Spotlight on CLEO COYLE'S HAUNTED BOOKSHOP + DOUBLE #GIVEAWAY!

 

From Cleo Coyle: Some characters haunt you long after a book is done, especially when they’re ghosts. Here are 5 reasons why we think you’ll enjoy being haunted by the characters in our new Haunted Bookshop Detective Mystery, recently honored as a *Star Reviewed Library Journal Pick of the Month! 

 OUR FIRST GIVEAWAY...

Before we continue with today's Spotlight post, we'd like to tell you about the first of our two giveaways. CLICK HERE or see the link below to jump to the prize package giveaway we're running for our Cleo Coyle Newsletter Subscribers to celebrate last week's release of our new Coffeehouse Mystery...

Cleo's Eat, Drink, and Get Buried 

Prize Package Giveaway 

Winner will receive:

> A signed copy of Cleo Coyle's New Coffeeouse Mysery Eat, Drink, and Get Buried in it's beautiful first edition hardcover format

> A Sturdy, Canvas Coffeehouse Tote Bag

> A Set of Glossy Cleo Recipe Cards, and...

 🍀 A bone china Irish Blessing  coffee mug from Royal Tara's "Clara" line of Irish gifts.

Jump to our first Giveaway 

by Clicking Here

Now for the 5 reasons why we think you’ll enjoy being haunted by the characters in our new Haunted Bookshop Detective Mystery...

Reason #1 PENELOPE, THE BOOKSELLER

A young widow with a growing son and busy life, Penelope Thornton-McClure didn’t believe in ghosts. Oh, sure, she knew locals gossiped about her family’s shop being haunted, but she never believed it, not until one horrible night when everything went wrong and she was under a great deal of stress. That’s when he spoke to her. The Ghost. From then on, Jack speaks to Pen at will—his will, not hers—blowing in and out of her head like a blustery gale. Despite his troubled spirit, Jack has a wicked sense of humor, and…after everything they go through together, Pen is amazed at the strangest irony of all, one that uplifts her own spirit: The Ghost believes in her...

Reason #2 JACK, THE HARDBOILED GHOST

A tough PI with an acre of shoulders and an iron jaw, Jack Shepard lived a hard, whiskey-swilling life on the meaner streets of New York City. His death (in 1949) was no picnic, either. Gunned down in a Rhode Island bookshop while following a lead in a case, he found his spirit locked in the fieldstone walls of that bookshop, unable to communicate with anyone—until his breakthrough with the prim young widow. While he has little patience with being stuck in this “cornpone” backwater town, he can’t deny the auburn-haired bookseller has improved his intolerable existence. Yeah, the broad is one of those annoying “do-right, fair-play Jane” types, but he secretly admires her character. Now he feels lucky that his purgatory has come with an angel, a doll he can't stop watching or watching over...

image courtesy giphy

#3 THEIR QUAINT RHODE ISLAND TOWN

Pen’s charming hometown of Quindicott, Rhode Island, is a character all its own. Not far from the Atlantic coast, it may be smaller and less posh than nearby Newport, but its residents are proud of its revived Cranberry Street business district and renowned Victorian B&B. Fresh ocean air, amazing seafood, and a neighborly community make it one of the area's most pleasant places to live—even if you happen to be dead...

Pen's Bookshop Cat "Bookmark"

#4 THE QUIBBLERS IN THE BOOKSHOP 

The "Quibblers" are a quirky group of folks who make up the local Quindicott Business Owners Association. They meet regularly in Pen’s charming old bookshop, guarded by mouse-hunter Bookmark, the cat. There's Fiona Finch, the fastidious co-owner of Finch Inn, who has a penchant for True Crime books and "happening to overhear" conversations between guests. Seymour, the outspoken mailman who moonlights as an ice cream truck driver, collects vintage pulp fiction, and likes to ghost hunt at midnight. And many more oddball characters, people Pen dearly loves—and her hard-boiled ghost barely tolerates.

#5 THE MYSTERY OF THE DEAD LIBRARIAN 

Join our earnest bookseller as she teams up with her hardboiled ghost to catch the cunning killer of Dory, a beloved local librarian in our new release THE GHOST AND THE DEAD LIBRARIAN. We truly love our characters, and we hope you will thoroughly enjoy visiting their Haunted Bookshop world.

Coming this Tues. 9/29

To Pre-Order Now: 

Amazon

B&N

Bookshop.org

+ Many more buy links

CLEO COYLE (cleocoylebooks.com) is the New York Times bestselling pseudonym for Alice Alfonsi, collaborating with her husband, Marc Cerasini. With more than 1 million copies of their books sold, Alice and Marc have gained an enthusiastic following. THE GHOST AND THE DEAD LIBRARIAN, a *Star Reviewed Library Journal Mystery Pick of the Month, marks the launch of an exciting new spin-off series in Cleo's beloved "Haunted Bookshop" world. Cleo also writes the long-running Coffeehouse Mysteries with its 22nd entry, EAT, DRINK, AND GET BURIED, just released and already a #1 Amazon Category Bestseller with more titles to come. Cleo’s novels have been translated into Spanish, Japanese, and Czech; earned starred reviews from Library Journal and Kirkus; received Best of Year selection honors from multiple reviewers; and have been recommended by Booklist as among the best culinary mysteries for core library mystery collections. Alice and Marc have also created bestselling tie-in properties for NBC, Lucasfilm, Disney, Fox, Imagine, Toho, and MGM. When not haunting coffeehouses, hunting ghosts, or wrangling their rescued stray cats, they cook like crazy, drink a lot of java, and write independently and together.

Visit Cleo's online home here.

Follow Cleo at: Facebook | Twitter | Bluesky 

Instagram | Newsletter | Pinterest  

Bookbub | Goodreads

OUR SECOND GIVEAWAY...

Enter to win an autographed copy of THE GHOST AND THE DEAD LIBRARIAN in its beautiful first edition hardcover format by leaving a comment on this post with your email address. If you win our random drawing, that's how we'll contact you, so don't forget to include your email!

CONGRATS TO OUR
HAUNTED BOOKSHOP WINNER:

Kay Garrett!

Our favorite PI ghost is back in time for Halloween Season! Be sure to subscribe to our Free Cleo Coyle Newsletter so you don't miss the upcoming Haunted Bookshop parties and giveaways. 

Good luck in our Eat, Drink and Get Buried 
& Haunted Bookshop Giveaways, and... 

Happy Haunted Reading, 

Everyone! 

~ Cleo

This giveaway is now over
and our winner is Kay Garrett!

Congrats, Kay!

Welcome to the Food Lovers' Village -- #giveaway #Spotlight Sunday

LESLIE BUDEWITZ: Most of you know me for my Spice Shop Mysteries, set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, where Pepper Reece runs a spice shop and solves crime. It’s a delicious series to write, inspired by the tastes, smells, and scents of a place I first encountered as an 18-year-old college girl, and still love. (Here’s my first Spotlight, back when we started the feature, on what inspired the Spice Shop mysteries.)

I also write the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, where Erin Murphy runs a local foods market in her family’s hundred-year plus Mercantile in the heart of the village of Jewel Bay, Montana, and solves crime. 

It takes a village . . . to catch a killer.

And I'll be giving one lucky reader winner's choice of a Village mystery. Read on, friends! 

 

Death al Dente won the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First Novel!

No surprise that Jewel Bay is based on the town where we live. I had to change the name so I could kill people. It really is the perfect cozy village, filled with great food, art galleries, live theater, and live music, on a bay formed where two rivers meet to create the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. Behind both real and fictional towns are several mountain ranges formed, as Erin likes to say, by the glacial hand of God. (With help from a series of earthquakes and floods, back in geologic time.) Wilderness abounds – along with a 36-hole golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus. And there’s a real-live dude ranch literally 5 minutes from the village – just drive across the one-lane bridge and turn left. . 

You can’t make this stuff up.

I’ll admit, that’s not what most people think of when they imagine a small town in Montana. And that’s what makes it the perfect cozy setting. 

A patient of Mr. Right sent his bookmark through the wash!

So where did Erin come from? She’s half Italian, as you can tell by her name. Like me, she left Montana and worked in Seattle. I wanted her to have experience in retail and in groceries, so I made her a grocery buyer for SavCo, the international warehouse chain. (At the time, our niece was a buyer for Costco, though not in groceries.) That gave her the skills to come home and take over the struggling Merc and give her widowed mother, Francesca, a chance to focus on her own line of pastas and sauces – and a new romance. 

And her name? Like the husband of a friend of my mother, Tom Murphy decided that because his wife had named the first two, it was his turn. And when she showed up on St. Patrick’s Day, her name was obvious.

Sadly, Tom Murphy was killed during Erin’s senior year of high school, in a hit-and-run that’s never been solved. Not until Erin returns home. I’ve lost count of how many readers finished the first book, Death al Dente – or murder not quite well done – and asked if we would ever find out what happened to him. Yes, yes, yes! Erin uncovers clues in each of the first three books, in addition to solving the crime in that book, and solves the mystery of her father’s death in Butter Off Dead, the third in the series.

The Food Lovers’ Village series includes five novels and a short story collection, with five short stories featuring Erin and the Villagers, and a prequel novella set in 1910, the year Erin’s great-grandparents, Paddy and Kate Murphy, married and started the Merc. Turns out Erin’s sleuthing skills may be inherited! 

The one lane bridge dressed up for the holidays -- and on the cover of my Christmas short story, The Christmas Stranger! (Available in the collection Carried to the Grave and as an e-book standalone.) 

I hope you’ll take a visit to the Food Lovers’ Village with me. Find out more about the books and read excerpts and praise on my website.  And as a gift to my readers, newsletter subscribers get two free short stories, including “The Picture of Guilt,” in which Erin and her beau make a surprising discovery while huckleberry picking. If you’re new to the series, it’s the perfect taste of the Village! 

Here's a link to one of my favorite Village recipes, Grilled Caprese Kabobs from Treble at the Jam Fest, the 4th Village mystery. I'll be back Tuesday with a yummy recipe for Shrimp with Pearl Couscous and Fried Capers. 

I love visiting new-to-me places on the page! Talk to me about some of your favorite armchair travel. If you've been to the Food Lovers' Village, on the page or IRL, tell us what you love about the place and the books! One lucky reader will win their choice of a Food Lovers' Village mystery -- and if you've read them all already, we'll come up with something else! (Leave your email address to enter. US and Canada only. Winner to be announced Wednesday, July 1.)  

At Seattle Spice Shop, owner Pepper Reece has whipped up the perfect blend of food, friends, and flavor. But the sweet smell of success can be hazardous . . .  

Spring is in full bloom in Pike Place Market, where Pepper is celebrating lavender’s culinary uses and planning a festival she hopes will become an annual event. When her friend Lavender Liz offers to share tips for promoting the much-loved—and occasionally maligned—herb, Pepper makes a trek to the charming town of Salmon Falls. But someone has badly damaged Liz’s greenhouse, throwing a wrench in the feisty grower’s plans for expansion. Suspicions quickly focus on an employee who’s taken to the hills. 

Then Liz is found dead among her precious plants, stabbed by a pruning knife. In Salmon Falls, there’s one in every pocket. 

Pepper digs in, untangling the tensions between Liz and a local restaurateur with eyes on a picturesque but neglected farm, a jealous ex-boyfriend determined to profit from Liz’s success, and a local growers’ cooperative. She’s also hot on the scent of a trail of her own, sniffing out the history of her sweet dog, Arf. 

As Pepper’s questions threaten to unearth secrets others desperately want to keep buried, danger creeps closer to her and those she loves. Can Pepper root out the killer, before someone nips her in the bud?

Available at Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * and your local booksellers!

ALL GOD'S SPARROWS AND OTHER STORIES: A STAGECOACH MARY FIELDS COLLECTION, now available in in paperback and ebook 

Take a step back in time with All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection of historical short mysteries, featuring the Agatha-Award winning "All God's Sparrows" and other stories imagining the life of real-life historical figure Mary Fields, born into slavery in 1832, during the last thirty years of her life, in Montana. Out September 17, 2024 from Beyond the Page Publishing.  

“Finely researched and richly detailed, All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories is a wonderful collection. I loved learning about this fascinating woman . . . and what a character she is! Kudos to Leslie Budewitz for bringing her to life so vividly.” —Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of Crow Mary

Available at Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * and your local booksellers!

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Spice Shop Mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody, standalone suspense, most recently Blind Faith. She is the winner of Agatha Awards in three categories: Best Nonfiction (2011), Best First Novel (2013), and Best Short Story (2018). Her latest books are To Err is Cumin, the 8th Spice Shop Mystery and All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection, in September 2024. Watch for Lavender Lies Bleeding, the 9th Spice Shop Mystery, on July 15, 2025.

A past president of Sisters in Crime and former national board member of Mystery Writers of America, Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine. 

Swing by Leslie's website and join the mailing list for her seasonal newsletter. And join her on Facebook where she shares book news and giveaways from her writer friends, and talks about food, mysteries, and the things that inspire her.

Spotlight on Molly MacRae #SpotlightSunday

 

 

Where, oh where does the mystery writer write?

My original idea for this Spotlight Sunday piece was to post some of my favorite pictures from the places where I’ve set my stories. But how to choose from the scads of pictures of Scotland, Ocracoke Island, the Tennessee mountains, Cape Cod, and the Monterey coast that I’ve taken over the years?

As I sorted through them, I realized I didn't need to choose because I could put together a fun subset. Again, there were too many, but here's a smattering of photos showing me writing in, or not too far from, some of my story settings (or not writing because I stopped to snap a picture of the writing space). These pictures are my love letters to the writing life.

Where, oh where do I write? Pretty much anywhere. 

The view from my window in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1974. For those of you who know Ian Rankin's Rebus novels, John Rebus lives to the left and around the next corner from here.

Paris, 1975. What you can't see in the picture is Norte Dame Cathedral, which is looming directly behind me. 

Faithful editors, Numa (checking due dates) and Sheeta (tuning up the typewriter keys), who saw me through graduate school with fur-flying colors. Champaign, Illinois, 1978. The map on the wall also hung on my wall in Edinburgh.

Johnson City, Tennessee, 2000 (fast forwarding through the graduate school and small children years). Editor Gunnarsson considering the early draft of Wilder Rumors on the computer screen. There's a glass of water in the lower right hand corner of the picture. That same glass (with fresh water) is sitting on my desk as I type this. 

 

Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, 2013. There are beautiful chickens on the other side of the fence. A cat came to visit most afternoons.

On the balcony in Mountain View Books in Mountain View, California, 2014. That's my brother Andy writing behind me. 

Garrapata State Park, Carmel, California, 2014. I still use that pen. 

Champaign, Illinois, 2014. Neko took over as editor when Gunnarsson retired. The sling was his solution to the problem of no lap when the writer prefers to stand. 

Lees McRae College, Linville, North Carolina, 2014. I drove one of my sisters from Illinois to this beautiful spot in the mountains so she could attend the Grandfather Mountain Gaelic Song & Language Week. That's a draft of Knot the Usual Suspects on the screen.

Champaign, Illinois, 2016, catching a breeze in the window seat.

Champaign, Illinois, 2016, my writing space up under the roof. 

Looking spooky on Washington Island, Wisconsin, 2019. I haven't set any published stories on Washington Island. Yet.

Hiding from mosquitoes in our backyard screen tent, Champaign, Illinois, 2021. Same water glass on the table.

Champaign, Illinois, 2022. When editor Neko retired, I had to muddle through on my own for a few years. From the mess I'm making, you can see why I needed another cat. Just barely visible, on the three-legged stool at the top of the picture, is the same water glass.

New editor finally installed. Dooley joined the staff in 2024. She is the consummate, and very furry, professional. 

You can visit North Carolina, Scotland, Tennessee, Cape Cod, and California, too, in my mysteries. Happy reading! 

 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Instagram or Bluesky.