Get ready for A LOVE OF COZY MYSTERIES Facebook Party! ❤️ Join us on Friday, Feb. 14, from 7:00-8:00 PM ET, for a night of mystery, fun, and fabulous prizes!
Meet all seven amazing authors from Booklovers Bench, read intriguing posts, share your thoughts, and maybe even win a prize or two! Mark your calendars!
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My author has always created stories about me based on real-life events she’s either read about, seen on the news, or experienced. For instance, in Guilty as Framed, the eleventh book in the series, she wove a plot around the actual 1990 unsolved museum heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum in Boston. To this day, it’s the largest theft of artworks in history and none have ever been recovered.
A Crafty Collage of Crime, the award-winning twelfth book in the series, was inspired by her move in 2021 from New Jersey to Tennessee. Many of our readers wanted to know when I would also move to the South, but being a diehard Jersey Girl, I dug in my heels and threatened to kidnap her muse if she dared transplant me. We compromised by Lois sending me on a trip to Tennessee wine country (yes, it’s a thing) and, of course, within hours of arriving, I stumbled across a dead body.
In Seams Like the Perfect Crime Lois once again gave me one of her own experiences, this one involving some very odd neighbors who used to live across the street from her back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These neighbors were so odd, that Lois didn’t have to do much in the way of embellishing what she saw from her own window. When you read the short synopsis of the plot, your first reaction will be, she had to have made up those people. Trust me, she didn’t.
Well, she did make up some of the tertiary characters in the book, and none of the real-life characters were ever murdered, but many of the characters in this book are a perfect example of truth being stranger than fiction.
Seams Like the Perfect Crime
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 14
When staffing shortages continue to hamper the Union County homicide squad, Detective Sam Spader once again turns to his secret weapon, reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. How can she and husband Zack Barnes refuse when the victim is their new neighbor?
Revolutionary War reenactor Barry Sumner had the odd habit of spending hours mowing a small patch of packed dirt and weeds until his mower ran out of gas. He’d then guzzle beer on his front porch until he passed out. That’s where Anastasia’s son Nick discovers his body three days after the victim and his family moved into the newly built mini-McMansion across the street.
After a melee breaks out at the viewing, Spader zeroes in on the widow as his prime suspect. However, Anastasia has her doubts. There are other possible suspects, including a woman who’d had an affair with the victim, his ex-wife, the man overseeing the widow’s trust fund, a drug dealer, and the reenactors who were blackmailing the widow and victim.
When another reenactor is murdered, Spader suspects they’re dealing with a serial killer, but Anastasia wonders if the killer is attempting to misdirect the investigation. As she narrows down the suspects, will she jeopardize her own life to learn the truth?
Craft projects included.
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February 4 – Jody's Bookish Haven – Spotlight
February 4 – Ascroft, eh? – Author guest post
February 5 – Socrates Book Reviews – Spotlight
February 5 – Sapphyria's Book Reviews – Spotlight
February 6 – Cinnamon, Sugar, and a Little Bit of Murder – Review & Recipe
February 6 – Baroness Book Trove – Spotlight
February 7 – Reading, Writing & Stitch-Metic – Craft post
February 7 – Eskimo Princess Book Reviews -
February 8 – Boys' Mom Reads! – Recipe
February 8 – Ruff Drafts – Spotlight
February 9 – Cozy Up With Kathy – Character guest post
February 9 – FUONLYKNEW – Spotlight
February 10 – Elizabeth McKenna - Author – Spotlight
February 11 – Christy's Cozy Corners – Author guest post
February 12 – Novels Alive – Review
February 13 – Jane Reads – Character guest post
February 14 – Deal Sharing Aunt – Author guest post
February 15 – Frugal Freelancer – Author interview
February 16 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – Spotlight
February 17 – Maureen's Musings – Spotlight
Home Cooking and a Killer Recipe
My debut mystery, Hidden Rooms, is set in a small Ohio farming town much like the one where I grew up. Like me, my main character, Riley, is lucky enough to have a mother who is a fantastic cook. The book opens soon after Riley’s return to her hometown and features plenty of scenes where her close-knit family comes together to enjoy homemade, seasonally fresh food.
Aside from being a traditional murder mystery, part of the puzzle in Hidden Rooms is Riley’s own medical mystery. Since moving home, Riley has been fighting bewildering health issues, from vertigo to joint pain. Like many people—particularly women—she struggles to find a clear diagnosis and has been left to manage her symptoms as best she can. Part of this includes eating foods that will help her feel her best.
I imagine this Savory Butternut Squash Soup would be the perfect dish for Riley since it offers a mix of comforting, garden-fresh home cooking, along with anti-inflammatory ingredients, like ginger, garlic, and turmeric. Also, since almost the entire U.S. is feeling the deep freeze as I write this, now seems like an ideal time to warm up with some soup, and the ginger gives this recipe a little added heat!
Savory Butternut Squash Soup
1 cooked butternut squash
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup of diced onion (about half an onion)
½ tablespoon minced garlic
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon turmeric
3 cups vegetable or chicken broth
½ cup cream
A Note on Baking vs. Dicing the Squash
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not peel and dice a squash if I can avoid it! Of course, it’s absolutely fine to prepare your squash that way if that’s what you prefer, but I find it a bit easier to bake the halved squash.
To do so, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cut the butternut squash into halves and remove the seeds. Brush olive oil onto the squash. Place the halves face down in a baking dish with a cup of water and bake for one to one and a half hours (until tender). Allow it to cool slightly and then remove the squash from the skin.
Heat the olive oil in a large pot or Dutch oven and sauté onions. After about 5 minutes, stir in the garlic, salt, pepper, ginger, paprika, and turmeric. Next, add the broth and cooked squash. Bring it to a low boil, stirring frequently.
Remove the pot from the heat. Puree the soup using an immersion blender. (If you need to use a regular blender, allow the soup to cool before blending it.)
Stir in the cream and put the blended soup back on the heat to rewarm it. Once it is hot, it’s ready to serve! I like to add pumpkin seeds as a topping for a little crunch.
Enjoy!
Long-distance runner, Riley Svenson, has been fighting bewildering symptoms for months, from vertigo to fainting spells. Worse, her doctors can’t tell her what’s wrong, leaving her to wonder if it’s stress or something more threatening. But when her brother’s fiancée is killed—and he becomes the prime suspect—Riley must prove his innocence, despite the toll on her health.
As she reacquaints herself with the familiar houses and wild woods of her childhood, the secrets she uncovers take her on a trail to the real killer that leads right back to the very people she knows best and loves most.
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What was your life like before your author started pulling your strings?
I was an anthropology PhD student at Columbia University trying to get funding to do field research. I still am – an anthropology PhD student, trying to get funding, but now I’m in a lot of trouble with my PhD committee because things went south when I went north.
What’s the one trait you like most about yourself?
My curiosity, though it can get me in trouble.
What do you like least about yourself?
My lack of self-confidence. I don’t trust my intuition as much as I should. We grad students suffer from imposter syndrome and it’s worse if you have learning disabilities like I do. I have ADHD and dyslexia.
What is the strangest thing your author has had you do or had happen to you?
She has a thing for geology and snow. She made me ski through boiling fumaroles in Yellowstone National Park, and I don’t ski. Currently she has me dangling from the edge of a glacier in Norway where I am presumably recording the sound of its demise, without meeting my own demise. I’m an anthropologist, I study urban culture and yet somehow, I keep ending up in the proverbial wild.
Do you argue with your author? If so, what do you argue about?
She’s a bit obsessed with the idea I’m solving mysteries by using my anthropology training, but it’s neurodiversity that allows me to see the world differently and drives my curiosity. My dyslexia is how I make connections and find trajectories others don’t. My dyslexia is my superpower. I keep reminding her Agatha Christie had dyslexia…it takes her kind of mind to think up these kinds of mysteries, and to solve them.
What is your greatest fear?
Being alone. Not like on or in a glacier alone, but in life, alone. I was the only child of a single mother, and she died when I was in high school, so I have had to create family along the way. I have a best friend, Kit, who is like a sister, but I have a fear of abandonment. See lack of confidence above.
What makes you happy?
A good mystery, a compelling research question, a problem I can solve. I love being deep into a puzzle. And if it involves human behavior, all the better.
If you could rewrite a part of your story, what would it be? Why?
My love life. I am very good at reading signs and people but maybe again it’s this lack of self-confidence, but I cannot read potential love interests.
Of the other characters in your book, which one bugs you the most? Why?
Pete, he is so utterly arrogant. Maybe I’m jealous of his self-confidence, his chutzpah and entitlement. I am a visual anthropologist, and I live by a code of ethics when it comes to taking and showing pictures, he’s a photojournalist and flouts those rules.
Of the other characters in your book, which one would you love to trade places with? Why?
Kit. She is intelligent, glamourous, funny, has a great family and is kind.
Tell us a little something about your author. Where can readers find her website/blog?
She’s an anthropologist. She practices multi-modal anthropology which means she outputs her research in eccentric forms for a scientist: as plays, films, sound art, fiction and even a cozy murder mystery. Her tagline is: In an era of fake news, a little anthropology goes a long way. Learn more about her and her books at her website.
What's next for you?
Montana where you first met me didn’t go so well. Currently, I am writing to you from Oslo, and I'll be honest things aren't going so well here either. Let's just say there's another dead body. You might think it an unfortunate coincidence, but I don't believe in coincidences. Dead bodies repeatedly popping up in my field sites is not exactly auspicious. Maybe the message is to stop going to cold climates, or, to give-up on anthropology. When I was in Montana, I promised Kit I would go somewhere warm next. But we grad students go where the money is. And my author wanted to write a Nordic non-noir. I’m just trying to do some ethnographic fieldwork. I can promise you I will be in a very hot desert the next time you hear from me – Joshua Tree California to be exact.
An Armchair Anthropology Whodunit
Alex is on the verge of dismissal from her anthropology doctoral program when her luck turns, and she lands a fellowship with a dioramist at the Museum of the Rockies. The only problem is, Alex hasn’t a clue about dioramas or dinosaurs, and, as she will soon find out, she’s not the only one faking it in this frozen landscape. From New York City to Yellowstone National Park, we follow Alex, a whip-smart student with dyslexia and ADHD, a Margaret Mead cum Ms. Marple, as she explores friendship, identity, globalization and a murder against the stunning backdrop of the Rockies in winter.
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