Q&A with Sheila Webster Boneham

This week, we sat down with Sheila Webster Boneham, author of the Animals in Focus mysteries. Her latest, Catwalk, is available now!

Midnight Ink: How long have you been writing?

Sheila Webster Boneham: I started writing as a child. I wrote my first “book” when I was 7 or 8—it was about a Cocker Spaniel named Sandy, illustrated with pictures I cut out of magazines. My first publication was a poem in a state-wide magazine when I was in seventh grade. In high school I was on the school newspaper and took journalism as an elective. I don’t think I even considered not writing! My first grown-up publications were in academic journals (I have a PhD in folklore), and from there I moved to feature articles for a variety of magazines. Breed Rescue was published in 1998 by Alpine Publications and was the first of seventeen nonfiction books about dogs and cats. I guess the publication of Drop Dead on Recall, the first Animals in Focus mystery, brought me full circle!

MI: What influence have other authors had on your writing?

SWB: Tremendous influence. No one writes in a vacuum—as writers, we are part of a long heritage and a global community of ideas, traditions, and techniques. When I read, even for pleasure, I can’t help noticing what other authors do that works—or doesn’t work—for me as a reader.

MI: If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing?

SWB: Honestly, I can’t imagine not being a writer, but I do also enjoy many things—photography, hiking, training and showing my dogs, travel, teaching. In fact, I do all those things, and without them I wouldn’t have much to write about. It all fits together.

MI: If you have a job outside of writing, what is it?

SWB: I write full time now. I used to teach university writing, literature, and folklore, and I still teach writing classes and workshops.

MI: What is/are your favorite thing/s to do when you’re not writing or working?

SWB: On a day-to-day basis, I would say take long walks in natural places, read, and play with animals. If I can get away, I love to travel. I’m especially fond of train travel, and have written about it.

MI: Who is your favorite mystery sleuth and why?

SWB: I assume you mean aside from Janet MacPhail of my series! I get a kick out of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum because she makes me laugh, and I also like J.A. Jance’s Joanna Brady. Both strong women in different ways.

MI: Do you have a favorite murder case from a book (either yours or another author’s)?

SWB: Not really. I like cases that keep me guessing (as a writer as well as a reader), but there are so many excellent mysteries out there, and so many ways to structure a plot, that I don’t think I can pick a favorite.

MI: What was your inspiration for  the Animals in Focus Mysteries?

SWB: The characters, human and animal, all come from my own experiences in the world of serious animal fanciers. I’ve been involved for decades with showing dogs, rescue work, volunteering with dogs and cats in shelters, teaching obedience classes, training and competing with my dogs, breeding highly competitive Australian Shepherds, volunteering with my therapy dogs, and just playing with animals. In the course of doing all those things, I’ve met all kinds of people and animals, and the fictional characters in my books are inspired (but not copied!) from life. As far as being inspired to write myteries with animals, I must credit Susan Conant and Laurien Berenson for leading the way with their brilliant work. Like me, they both had extensive experience beyond pet ownership, and I have always appreicated that the animals in their books are realistic. When I started Drop Dead on Recall, there weren’t many dog mysteries; now there are packs of them! But Conant and Berenson led the way.

Jay, the inspiration for fictional Jay

MI: How do the Animals in Focus Mysteries compare to your past works?

SWB: The mysteries are a whole new venture for me as all my previous writing was nonfiction.  In addition to many feature articles in magazines, I had written seventeen nonfiction books, several of them winners of awards from the Dog Writers Association of America and the Cat Writers’ Association, before I wrote Drop Dead on Recall. My background has given me the knowledge based to keep the animals realistic and the information accurate in the mysteries, which many readers and reviewers have noted. Drop Dead on Recall won the 2013 Maxwell Award for Fiction from the Dog Writers Association of America in peer-judged competition, and was an NBD Petside Top Ten Dog Book of 2012 in an almost all nonfiction field.

Lily

MI: Tell us about Janet MacPhail (and Leo and Jay)!

SWB: Janet is a mildly eccentric animal lover and professional photographer in her fifties. She loves to play with her Australian Shepherd, Jay, and her orange tabby, Leo, both of whom are full-fledged characters—and heroes!—in the series. Janet becomes an accidental

Lily with her books

sleuth in each of the books while also wrestling with issues well-known to many women her age. She’s been divorced and independent for years, and isn’t sure she wants to give that up, but a good-looking guy with a good-looking dog show up and stick around. Janet’s mother is battling dementia, and since Janet’s brother isn’t dealing with it very well, Janet has to make a lot of decisions. She’s also battling those ten (okay, twenty) pounds that just won’t seem to go away. And then there are those pesky dead bodies to deal with!

MI: Do you have a pet? Tell us about him/her.

Jay shows off his agility skills

SWB: Of course! At the moment we have only one dog, an eight-year-old yellow Labrador Retriever named Lily. This is the first time in decades, though, that we haven’t had multiple dogs and cats. The real Jay, who was born into my hands in 1998, died in 2012. Fictional Jay is based largely on Jay’s loving personality, with some behaviors added from the many other Australian Shepherds we’ve had. And Drake, Tom’s Lab in the books, is a composite of Lily and my two previous Labs, Raja and Annie. Janet’s tabby Leo is based on several cats in my life—Leo, Malcolm, George, Mary, Kitty, and Smokey, as well as cats I’ve known in shelters.

Jay and Lily

MI: What food could you live off of for the rest of your life?

SWB: Beans (red or black) and brown rice, with some salsa on top! (Okay, and carrot cake with cream cheese icing. That’s dairy and veggies, right?)

MI: Do you have a favorite recipe?

SWB: Confession: while I am not Janet and Janet is not me, we do share some traits, and one is not cooking. Luckily, my husband, Roger, is a great cook, and of all his yummies, I’d have to say his spaghetti sauce is my favorite.

MI: What is your favorite part about being an Inker?

SWB: Sense of community with my fellow authors. This is a great bunch of people with a wonderfully diverse assortment of stories to tell, and I’ve found them also to be very supportive and generous with information, mutual promotion, and friendship.

Catwalk, the third Animals in Focus mystery, is available in bookstores and online now!

How To: Kill Someone with a Toaster

How To: Kill Someone with a Toaster

1. Electrocution. Simple, and effective.
2. Use the toaster as a weapon to bash someone over the head.
3. Strangle someone with the cord.
4. Make poison toast.
5. Start a fire with the toaster.
6. Drop a pallet of toasters on someone, of course.

For more on toaster-related murder, pick up Linda Joffe Hull's latest, Black Thursday, available online and in bookstores now!

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!

If you look close, there might be a hidden message on this shirt!

Several months ago, I decided to form an author street team. 

A street team is basically a group of people who like an author’s work and volunteer to help promote it.  In exchange, the author gives out swag, hosts special online events, and does other fun things with those fans. 

I’m sure there are lots of proven best practices for street teams. I even bought a Kindle book on the subject.  But since I don’t own a Kindle, I haven’t read it.  (Yeah, I’m THAT person.)  I’m basically making this up as I go along. I’m in the middle of my street team launch now.

As any Microsoft alumnus knows, you can’t have a launch without a free t-shirt, so I decided to give free shirts to my first wave of volunteers.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

I knew t-shirts would be pricier than bookmarks, but I’d survived the coffee cup giveaways without becoming homeless, so I figured why not?  How expensive could a few dozen t-shirts be, anyway?

There were a couple of flaws in my plan. First, I got a lot more volunteers than I originally thought I would.  (This is a good and awesome thing, and I am SO HONORED!) Next, I learned that I had priced t-shirts with single color printing. (The red shirts with full color printing I had my heart set on were about three times the cost.) And I forgot all about postage costs to mail them around the world.

My husband joked that I’d make heck of a lot more money if I gave up writing and watched TV all day, but I was still happy.  Soon my t-shirts would be flying world-wide, making my readers happy, and hopefully spreading the word about my newest book.  I wrote a nice letter to go along with them, a friend of mine packaged them up, and they went on their way.

The first recipient sent me a photo.  The shirt looked great, except for what I thought was a very odd shadow. I narrowed my eyes, but couldn’t make out what it was.  The next had the same shadow, only in a different place.  Then the third.  You get the idea. Turns out, the ink from my friendly letter had transferred to the printing on the shirt, leaving my welcome letter in the clouds, across my protagonist’s shirt, sometimes stamped solidly across her face.

I was mortified.  I felt like a well-meaning (but somewhat senile) aunt that sent all the kids broken Christmas presents. I called up my husband and told him to mentally prepare to do it all over again. He asked if I’d learned my lesson. I told him probably not.  (At least I didn’t lie.)

But here’s the learning.  My readers rallied behind me.  They experimented with and shared ways to get out the ink, sent notes assuring me that I wasn’t the worst Santa ever, and even started an “I love you” thread on Facebook.  One reader assured me that she likes her shirt BETTER now that it has a flaw.  Others offered to pay for their replacement shirts. (Which I won’t allow, of course.) Some of the shirts were salvageable, others I will soon be replacing.  But somehow I suspect that the error has drawn us all closer.

I always was a little off-kilter.  Why should my shirts be any different?


Namaste

Tracy Weber

          

About Tracy:

My writing is an expression of the things I love best: yoga, dogs, and murder mysteries. I'm a certified yoga teacher and the founder of Whole Life Yoga, an award-winning yoga studio in Seattle, WA. I enjoy sharing my passion for yoga and animals in any form possible.  My husband and I live with our challenging yet amazing German shepherd Tasha and our bonito flake-loving cat Maggie. When I’m not writing, I spend my time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sipping Blackthorn cider at my favorite local ale house.

For more information, visit me online at http://tracyweberauthor.com/ and http://wholelifeyoga.com/

Q&A with Jeff Cohen

This week, Midnight Ink sat down with Jeff Cohen (sometimes known as E.J. Copperman), author of the new Asperger's Mystery series.

Midnight Ink: How long have you been writing?

Jeff Cohen: What’s today . . . pretty much since I was eight.

MI: What influence have other authors had on your writing?

JC: I don’t know that other writers influence the way I write. Obviously I have read a lot of writers who are important to me, like Irwin Shaw, Robert B. Parker, William Goldman, and many others. But I’ve always pretty much written the way I write. I think.

MI: If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing?

JC: Living in a refrigerator carton. I don’t know how to do anything else. Luckily I married well. For any number of reasons.

MI: If you have a job outside of writing, what is it?

JC: I don’t. This is it. So buy my books; I still have student loans to pay off. (Actually I do a little teaching, but that’s much more part-time than writing.)

MI: What is/are your favorite thing/s to do when you’re not writing or working?

JC: It’s such a cliché: I like to spend time with my family. I play guitar when nobody can hear. I watch a lot of movies and I read. I am a remarkably dull person.

MI: Who is your favorite mystery sleuth and why?

JC: Besides my own? Probably Sherlock Holmes, although he’s something of a know-it-all. I like Spenser, at least in the first 30 or 40 books. And Chris Grabenstein’s John Ceepak/Danny Boyle series is something I’ll always stop my day to read.

MI: Do you have a favorite murder case from a book (either yours or another author’s)?

JC: I’m going to get in such trouble for saying this: The murder is the least interesting part of the story to me. I’m much more involved in the characters and their relationships, and hopefully in making the reader laugh. I come up with different ways to kill fictional people because it’s part of the form and it makes the story go, but the murder itself? In other people’s books, I barely pay attention. In my own, it’s always the thing that causes me the most headaches.

MI: What was your inspiration for the Asperger’s Mystery series?

JC: I have a son who has Asperger’s (or whatever they’re calling it this week) and his challenges and triumphs in dealing with the world are an inspiration all the time. As for the Asperger’s series itself, I thought it would be interesting to get inside the head of someone who thought like that and give him something difficult to figure out.  The whole thing came in a flash—the missing head, Questions Answered, Ms. Washburn (although she didn’t have a name yet), everything. It was just a question of figuring out the mechanics of it once I started writing. And that’s always the hardest part. For me.

MI: How does this series compare to your past works?

JC: It’s not as desperate to make you laugh, although hopefully people will find it funny. Aaron Tucker was a joke machine; the plot was secondary to him riffing on things. Elliot Freed was Aaron Tucker on steroids—he lived for comedy, almost literally. The Haunted Guesthouse series has Alison Kerby’s attitude throughout and the situations are set up to be funnier. With Samuel (in the Asperger’s series), he would not be anxious to make jokes because he’d be worried people wouldn’t find them funny. It’s more the reactions of other characters to what he does that carries the humor here.

MI: Tell us about Samuel Hoenig.

JC: Samuel is right on the edge of a lot of things. He has Asperger’s, but he’s very high-functioning, so he almost doesn’t have Asperger’s—at least outwardly. He’s not quite a genius, but he’s really close. He’s an adult in his 30s who lives with his mother because he wants to. And he opens a business at which people can get any question answered—if it interests Samuel. He believes Asperger’s is less a disorder and more a personality trait, so he’ll get a little testy if people treat him like he’s afflicted… but he’s not above using that to his advantage when necessary. Samuel’s complicated, more than might immediately be obvious.

Gizmo

MI: Do you have a pet? Tell us about him/her.

JC: As a matter of fact, we adopted a beagle name Gizmo (and the four of us debated for three days about a new name before leaving the one he’d been given at the shelter) who’s just over a year old and hasn’t figured out he’s not a puppy anymore. He’s a very small beagle (they call him a teacup beagle, but my vet says there’s no such thing). He’s heavily into chewing and getting picked up. He’s settling into the family nicely.

MI: If you don’t have a pet, do you have a favorite animal?

JC: Does Bullwinkle J. Moose count?

MI: What food could you live off of for the rest of your life?

JC: Pasta, but I prefer having a choice.

MI: Do you have a favorite recipe?

JC: You’re assuming I cook. That’s adorable.

MI: What is your favorite part about being an Inker?

JC: I am very big on personal relationships—I like doing business with people I like. So I’ve been really impressed with everybody at Midnight Ink and their incredibly supportive attitude toward Samuel and the series.

The Question of the Missing Head is now available online and in bookstores!

First Page Blues

By: Deirdre Verne

I struggle with the first few paragraphs of anything. This blog entry alone has been started and trashed at least five times. Within seconds of churning out the first paragraph, I almost always require immediate feedback. I’m not asking for much. A simple ‘you’re on the right track’ from just about anyone is enough to boost my confidence. Without the thumbs up, I have trouble continuing to the second page. Once I get going, however, I’m good for the next three hundred. But that first page! It’s a killer.
A writer friend of mine warned me recently about soliciting criticism. “Never show your work to your family until it’s published,” she said. 
Good advice -- ten years too late. Enter my husband. He now refuses to read my writing, insisting that I purposely killed him off in the opening scene of my first (unpublished) book. Talk about sensitive. It’s not like I’m writing a memoir.
Then I tried my mother. She loves to read and she loves me. She’s also a teacher. Her only attempt to read my writing started with her licking the tip of a red pen. Let’s just say it didn’t end well.
Based on my prior experiences, I’ve trained myself to complete an entire chapter without external input. Then I seek out a peer from my writing group to provide constructive and actionable criticism. I still need the occasional pat on the back, but I’ve learned to replace my need for immediate gratification with a heaping bowl of ice cream.

Deirdre Verne is a college professor who is currently the curriculum chair of the marketing program at Westchester Community College. Previously, she held senior marketing positions at Time, Inc. Drawing Conclusions is the first book in her A Sketch in Crime mystery series. Available winter, 2015.

Q&A with Linda Joffe Hull

This week, we sat down with Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery author Linda Joffe Hull, whose latest Black Thursday, was just released.

Midnight Ink: How long have you been writing?

Linda Joffe Hull: I dabbled from the day I got out of college (cough) years ago, but didn’t start writing seriously until my boys started school in 2001. They are both in college now.

MI: What influence have other authors had on your writing?

LJH: My mom claims she found me hiding under the covers with a flashlight and a book on a regular basis starting at three years old. I have been influenced by everything from the Nancy Drew series to David Sedaris.

MI: If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing?

LJH: I often say that at this point I would be a stripper at a nursing home, but I would probably be in sales and advertising, which I did in a former life.

MI: If you have a job outside of writing, what is it?

LJH: I do freelance editing and ghostwriting and work on everything from self-help and memoirs to fiction projects.

MI: What is/are your favorite thing/s to do when you’re not writing or working?

LJH: My boys are collegiate divers, so I love travelling to watch them compete. Go Hoosiers and Hawkeyes!

MI: Who is your favorite mystery sleuth and why?

LJH: I change my mind every time I read a new mystery, but the first favorite that came to mind was Precious Ramotswe.

MI: Do you have a favorite murder case from a book (either yours or another author’s)?

LJH: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote really sticks with me.

MI: What was your inspiration for the Mrs. Frugalicious Mysteries? 

LJH: I was flipping through the channels one night and found myself watching Extreme Couponing. I realized, almost immediately, that anyone with the math brain and the ability to think on the fly the way couponers do, would make a crack amateur sleuth. Mrs. Fruglicious was born soon after.

MI: How does the Mrs. Frugalicious Mystery series compare to your past works?

LJH: I like to write about the suburbs—specifically, the unexpected dangers and pitfalls of suburban existence. I describe my first novel, The Big Bang, as a suburban satire/pregnancy whodunit. The Mrs. Frugalicious mysteries are far lighter and have a lot less, shall we say, dark blue subject matter.

MI: Tell us about Maddie Michaels.

LJH: Maddie Michaels is the wife of local TV financial guru Frank Finance Michaels. When he loses all their money in a ponzi scheme, she reinvents herself as bargain shopper and coupon clipper Mrs. Frugalicious to (surreptitiously) save the family from financial ruin. I enjoy writing her because she is plucky and is endlessly able to look at the increasingly dire situations she faces with humor and a sense of optimism that some people (I’m looking in the mirror here) can’t always summon up.

MI: Tell us your top 3 couponing tips.

LJH: 

1. Always, always go through your Sunday paper and clip coupons for things you will buy anyway. There’s no reason not to save money every time you shop.
2. When you use coupons, grocery and discount stores recognize you as a coupon clipper and give you additional discounts and savings offers in the form of Catalinas, those printed coupons that come with your receipt.
3. Never ever go shopping without going online to check for coupons or specials. Practically every national retailer offers discounts and/or specials simply by going to their website.

Linda and Hazel

MI: Do you have a pet? Tell us about him/her.

LJH: I have two pets, Andi the gecko who currently resides in my oldest son’s room. She was named Andrew (after him) until we discovered she is a girl. As my second son, Evan was headed off to college we adopted Hazel. She is a four-month-old Lab/Blue Heeler mix. Adorable only begins to describe her. Coincidentally, her kennel name was Eliza, which happens to be my daughter’s name. Clearly, she was meant to be in my brood.

MI: If you don’t have a pet, do you have a favorite animal? 

LJH: I love exotic animals, many of whom are unsuitable for domestic life. Luckily we have Andi and Hazel.

MI: What food could you live off of for the rest of your life?

LJH: Homemade chocolate chip cookies.

MI: Do you have a favorite recipe?

LJH: I’m not the best cook, but I do make an easy, incredible grilled salmon marinated in soy sauce, lemon wedges, sugar and garlic.  

MI: What is your favorite part about being an Inker?

LJH: Aside from working with the amazing Terri Bischoff? I guess I’d have to say the camaraderie amongst the authors who write for Midnight Ink. I’ve made and continue to make very close friends. What a great group of people!

Black Thursday, the second Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery, is now available in bookstores and online!

Midnight Ink Monthly: October Edition

Midnight Ink Monthly's October Edition featured an excerpt from The Question of the Missing Head by E.J. Copperman and Jeff Cohen.

Can Samuel Hoenig Solve The Question of the Missing Head?: 

An Excerpt

"It's a cryogenics lab, Jesse," she said.  "It's legal."

"Cryonics," I corrected. "Cryogenics is simply the science of very low temperatures. Cryonics is the activity practiced here."

But the officer named Jesse, whose name tag read "Crawford," pointed at Dr. Springer's body.  "What about that?"

"That is one of our doctors," Ackerman said.  

"She's dead?" Crawford asked.

Ackerman nodded.

"Call it in," Crawford told his partner, and she reached for her communications link on her shoulder.  

"That might not work down here," Ackerman told her, and pointed to the phone.  The female officer started to call to her headquarters.

"You were coming out of there when we came in," Crawford said to me. "You shouldn't have been in there."

"We weren't sure she was dead," Ms. Washburn explained. "Mr. Hoenig was trying . . ." 

"I answer people's questions for them," I told the officer. "I needed to be in there to answer a question for Dr. Ackerman."

"Did you touch anything?"

"No," I said. "I was extremely careful."

Crawford leaned into the preservation chamber, and Ackerman looked nervously after him.  I think he was nervous—it might have been an expression of disapproval.  

"No blood," Crawford said. "Looks like natural causes."

"Oh, no," I told him. "Dr. Springer was murdered."             

Discover who murdered Dr. Springer in The Question of the Missing Head by E.J. Copperman and Jeff Cohen, available now!

To subscribe to Midnight Ink's monthly publicity newsletters, please email publicity (at) midnightinkbooks (dot) com.

Fact vs. Fiction

by Shannon Baker

I am not the kind of writer who can make up whole worlds from my imagination. My plots always come from real stuff, the cool facts I read about. For instance, when I moved to Flagstaff and found out about the controversy to pump manmade snow on the San Francisco Peaks--land sacred to 12 tribes--I had to write a story about it

I needed a protagonist in the center of the storm who had everything at stake. That turned out to be Nora Abbott, owner of the ski resort. Driven, insecure, timid and ferocious in equal measure, Nora sprang onto the pages.

In my research about the tribes involved, I stumbled across the Hopi. Suddenly, my book took off in a whole new direction that lent itself to a mystery series. My Hopi research turned up so many intriguing aspects of their history, culture, and beliefs I couldn’t address even a fraction in one book. So I was excited when Midnight Ink offered me a three-book deal. Tainted Mountain delves into the Hopi prophesies and explains a little bit about their ceremonies. It introduces kachinas and their role in Hopi lives.

For Broken Trust, I wanted to focus on a different aspect of Hopi’s connection with the world. Hopi are concerned about end times. According to Hopi beliefs, we now live in the fourth world and we’ve just about messed it up so badly we’re approaching the end of this world and emergence to the fifth world. Sad news for most of us, since not very many will survive to start the fifth world.

In Broken Trust, Nora returns to her favorite place, Boulder, and lands a job at an environmental trust. (Coincidently, I also moved back to Boulder while I was working on this book.) But all is not as it seems. The trust is a hotbed of conflict and corruption. Nearly a half million dollars is missing and Nora’s predecessor is murdered.

Nora’s mother pops onto the scene with her own drama. She is determined to hook Nora up with handsome Cole Huntsman. Cole has been waiting for a year to let Nora get over the death of her husband and the traumatic events in Flagstaff, but he’s ready to start a relationship with her. In the meantime, with the help of quirky staffers at the Trust and an Ecuadorian hunk, Nora uncovers a plot that could destroy one of the most pristine locations on the planet. 

And how, you might or might not be asking, is such monumental destruction possible? That was the really fun part for me. I got to research conspiracy theories surrounding HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research) and using weather as a weapon of mass destruction. This stuff is scary/interesting. I spent hours watching Jessie Ventura and others present the case that the shadowy Powers That Be are planning to control our minds/kill us all/wreak havoc on the environment. I dabbled in learning a little (very little) about Tesla towers and the potential for sustainable energy.

When I sold Tainted Mountain I was happy and proud of my new baby. We all know the analogies of writing and publishing books to having babies. I don’t know if anyone else felt this way, but when I was expecting my second baby, I worried I’d never be able to love it as much as I loved my first one. And even though I’d planned and wanted the baby with all my heart, part of me was jealous it would come between me and my firstborn. Weird, I know. But I kind of had the same misgivings about creating a series and wondering if I’d love the second book as much as the first.

The book is here and, just as it was with my kids, I do love book two as much! I learned a lot between book one and two and even more between two and three. It turns out I like writing a series and I’m glad Nora got to live on.

Look for Tattered Legacy, which is set in Moab, next spring.

What about you? What is the most interesting or fun fact you learned while reading fiction?

Fall Releases from Midnight Ink!

By: Maegan Beaumont

Check out these great new mysteries for Fall!

Black Thursday
By: Linda Joffe Hull A Mrs. Frugalicious Shopping Mystery #2 

"A fun and savvy mystery."—BOOKLIST

Catwalk
By: Sheila Webster Boneham 
An Animals in Focus Mystery #3

“Janet MacPhail's latest adventure will delight dog lovers, cat lovers, and mystery lovers…. Five stars for Catwalk!” —SUSAN CONANT, AUTHOR OF THE DOG LOVER'S MYSTERY SERIES

The Question of the Missing Head
By: E. J. Copperman, Jeff Cohen An Asperger's Mystery #1 

 "[A] delightful and clever mystery."—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Lost Under a Ladder
By: Linda O. Johnston A Superstition Mystery #1

"Doggone cute."—LIBRARY JOURNAL

Adobe Flats
By: Colin Campbell A Resurrection Man Novel #3 

"A stylish noir voice."—KIRKUS REVIEWS

Beauty with a Bomb
By: M. C. Grant 
A Dixie Flynn Mystery #3

"Readers will cheer for this avenging less-than-angel as she goes after some very bad people." —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Of Merlot & Murder
By: Joni Folger A Tangled Vines Mystery #2 

Lively and entertaining . . . [a] well wrought whodunit." —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

 Unraveled Visions
By: Nina Milton 
A Shaman Mystery #2

"[A] thrilling tale." —RT BOOK REVIEWS

Bitter Crossing
By: D. A. Keeley 
A Peyton Cote Novel #1

"A solid bet for Nevada Barr and Tricia Fields fans." —LIBRARY JOURNAL

Murder at Midnight
By: C.S. Challinor 
A Rex Graves Mystery #6

"A classic country-house mystery, with modern day twists and turns adding to the fun." —BOOKLIST

Maegan Beaumont is the author of the award-winning Sabrina Vaughn thriller series. A native Phoenician, Maegan's stories are meant to make you wonder what the guy standing in front of you in the Starbucks line has locked in his basement, and feel a strong desire to sleep with the light on. When she isn't busy fulfilling her duties as Domestic Goddess for her high school sweetheart turned husband, Joe, and their four children, she is locked in her office with her computer, her coffee pot and her Rhodesian Ridgeback, and one true love, Jade.