my best,
Jane
nichepoetryandprose 