And for another special evening, join author Lois Winston on Monday evening, January 27th at 7pm ET (6pm CT, 5pm MT, and 4pm PT), where she'll be the guest of the Cozy Mystery Party Facebook Group, hosted by Heather Harrisson and Shawn Stevens. If you'd like to join in for a fun hour + of all things murder, mayhem, and cozy mysteries (there will be prizes and surprises!), join the group ahead of time at https://www.facebook.com/groups/cozymysteryparty. Hope to see you there!
TOUR PARTICIPANTS
June 10 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT
June 10 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
June 11 – Mystery, Thrillers, and Suspense – SPOTLIGHT
June 12 – Jane Reads – AUTHOR GUEST POST
June 13 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – CHARACTER GUEST POST
June 14 – Reading, Writing & Stitch-Metic – CRAFT POST
June 15 – StoreyBook Reviews – AUTHOR GUEST POST
June 16 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
June 17 – Literary Gold – SPOTLIGHT
June 18 – Elizabeth McKenna – Author – SPOTLIGHT
June 19 – Ruff Drafts – SPOTLIGHT
June 19 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
June 20 – MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT
June 20 – Baroness Book Trove – SPOTLIGHT
June 21 – Ascroft, eh? – CHARACTER GUEST POST
June 22 – Boys’ Mom Reads! – AUTHOR GUEST POST
June 22 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT
June 23 – eBook Addicts – SPOTLIGHT
You can also find all the information on the Great Escapes Tour Page.
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 13
Magazine crafts editor Anastasia Pollack may finally be able to pay off the remaining debt she found herself saddled with when her duplicitous first husband dropped dead in a Las Vegas casino. But as Anastasia has discovered, nothing in her life is ever straightforward. Strings are always attached. Thanks to the success of an unauthorized true crime podcast, a television production company wants to option her life—warts and all—as a reluctant amateur sleuth.
Is such exposure worth a clean financial slate? Anastasia isn’t sure, but at the same time, rumors are flying about layoffs at the office. Whether she wants national exposure or not, Anastasia may be forced to sign on the dotted line to keep from standing in the unemployment line. But the dead bodies keep coming, and they’re not in the script.
Craft tips included.
Buy Links
For a limited time, Stitch, Bake, Die!, the 10th book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, those books author Lois Winston writes about me, is on sale at Amazon for only .99 cents! Grab your copy today. Sale ends May, 5th.
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 10
With massive debt, a communist mother-in-law, a Shakespeare-quoting parrot, and a photojournalist boyfriend who may or may not be a spy, crafts editor Anastasia Pollack already juggles too much in her life. So she’s not thrilled when her magazine volunteers her to present workshops and judge a needlework contest at the inaugural conference of the NJ chapter of the Stitch and Bake Society, a national organization of retired professional women. At least her best friend and cooking editor Cloris McWerther has also been roped into similar duties for the culinary side of the 3-day event taking place on the grounds of the exclusive Beckwith Chateau Country Club.
Marlene Beckwith, wife of the multi-millionaire pharmaceutical magnate and country club owner, is both the chapter president and conference chairperson. The only thing greater than her ego is her sense of entitlement. She hates to lose at anything and fully expects to win both the needlework and baking competitions.
When Anastasia and Cloris arrive at the conference, they discover cash bribes in their registration packets. The Society members, few of whom are fans of Marlene, stick up for the accused and instead suggest that Marlene orchestrated the bribes to eliminate her stiffest competition.
The next morning when Marlene is found dead, Anastasia questions whether she really died peacefully in her sleep. After Marlene’s husband immediately has her cremated, Anastasia once again finds herself back in reluctant amateur sleuth mode.
With the help of Cloris, Marlene’s personal assistant Rhetta, and a laptop someone will stop at nothing to find, Anastasia soon unravels evidence of insurance scams, medical fraud, an opioid ring, long-buried family secrets, and too many possible suspects. And that’s before she stumbles over the body of yet another member of the Stitch and Bake Society.
Can Anastasia piece together the various clues before she becomes the killer’s next target?
Crafting tips included.
Even as a fictional character, I know that nothing is ever easy when it comes to computers unless you’re a computer geek. And I suspect even computer geeks do a considerable amount of head banging trying to get programs to work. Then again, maybe the programmers are the problem. What other industry do you know where products that aren’t quite right yet are released into cyberspace? Then, we mortals and fictional mortals must contend with a constant stream of software updates.
Want a peek? Just click here.
She had promised to make it up to me. She knew I really wanted to go back to Barcelona. There was so much I hadn’t gotten a chance to see. Lois changed her mind, though. She came up with a plot she liked better, and of course, it involved me finding more dead bodies.
And then there’s the Tennessee thing. You might remember Lois, the diehard Jersey girl, is now living in a Nashville suburb. Many of her readers have been asking when she’s going to move me, another diehard Jersey girl, down south. I told her if she did, I’d go on strike and take her muse with me. After extensive negotiations, we struck a compromise, and she sent Zack and me to Tennessee on our honeymoon.
Since Zack had an upcoming assignment to shoot a magazine spread on Tennessee wineries, she combined the assignment with our honeymoon, making it a working honeymoon. Convenient, huh? Maybe for her plot purposes, but it certainly wasn’t the relaxing honeymoon I’d envisioned. Far from it. Wait until you read what happened within minutes of our arrival at Three Sisters Winery! Talk about a double whammy!
Want a chance to win a copy of A Crafty Collage of Crime? From June 19th and running through July 2nd, Lois and I will be on a Great Escapes virtual tour where she’s giving away copies of my newest adventure. Follow the tour here to enter the Rafflecopter for a chance to win. You’ll also be able to read reviews from some of the bloggers and posts and interviews from both Lois and me.
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 12
Wherever crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack goes, murder and mayhem follow. Her honeymoon is no exception. She and new husband, photojournalist (and possible spy) Zachary Barnes, are enjoying a walk in the Tennessee woods when they stumble upon a body on the side of a creek. The dead man is the husband of one of the three sisters who own the winery and guest cottages where Anastasia and Zack are vacationing.
When the local sheriff sets his sights on the widow as the prime suspect, her sisters close ranks around her. The three siblings are true-crime junkies, and thanks to a podcaster who has produced an unauthorized series about her, Anastasia’s reputation for solving murders has preceded her to the bucolic hamlet. The sisters plead for her help in finding the real killer. As Anastasia learns more about the women and their business, a host of suspects emerge, including several relatives, a relentless land developer, and even the sisters themselves.
Meanwhile, Anastasia becomes obsessed with discovering the podcaster’s identity. Along with knowing about Anastasia’s life as a reluctant amateur sleuth, the podcaster has divulged details of Anastasia’s personal life. Someone has betrayed Anastasia’s trust, and she’s out to discover the identity of the culprit.
Craft project included.
Buy Links
The third audiobook, Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, is now available through Audible, iTunes, and Amazon. Better yet, Lois has a select number of both US and UK promo codes for free downloads from Audible. If you prefer to listen to your mysteries rather than read them, post a comment to the blog for a chance to win one of the promo codes. All Lois, Alex, and I ask in return is that when you’re finished listening, you post a review on Audible and wherever else you review. Happy listening!
Revenge of the Crafty Corpse
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 3
Anastasia Pollack’s dead louse of a spouse has left her with more bills than you can shake a crochet hook at. Teaching craft classes at her mother-in-law’s assisted living center seems like an easy way to supplement her meager income. But when Lyndella Wegner—a 98-year-old know-it-all with a penchant for ruffles and lace—turns up dead, Anastasia’s cantankerous mother-in-law becomes the prime suspect in her murder. Upon discovering that Lyndella’s scandalous craft projects—and her scandalous behavior—made her plenty of enemies, Anastasia sets out to find the real killer before her mother-in-law ends up behind bars.
Buy Links
For this latest book, Lois has veered from being inspired by actual crimes and human-interest stories, to creating a plot that actually revolves around a yet unsolved real-life crime that took place in Boston in 1990. Like most crime junkies, Lois has been fascinated for years with the burglary that took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on St. Patrick’s Day of that year. It’s still considered the largest art heist in history. To this day, not only haven’t the perpetrators been caught, but none of the artworks have ever been recovered. Hampering the ongoing investigation is that many of the suspects have since died.
When Lois was mulling ideas for this next book in the series, she decided to focus the plot on the museum heist. But how do you tie a factual thirty-two-year-old crime in Boston into the plot of a contemporary cozy mystery series that takes place in New Jersey?
That’s the beauty of writing fiction rather than true crime. Lois invented some new characters, changed the names of others (to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent), and wove various events from the actual crime into the plot that became Guilty as Framed.
Too bad along the way she couldn’t have also solved the actual mystery of the missing paintings. There’s still a huge outstanding award for information leading to their recovery.
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 11
When an elderly man shows up at the home of reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack, she’s drawn into the unsolved mystery of the greatest art heist in history.
Boston mob boss Cormac Murphy has recently been released from prison. He doesn’t believe Anastasia’s assertion that the man he’s looking for doesn’t live at her address and attempts to muscle his way into her home. His efforts are thwarted by Anastasia’s fiancé Zack Barnes.
A week later, a stolen SUV containing a dead body appears in Anastasia’s driveway. Anastasia believes Murphy is sending her a message. It’s only the first in a series of alarming incidents, including a mugging, a break-in, another murder, and the discovery of a cache of jewelry and an etching from the largest museum burglary in history.
But will Anastasia solve the mystery behind these shocking events before she falls victim to a couple of desperate thugs who will stop at nothing to get what they want?
Guilty as Framed is currently available for pre-order.
Buy Links
By Anastasia Pollack
Several years ago, a producer expressed interest in the eponymous series author Lois Winston writes about me. This producer pitched the idea to the production company where she worked. Everyone was onboard. Lois met with the owner and two producers, and they optioned The Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. They then set about hiring a writer to create a treatment to pitch the idea to various networks. This production company had already created many movies and series for a variety of cable networks. I was over the moon!
Needless to say, the production company struck out. I knew I was too much of a sassy Jersey Girl for Hallmark mysteries, but I really thought one of the other networks would enjoy getting to know me. But as of now, I won’t be ready for my closeup anytime soon. However, since hope springs eternal, I thought I’d share with you my dream cast.
As for Zack, Lois has described him as someone whose DNA cavorted in the same primordial pool as Hugh Jackman, Pierce Brosnan, and Antonio Banderas. I’d take any of those hunks, but she’s pushing for Hugh Jackman because the guy can sing and dance. To my knowledge, Zack is neither a singer nor a dancer, and I should know, right? But if you know anything about my author, you know she’d be perfectly happy spending the rest of her life on Broadway—and I don’t mean Broadway, Nashville.
The remainder of the cast gets a bit tricky because I’d have to fiddle with the space/time continuum. I’d love to see Mama played by Ellen Burstyn but the Ellen Burstyn of the 1980s.
Unfortunately, two of my other choices are no longer with us. So I’d have to fiddle with the universe even more to make these casting choices work. If you ever watched The Sopranos, you’ll know Nancy Marchand, who played Tony’s mother Livia Soprano, would be a perfect Lucille. And Estelle Getty, Sophia from The Golden Girls, would have been perfect as Harriet Kleinhample.
As for Nick, Alex, Sophie, and Sophie’s dad Shane, I haven’t pinned those down yet. Any suggestions?
P.S.: Ralph has demanded to play himself, claiming Hollywood would have a hard time finding another African Grey parrot with as much knowledge of Shakespeare.
Lois Winston, the author who always delights in placing me in situations where I find myself dealing with murder and mayhem has done it again. While everyone else spent the pandemic learning how to make artisanal sourdough bread, she was hard at work on the next book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series--the 10th! This time she's got me dealing with dead bodies at a conference where I'm teaching needlework workshops and judging a needlework competition.
Stitch, Bake, Die! will be available Oct. 4th, but you can pre-order your copy now.
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 10
With massive debt, a communist mother-in-law, a Shakespeare-quoting parrot, and a photojournalist boyfriend who may or may not be a spy, crafts editor Anastasia Pollack already juggles too much in her life. So she’s not thrilled when her magazine volunteers her to present workshops and judge a needlework contest at the inaugural conference of the NJ chapter of the Stitch and Bake Society, a national organization of retired professional women. At least her best friend and cooking editor Cloris McWerther has also been roped into similar duties for the culinary side of the 3-day event taking place on the grounds of the exclusive Beckwith Chateau Country Club.
Marlene Beckwith, wife of the multi-millionaire pharmaceutical magnate and country club owner, is both the chapter president and conference chairperson. The only thing greater than her ego is her sense of entitlement. She hates to lose at anything and fully expects to win both the needlework and baking competitions.
When Anastasia and Cloris arrive at the conference, they discover cash bribes in their registration packets. The Society members, few of whom are fans of Marlene, stick up for the accused and instead suggest that Marlene orchestrated the bribes to eliminate her stiffest competition.
The next morning when Marlene is found dead, Anastasia questions whether she really died peacefully in her sleep. After Marlene’s husband immediately has her cremated, Anastasia once again finds herself back in reluctant amateur sleuth mode.
With the help of Cloris, Marlene’s personal assistant Rhetta, and a laptop someone will stop at nothing to find, Anastasia soon unravels evidence of insurance scams, medical fraud, an opioid ring, long-buried family secrets, and too many possible suspects. And that’s before she stumbles over the body of yet another member of the Stitch and Bake Society.
Can Anastasia piece together the various clues before she becomes the killer’s next target?
Crafting tips included.
Pre-order now. Available 10/04/21
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| Anastasia's House |
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| Floor Plan |
And in case you’re interested in what I really look
like, think Tina Fey. The cool thing is, Publishers
Weekly once said I was as “deadpan droll as Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon” in their
starred review of Assault With a DeadlyGlue Gun. Little did they realize at the time I’m also her doppelganger—minus the hairy
man-arms Photo-shopped on the cover of her book!
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| Author Lois Winston and a mop doll at the Midnight Ink booth at Bouchercon |
Cathy is an Occupational Therapist and freelance writer. Her short story “Afterward”, published in the Chrysalis Reader was nominated for the 2007 Pushcart Prize – Best of Small Presses. She has had short stories published in the Mom Writer’s Literary Magazine, r-kv-r-y Quarterly, The Literary Bone, Touched By Wonder Anthology, and was a finalist in the “Family Matters” competition of Glimmer Train Magazine; as well as a two article series in Cabin Life Magazine. Read more about Cathy at her website. -- AP
