Jane Reads, and Bakes, and Cooks, and Sews, and....
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| Kinsey Millhone Mystery #23 |
Two dead bodies changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I'd never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue.
The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He’d been gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The other was on the beach six weeks later. He’d been sleeping rough. Probably homeless. No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone’s name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come to the morgue to see if she could ID him.
Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes.
But as Kinsey digs deeper into the mystery of the John Doe, some very strange linkages begin to emerge. And before long at least one aspect is solved as Kinsey literally finds the key to his identity. And just like that,” she says, the lid to Pandora’s box flew open. It would take me another day before I understood how many imps had been freed, but for the moment, I was inordinately pleased with myself.”
In this multilayered tale, the surfaces seem clear, but the underpinnings are full of betrayals, misunderstandings, and outright murderous fraud. And Kinsey, through no fault of her own, is thoroughly compromised.
W is for . . . wanderer . . . worthless . . . wronged . . .
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| The Whole Enchilada, by Diane Mott Davidson |
From Goodreads:
Goldy Schulz knows her food is to die for, but she never expects one of her best friends to actually keel over when she's leaving a birthday party Goldy has catered. At first, everyone assumes that all the fun and excitement of the party, not to mention the rich fare, did her in.
But what looks like a coronary turns out to be a generous serving of cold-blooded murder. And the clever culprit is just getting cooking.
When a colleague—a woman who resembles Goldy—is stabbed, and Goldy is attacked outside her house, it becomes clear that the popular caterer is the main course on a killer menu. With time running out, Goldy must roll up her sleeves, sharpen her knives, and make a meal out of a devious murderer, before that killer can serve her up cold.
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The Iggy Chronicles, Volume One:A Chet and Bernie Mystery eShort Story,by Spencer Quinn |
“Last summer we had A Cat Was Involved,” Admin says. “I hear there’s another e-story in the works for this summer.”
“I hear the same thing,” says Spence.
“Do we have a title?”
“Two possibilities at the moment.”
“Yes?”
“Iggy in the Wind is one. The other is The Iggy Chronicles, Volume 1.”
“I gather the subject matter concerns Iggy.”
“Say no more.”
“I understand there’s a new e-short story coming in August,” Admin says.
“The Iggy Chronicles, Volume 1,” says Spence.
“I’m assuming that Iggy, Chet’s best pal but a virtual prisoner in the Parsons’s house for just about the whole series, gets loose at last?”
“I’m not authorized to reveal any details.”
“Huh? Authorized by whom?”
“The IRS now has an Authorizing Division that governs the actions of authors. The accountant says not to upset them.”
Admin: Is it true that Iggy is in fact the hero of this new e-story?
Spence: I really don’t want to give too much away.
Admin: But supposing, for the sake of argument, that Iggy does turn out to be the hero. I’m wondering how Chet might take that.
Spence: I really don’t want to give too much away.
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| Artifact, by Gigi Pandian |
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| Cloche and Dagger, by Jenn McKinlay |
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| Little Black Book of Murder, by Nancy Martin |
Someone’s getting crossed off the register.
Nora Blackbird may have been to the manor borne, but these days money is so tight, she can’t afford to lose her job as a society columnist. So when her new boss at the Philadelphia Intelligencer—Australian tabloid editor Gus Hardwicke—tells her to work the celebrity gossip beat or start checking the want ads, the choice is easy.
Now Nora’s writing a profile on billionaire fashion designer Swain Starr, who recently retired to build a high-tech organic farm with his new wife, Zephyr, a former supermodel. But before Nora can get the story, the mogul is murdered. And now Gus wants her to snap up an exclusive on who killed Starr before the cops do.
But solving a celebrity murder isn’t easy with a home life as colorful as Nora’s. Her sort-of-husband, Mick, a former mobster, is associating once again with unsavory characters. Her sister Libby is on a mission to get her diabolical twins on stage or screen with the help of an unscrupulous former child star. And the youngest Blackbird sister, Emma, just got kicked out of the house by Mick—who refuses to explain why.
If anything can bring the blue-blooded Blackbird sisters together, it’s a murder investigation involving high-society events, glamorous people, and the disappearance of a genetically perfect pig that may or may not be basking in the sun at Blackbird Farm. They’ll all have to pull together this time, because if Nora can’t bring home the bacon, she might have to exchange her bucolic estate for a cramped walk-up. from Goodreads
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| The Passion of the Purple Plumeria, by Lauren Willig |
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| The Passion of the Purple Plumeria, by Lauren Willig |
