Blog Archives
Recipe for Murder (A Pine Cove Mystery)
Marla A. White’s Recipe for Murder, a Pine Cove Mystery, follows ex-LAPD officer turned B&B owner Mel O’Rourke as she is pulled into a suspicious death far from home. In New Orleans, Jackson Thibodeaux discovers his friend Kaya Woods dead at a culinary school; moments later, someone knocks him unconscious, and when he wakes, the crime scene has been scrubbed clean. Back in Pine Cove, Mel must sort through Jackson’s claim of staged suicide while juggling a struggling inn, a snarled romantic triangle, a nosy but formidable family, and a mystery with more heat than any cooking-school rivalry.
I liked the book most when it let Pine Cove be gloriously, inconveniently alive. The mystery has sharp elbows, but the town is the real seasoning: Grandma O’s filthy one-liners, Poppy’s theatrical Britishness, Gregg’s prickly lawman energy, Jackson’s wounded charm, and Mel’s exhausted competence all crowd the page in a way that feels deliberately noisy. White understands that a cozy mystery doesn’t need to be soft; it can have bite, vinegar, and a little smoke under the sweetness.
Mel makes a satisfying narrator because she isn’t merely “spunky,” that exhausted label often slapped on women with sarcasm and a gun. She’s brave, but not tidy about it; funny, but often as a defense mechanism; capable, but still porous to fear, jealousy, and old damage. The romantic tension occasionally threatens to steal the wheel from the murder plot, yet I found that messiness part of the book’s appeal. The story is at its best when danger, desire, plumbing disasters, and small-town gossip all arrive at once, like a dinner party where every guest brought a weaponized casserole.
The target audience is readers who enjoy cozy mysteries, small-town fiction, romantic suspense, and humorous mysteries with an ensemble cast and a heroine who can trade insults while chasing clues. Fans of Joanne Fluke’s food-centered mysteries may recognize the genre pantry, though White’s tone is sassier, more kinetic, and closer at times to Janet Evanovich’s chaos-with-a-body-count verve. Recipe for Murder is a lively whodunit that proves comfort reading can still be thrilling.
Pages: 288 | ASIN : B0GTRJ24MV
Fire at the Track – A Harness Racing Mystery
Fire at the Track by M.J. Evans is a harness racing mystery built around a barn fire that kills twenty-eight horses and shakes the Liberty Racetrack community to its core. The book opens with the thrill of the sport, especially the rise of Eat My Dust, then quickly turns that excitement into grief, suspicion, and an insurance investigation. At its center is Callie Oaks, an investigator with real horse-world experience, who goes undercover at the track to find out whether the fire was an accident, negligence, or something far more deliberate.
What makes the book work best is how strongly it understands the emotional world of horse people. The horses aren’t background decoration. They’re the reason everyone is there, and the reason the crime feels personal. The line “They were like family” captures the heart of the story in a simple way, because the loss in Barn 7 isn’t treated as just property damage. It’s a wound shared by owners, trainers, grooms, drivers, and even the night watchman who can’t forgive himself for saving only one horse.
Callie is an appealing lead because she’s capable without feeling slick or distant. Her undercover identity, Haylie Norr, gives the story a nice layer of tension, especially as she gets pulled back into the rhythm of barn life and into training the filly Sunny. The mystery moves through insurance fraud, gambling debts, grief, jealousy, and cover-ups, but it stays grounded in everyday racetrack details: feedings, stall assignments, vet records, training routines, and the politics of a tight community where everyone knows everyone else’s business.
The book also has a warm secondary thread in Callie’s connection with reporter Paul Coffman. Their relationship doesn’t take over the mystery, but it gives the story a softer place to land after some heavy material. By the end, when the investigation has exposed Tommy Valdez and Frank Morrison, and the track begins repairing both its safety systems and its sense of trust, the final stretch with Callie, Sunny, and Paul feels earned. The closing idea that survivors “get back in the sulky, gather the lines, and race toward whatever finish line waits ahead” fits the book’s steady, hopeful view of recovery.
Fire at the Track is a sincere, horse-centered mystery with a strong sense of place and a lot of affection for the harness racing world. It’s part crime story, part community drama, and part comeback story. The best parts are the ones where the book lets readers feel the barn, the track, the grief, and the bond between people and horses. It’s a conversational, accessible read for mystery fans, especially readers who like animals, racetrack settings, and stories where justice matters because the victims mattered.
Pages: 287 | ASIN : B0GMDMX3HY
A Fuse Lit By a Match
Murder Most Saurian follows a group searching for living dinosaurs who chase a new lead straight into a Welsh mystery of vanishing locals, questionable evidence, and the question of whether it’s a hoax, a monster, or a serial killer. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Actually, there was a convergence of inspirations for this story’s setup that can be seen as a fuse lit by a match.
For starters, my wife is a big fan of murder mysteries, especially British television murder mysteries. As a result, I’d been on the lookout for an opportunity to put a unique spin on that genre.
Then there was a trip to Wales that turned utterly magical, tracing my great-grandfather’s footsteps as described in his autobiographical pamphlet published in 1940. Nothing about dragons or dinosaurs, but a series of amazing events in the course of a few hours led to an encounter with previously unknown relatives. Might as well have stumbled across a grazing Stegosaurus!
The match that got tossed on these and other highly flammable inspirations consisted of a 1980s report from Barmouth, Wales, of schoolgirls spotting an odd creature with a long neck and tail descending into the sea. Ka-boom! Came to me in a flash, how the Eclipso story arc would benefit massively from a wee little side trip to Pembrokeshire!
Augie and his companions feel like a group of lovable misfits. How did you build such a distinct ensemble?
Augie and his companions share an abiding fascination with the cryptozoological search for animals that might or might not exist, especially of the dinosaur persuasion! I imagined them from diverse backgrounds, bringing a variety of crucial skills to bear. Stephen Feldman, for example, is a hardened skeptic of anything off the beaten trail. Especially with hoaxers on the loose, he is a persistent, if often irritating, reminder that things are not always what one might wish for.
The joy I hope these and other characters’ quirkiness brings to the reader is meant to be a celebration of the joy brought to me by the special, unique people in my own life, rather than laughing at anyone. And this is not to ignore or minimize the many serious issues hinted at throughout the Eclipso story arc. One Welsh character’s state of constant inebriation sets up many comical situations, but serious drinking issues in the U.K. are certainly no laughing matter. Rather than pound that into the ground with a very dark narrative about where excessive drinking leads, however, I challenged myself to have that character find a way out of his addiction by connecting with his happy place. Which gets at an important double meaning of the series title, Eclipso’s Happy Quest. Happiness describes the quest itself. But there is also the quest for happiness that every precious creature makes.
My fondest hope is that this series will most appropriately provide many hours of amusement, alongside lots of think about.
This book mixes science fiction, mystery, and comedy so freely. How did you approach balancing those genres?
Shakespearean tragedies were known for including comical bits, while his comedies were notable for working in tragic aspects. It is in that spirit that I have approached this nine-book story arc.
My favorite music mashes up folk, rock, classical and jazz from round the world in something often referred to as progressive rock. What appeals to me so much about that aesthetic is trying to grasp the interconnectedness of everything, which I believe is what a truly loving universe calls for. And so it goes that I have striven for years to likewise bring together various fiction genres rather than building walls between them. While my main “jam” is definitely science fiction, I favor the approach of someone like Ray Bradbury, who in The Martian Chronicles moved freely between chapters describing Martian colonization, and a civil rights drama.
As this is Book IV, how does this installment expand or deepen the Happy Quest series?
Book IV sees Eclipso’s team trying to evade the hoaxes that plagued their research across the first three books. While something (or rather someone) totally unanticipated frustrates that effort, they still add significantly to their understanding of what they might be dealing with, assuming it really does constitute evidence of non-avian dinosaur survival to the present day.
At the same time, from Book Two onward, Eclipso’s crew have found themselves accompanied by three people who claim to have arrived from the future to tamper with history. If they can be believed, their spaceship has gotten stuck inside a black hole, unable to retrieve them for their next past-altering mission. There’s progress on that front as well.
Another sidebar story involves Augie’s wife, who teaches at a public elementary school. To the eternal disgruntlement of her curriculum adviser, she has used the dinosaur search as a motivational tool for her students, and made a mockery wherever possible of standardized testing. Will Vicky Copplestone be able to keep thumbing her nose at pedagogical convention to continue offering her students the most unique experiences imaginable? Read on, and find out!
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It’s the wildest quest yet, as one of Eclipso’s own becomes a suspect…and evidence mounts that multiple prehistoric beasts, or a serial killer, might be roaming the Welsh coastline.
Bonsai Gator is going to have a tough time reggae dancing his way out of this one!
Eclipso’s Happy Quest, Book 4: Murder Most Saurian?
Eclipso’s Happy Quest: Book IV – Murder Most Saurian is a lively and genre-bending novel that blends science fiction, comic mystery, and adventure into one long, eccentric trip. The story follows Augie Matias, his oddball companions, and the elusive Eclipso as they chase reports of surviving dinosaurs, dodge hoaxes, and navigate small-town dramas from Carolina swamps to the foggy Welsh coast. What begins as a hunt for a creature becomes a messy, funny, and surprisingly heartfelt chain of misunderstandings, staged spectacles, and genuine wonder about what might still be hiding in the world.
As I made my way through the book, I kept feeling like I was being told the story by a friend who has a talent for getting into bizarre situations and an even better talent for retelling them. The writing leans playful and talkative, with scenes that stretch out just long enough to let you sit inside the chaos. Some moments read almost like sitcom episodes. Others are closer to cozy science fiction, where the biggest mysteries are solved not by weaponry but by curiosity and stubborn optimism. The characters, from Augie to Kay to the gloriously unhinged locals at the Drunk In The Wool pub, carry the book with their quirks. Even the smallest characters feel animated, like they wandered out of a community theater production and never left.
What I liked most was how David Taylor layers humor on top of sincerity. One minute, someone is arguing with a robot about whether it has an aunt. The next, a character is quietly thinking about loss or responsibility or why we chase wild stories in the first place. The book has a soft heart beneath the jokes. The mystery of the “saurian” sightings stays just grounded enough to keep you guessing, but the real hook is how people react to the unknown. Fear and imagination run side by side, and the author seems to suggest that both are useful, as long as we don’t let either one take the wheel for too long.
In the end, I closed the book feeling like I’d been on a long, looping adventure that mattered less for the destination and more for the strange company along the way. I’d recommend Murder Most Saurian? to readers who enjoy lighthearted science fiction, character-driven comedy, and mysteries that prefer charm over tension. If you’re someone who likes ensemble casts, playful genre mixing, and stories that never apologize for being weird, this novel will feel like good company.
Pages: 287 | ASIN : B0G5VRN86F
Dead Drop in Lily Rock: An Avery Denning Lily Rock Mystery
Dead Drop in Lily Rock opens with a sharp, clever premise and then settles into something warmer and more interesting than a standard cozy mystery. Avery Denning arrives in Lily Rock as a dusty, displaced Pacific Crest Trail hiker, only to find her would-be host, Stella Rawlins, dead beneath a sabotaged little free library. From there, the novel braids together a murder investigation, a small town full of old loyalties and private grudges, and a surprisingly charged argument about books, taste, censorship, and belonging. Stella’s library, with its mix of Julián Is a Mermaid, All American Boys, and the haunting reappearance of Are You My Mother?, gives the mystery its emotional center, while the Switchback Syndicate, that secretive circle of little-library caretakers, gives it a mischievous edge.
I liked that Bonnie Hardy understands that charm only works if it has a pulse beneath it. Avery could easily have been written as a stock snarky amateur sleuth, but she isn’t. She’s vain, funny, brittle, lonely, proud, and more wounded than she wants anyone to see. The book gives her room to be messy. I loved the early stretch where she goes from finding a body to being folded into Olivia’s home, standing under a hot shower, eating Sierra Snowcaps, and trying not to cry into her tea. That sequence tells you almost everything about the novel’s emotional register. It knows how to make comfort feel earned. I also found the recurring animal comedy genuinely delightful. Mayor Maguire and Tater Tot add texture and rhythm, the kind of oddball local life that makes Lily Rock feel inhabited.
The argument over what belongs in a library, who gets to decide what children read, and how quickly principle curdles into self-righteousness gives the mystery more bite than I expected. The midnight hot-tub meeting, the burner phones, the bruising fights over “classic” books, and Avery’s half-mocking, half-brilliant fake book-burning proposal all give the novel a sly satirical streak. The dialogue leans into explaining the book’s positions. Still, I’d rather read a mystery that reaches openly for something real than one that stays tidily bloodless. Hardy’s prose is brisk and conversational, but every so often she lands on an image or tonal turn that lingers, especially when she writes about Avery’s shame, hunger, or sudden flashes of tenderness. The result is a book that feels light on its feet.
By the end, what stayed with me was the way the novel turns suspicion into a rough kind of community, finally reshaping the secretive Switchback Syndicate into something more open and humane. I finished it feeling that rare cozy-mystery satisfaction of having been entertained, amused, and unexpectedly touched. I’d recommend this to readers who want their mysteries with eccentric town energy, emotional bruises, bookish politics, and a heroine sharp enough to make trouble but vulnerable enough to matter. It’s cozy, but it has more ache in it than that word usually allows.
Pages: 291 | ASIN : B0GFG8TM7H
Dive Into the Past
The Man in the Dam follows a journalist hosting a dinner for members of the local amateur theatre society at her family’s country home, who wakes to find a body in her family’s paddock dam, leading to a tangled investigation full of secrets and lies. Why place the story in Victoria’s High Country?
A key feature of the Jade Riley Mysteries is that each book is set in a place where I’ve lived. We have a property in Mansfield in Victoria’s High Country, so I couldn’t wait to write a book inspired by that location.
The small town gives a cosy mystery vibe that suits the story, enabling a situation where everybody knows everybody else, leading to secrets and lies. The surrounding countryside is typically Australian with gum trees, kangaroos, and kookaburras, as well as the menace of snakes and spiders.
Further, the local Lake Eildon offers the opportunity for a dive into the past. It was formed by a dam constructed in the 1950s, flooding houses, roads, and bridges. This lost history is integral to the story.
What parts of Jade are most personal to you as a writer?
Jade shares several of my characteristics. She’s driven and determined, like me. She’s also an over-thinker, which isn’t a stretch for me either. But the most personal of her traits are the ones I wish I had, like incredible courage. Sometimes she takes this to the point of foolhardiness, but she always stands up for what is right. Whereas me? Don’t tell me state secrets because I’d spill all at the mere sight of a thumbscrew.
Jade also faces a major life choice in this book: should she marry Brett and give up her career to move to Malaysia for his job? I faced a similar decision when my husband was offered a job in Nigeria, which involved me relinquishing my beloved job as a career coach. In the end, I agreed to go, instead of turning my hand to becoming a writer. Before my novels were picked up for publication, I wondered whether I’d made a mistake, but now I have no regrets.
Performance is a strong thread in the book. How does theatre mirror the mystery itself?
I used theatre imagery throughout the story in developing the characters, setting, and plot. Everyone in the novel is playing a role, choosing what to reveal and what to keep hidden. The settings are theatrical, from the local bookshop and pub to the murky waters beneath the lake. History comes back to haunt people like a theatre ghost.
I also chose Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest as the play the characters are working on for a specific reason, but I can’t explain why without giving spoilers.
Weird coincidence: I was working on this book when I went on a writer’s retreat to Varuna, The National Writers’ House, in NSW, Australia. While there, I found The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde in my room, and that serendipity confirmed The Importance of Being Earnest as the right choice of play.
What do you enjoy most about writing mysteries?
Mysteries are all about creating a puzzle for readers, and I love puzzles. I enjoy intricate plotting, red herrings, misdirections, and creating characters who all have something to hide.
Before I start, I usually have a big picture plan, but the details only emerge as I’m writing. I love the aha moments when I can add something I hadn’t anticipated because I figure if I couldn’t predict it at the start, readers are more likely to be surprised.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Journalist Jade Riley hosts a dinner at her parents’ idyllic country property with members of the local amateur theatre society. The next morning, she finds one of her guests dead in a dam.
As Jade investigates, the players tighten their grip on long-held secrets. Grudges and tangled motives emerge, and the past refuses to stay buried.
At the same time, a proposal from her boyfriend forces Jade to consider how much she’s willing to give up for love.
An atmospheric, fast-paced mystery, THE MAN IN THE DAM is the third book in Andrea Barton’s Jade Riley Mysteries series.
Dead Drop in Lily Rock
Bonnie Hardy’s Dead Drop in Lily Rock drops me into town alongside Avery Denning, sunburned, scruffy, and freshly unmoored after a Palos Verdes fire burns her house down and shoves her onto the Pacific Crest Trail. She’s looking for nothing more complicated than a safe bed for the Fourth of July weekend when she collides with Stella Rawlins’s death at a bright-blue little free library: a rustle in the hedge, a flash, the sulfur bite of a firecracker, and then Stella’s terrible, sudden nothing. What starts as shock hardens into a question Avery can’t put down, especially once the town’s book-obsessed social web (including the Switchback Syndicate, devotees of “older classics” for new readers) begins to look less quaint and more… curated.
I enjoyed the book’s comfort-layering: the setting is cozy, like a mug you can wrap both hands around. Hardy lets the town charm do real work, Mayor Maguire isn’t just “a dog,” he’s a small-time celebrity labradoodle politician on Stella’s bookmarks, a detail so specific it feels lived-in rather than staged. And the dialogue has bite. Officer Janis “Jets” Jets is the kind of cop who’d rather arrest you, eat lunch, and get back to crowd control than listen to anyone emote, and her sarcasm becomes its own local weather system. I was smiling at the brusque tenderness underneath it all: people in Lily Rock needle each other the way families do, affection disguised as a shove.
The second thing that hooked me was how the book treats “a book” not as decoration but as evidence. The recurring children’s title Are You My Mother? isn’t a cute motif. It’s a bruise Stella keeps being forced to touch, tied to adoption and a past she thought she’d settled. When Avery starts finding multiple copies scattered through Stella’s house, it lands as genuinely eerie, like someone has been trying to speak in a language made of paper and repetition. The late-stage revelations snap satisfyingly into place: surveillance footage, a sabotaged “shower deck,” and, finally, an unambiguous face in the after-flash, Cordelia Pratt, firecracker in hand. It’s a clean kind of catharsis, made sharper because the motive lives in obsession and secrecy rather than moustache-twirling villainy.
If you like your mysteries with warmth in the margins, and you don’t mind a little darkness under the bunting, this one’s for you: cozy mystery, small-town mystery, amateur sleuth, bookish mystery, murder mystery. The series framing is right up front (Avery Denning, Lily Rock, Book 1), so it reads like an invitation as much as a standalone case. In spirit, it sits closer to an Agatha Christie village puzzle than a gritty procedural. Dead Drop in Lily Rock shows that a murder mystery can be comforting when the clues feel human, and the town feels real.
Pages: 302 | ISBN: 1954995520
Haunted Day and Night
Haunted Day and Night follows Anastasia “Ana” Day, a young paralegal in York, Pennsylvania, who buys a crumbling 1887 Victorian row home that turns out to be a lot more crowded than the real-estate listing suggested. As she scrapes carpet, patches plaster, and fights with her controlling boyfriend Blake, strange things start happening in the house. Doors swing open on their own, cabinets sit wide open, a saw accident in the basement feels almost pushed, and messages appear in candy-apple red lipstick on the bathroom mirror that tell her to leave. Paranormal investigators eventually help her uncover the story of Eliza and Eva Klinger, former residents tied to women’s rights, whose restless presence nudges Ana away from toxic love and toward a stronger, more honest version of herself. The book blends haunted-house chills with a slow-burn story about walking out of unhealthy relationships and rethinking faith, family, and what it means to have a voice.
I really enjoyed how grounded the horror felt. The house is vivid in my mind, from the stained powder-blue carpet to the mahogany banister and those bay windows that keep catching Ana’s eye while everything else falls apart around her. The early scenes with Blake in the basement and the “LEAVE” message on the mirror genuinely made my stomach tighten, not because of jump scares, but because the danger feels emotional as much as supernatural. The writing leans descriptive and sometimes lingers on details or explanations longer than I personally wanted, yet that same patience helps the creepy moments land. I liked how the dialogue shows Blake’s gaslighting and need for control without turning him into a cartoon villain; I could imagine real conversations like the ones about “helping” her and “fixing” her house and life. Side characters like Bob the handyman and Ana’s coworkers give the story warmth and a hint of community, which makes the isolation in the house hit harder when things go sideways. At times, I wanted a bit tighter pacing, especially in the middle, but overall, the narrative flow kept me turning pages to see what the house would do next and what Ana would finally do about Blake.
What surprised me most was how much the book leans into questions about belief, the afterlife, and women’s agency, and how emotional that became for me as a reader. The ghosts are not just a spooky background; they are women with their own history of fighting for rights, and their presence feels like a protective line of ancestors standing behind Ana. I liked that she wrestles out loud with heaven, hell, reincarnation, and religious dogma, and that different characters give different answers without the story shoving one “right” view in my face. The connection between restoring the house and restoring her sense of self is pretty on the nose at times, yet it still worked for me because it felt sincere rather than gimmicky. I found the EVP scenes with Nate and his team strangely moving: hearing the names “Eliza” and “Eva” come through while Ana has just done her own historical digging gives the whole thing a bittersweet weight. The feminist thread, especially around women ignoring red flags, surviving control, and learning to trust their own instincts, hit me harder than the ghost plot at some points. Every now and then the message tilts a bit preachy, but I never doubted the heart behind it, and I appreciated that the spirits are there to empower Ana rather than just punish or terrorize her.
I would recommend Haunted Day and Night to readers who like their ghost stories emotional and character-driven, with more haunted feelings than graphic frights. If you enjoy old houses, slow-build supernatural tension, and stories about women untangling themselves from bad relationships while questioning inherited beliefs, this will probably be right up your alley. It is a good fit for book clubs that like to talk about themes like spiritual abuse, intuition, and generational female strength, and for fans of softer paranormal fiction who do not need constant jump scares. For everyone else who loves a creaky Victorian, a stubborn heroine, and ghosts who have opinions about patriarchy, I think this book will be a satisfying and sometimes surprisingly comforting read.
Pages: 400 | ASIN : B0BXJTKG4M
