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The Ballad of Screech and Friday
The Ballad of Screech and Friday, by Joann Keder, is a rowdy Piney Falls mystery in which Lanie Anders-Hill finds herself pulled into a strange tangle of karaoke-club deaths, cult residue, family secrets, and one very suspicious chain of Moonbeam-branded operations. At the center is Pepper Friday, a woman with a bruised past and a complicated connection to November “Vem” Bean, while Sybil Screech storms through the story like a human car alarm in expensive shoes. What begins as small-town mayhem around a disastrous stage performance widens into something sharper: manipulation, poison, undercover work, and the long afterlife of childhood control.
I enjoyed how the book refuses to behave like a tidy little mystery. It has the bones of a cozy whodunit, but the flesh is pure Piney Falls: eccentric, noisy, emotionally dented, and funny in a way that sometimes arrives sideways. Lanie’s narration gives the story its ballast. She’s observant without being chilly, exasperated without turning cruel, and her devotion to Vem gives the more outrageous scenes a real human pulse. The humor is deliberately extravagant, names, clubs, cult slogans, moaning sessions, villainous moles, but beneath the confetti is a serious concern with how people survive being used.
Pepper was the character who lingered with me most. Her arc is not a simple redemption tour; it’s thornier than that. She has jealousy, anger, shame, and a dangerous hunger to be seen, but the novel lets those feelings sit beside courage and moral awakening. That mixture gives the book texture. I also appreciated the way the mystery keeps changing shape. Just when I thought I understood the danger, the story widened from personal revenge to institutional exploitation, from karaoke absurdity to something almost gothic in its pattern of control. The tonal jumps are bold, and while the plot can, at times, feel gloriously overstuffed, the emotional throughline keeps it from becoming mere carnival noise.
This book is best for readers who like cozy mysteries, small-town mysteries, amateur sleuth fiction, quirky mysteries, cult suspense, and character-driven mysteries with a satirical bite. Fans of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books may enjoy the same collision of comic chaos, danger, and oddball community, though Joann Keder gives the absurdity a more homespun and wounded heart. The Ballad of Screech and Friday proves that even the loudest, strangest towns can become places where damaged people learn to breathe again.
Pages: 292 | ASIN : B0GKR41SH2
Mean Cuisine
Mean Cuisine, by Wendy W. Webb, is a comic cozy mystery with a messy kitchen, a dead chef, a psychic investigator, and a black cat who seems to understand danger before everyone else does. Beluga Stein signs up for culinary school, looking for a change of pace, which is funny from the start because her first big food disaster involves exploding eggs. She tells herself the school will mean “Murder-free, safe cooking. No doubt about it.” Naturally, that hope lasts about five minutes.
The book’s real charm is Beluga herself. She’s nosy, dramatic, smart, food-obsessed, and usually aware that her life has become ridiculous. Her friendship with Tanya gives the story a lot of its bounce, since their conversations feel like those of two longtime friends who know exactly how to annoy and rescue each other. Planchette the cat and Emerson the goat add another layer of chaos, and the animal comedy never feels separate from the mystery. It’s part of Beluga’s world.
The mystery is built around the culinary school, where strict chefs, competitive students, strange accidents, and supernatural hints all share the same space. The murder investigation brings in poison, jealousy, hidden motives, and a cluricaun with a taste for wine. Webb keeps the pace lively by mixing classroom mishaps with clues, diary entries, and scenes that turn ordinary kitchen tools into potential hazards.
What stands out most is the voice. The humor is constant, but it comes from character more than punch lines. Beluga’s narration has a casual, sideways logic that makes even danger feel oddly cozy. By the end, when she writes, “All’s well that ends well. At least for some,” it fits the whole mood of the book: cheerful, suspicious, and perfectly aware that peace is probably temporary.
Mean Cuisine is a warm, weird, food-centered mystery about a woman who wants to learn to cook and instead finds herself sorting out murder, friendship, and a supernatural mess. It’s playful without losing the thread of the case, and its best moments come from watching Beluga stumble into trouble with total confidence that she can talk, eat, or investigate her way out of it. Webb’s work is best suited to fans of cozy mysteries and any reader who appreciates humor woven throughout suspenseful plots.
Pages: 224 | ASIN : B0DM2NYQHZ
QUANT: Russell Quant Mystery #9
In this Russell Quant mystery, a grieving son returns to his mother’s Saskatchewan farmhouse while trying to face the painful realities of her dementia, only to be pulled into a case involving a suspicious death, a poisoned greenhouse, and a small town whose secrets travel faster than dust on a prairie road. What begins as CeeCee Toth’s desperate insistence that her husband Clem did not die by suicide grows into a sharp, winding investigation that reaches from Howell to Turks and Caicos and back again, tying land development, greed, loyalty, and family grief into one satisfyingly tangled knot.
I was immediately taken by the novel’s voice. Russell is funny without feeling polished to a synthetic shine; his wit has elbows. The narration can swing from a joke about lawn tractors or old Ukrainian food habits into an ache about aging parents, and that tonal dexterity gives the book its best texture. The mystery is engaging, but the emotional ballast comes from Kay Quant, her cooking, her stubbornness, her slipping memory, and the fierce maternal spark that still flashes when it matters most.
What I liked most was how the book lets comedy and sorrow occupy the same room without either one apologizing. The prairie setting feels lived-in rather than decorative, full of small-town rhythms, grudges, gossip, and that peculiar intimacy where everyone knows your truck before they know your sins. The middle section’s travel detour adds a breezy, caper-like expansion, but the heart of the story remains at home: a son learning that love sometimes means making decisions no one wants, and a detective realizing that the past is never as neatly boxed up as old photographs in a farmhouse cupboard.
This book is ideal for readers who enjoy cozy mystery, private investigator fiction, LGBTQ+ fiction, and character-driven crime novels with humor and heart. Fans of Louise Penny’s community-rich mysteries may enjoy the way this novel blends murder with emotional weather, though Russell Quant brings a saucier, more irreverent sensibility than Armand Gamache. Beneath its humor and homicide, this novel understands that family secrets don’t stay buried, they grow.
Pages: 277 | ASIN : B0GX32RJ22
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
