fuonlyknew

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A Hill To Dye On

A Clear Creek Mystery

by Rebecca McKinnon

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A Hill to Dye On (Clear Creek Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting – A small town in the Rocky Mountains
Independently Published (October 13, 2022)
Number of Pages: ~250
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B6D7BXL4

Summer has made its way up the mountain to Clear Creek, and with the new season, the town is offering a slew of summer classes at the community center. Happy to participate, Jemma and her yarn shop sponsor a fiber-dying class taught by her oldest friend, Kitty.

When a mysterious man walks into class, something about him pulls Jemma into a tangle. Learning Kitty once knew him, Jemma has questions — but her friend is staying mum. Then Jemma goes on an early-morning walk and discovers the man dead.

This time, Jemma’s determined to stay out of the investigation — until she learns that because of a past she’s been hiding, Kitty is the main suspect! Unwilling to turn her back on her friend, Jemma starts looking for a dropped stitch.

Because somewhere, there’s a person with dye on their hands.

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Enjoy this peek inside:

I hovered in the open door, trying not to draw attention to myself, or to the fact that I was late.

“Be gentle.” Kitty, one of my best friends, had her fingers wrapped around a woman’s arm, slowing her movements as she pressed the mini practice skein into the water. “You don’t want to felt it.”

“If that girl looked any happier, she’d drop her harp plumb through the cloud.”

I stifled a laugh as I turned to Emmilene. “You do have a way of saying things, but you’re right. Kitty’s practically glowing. She’s a great teacher.”

Emmilene nodded.

We eased into the room as Kitty led the class through the next steps.

“Add in your citric acid and stir it so it dissolves.” Kitty offered a sassy grin. “You can use vinegar as the mordant, but I didn’t think the weight lifting class down the hall would appreciate breathing the smell of it while they worked on their muscles.”

Giggles rippled through the class, and I noticed a couple of ladies eye the doorway behind me as if hoping to catch a glimpse.

Emmilene’s efforts to put up walls in the unused portion of the old equipment building that housed the community center had allowed anyone in town to host classes there. Some, like Kitty’s yarn dying class, were sponsored by the shops or restaurants, and others were taught by residents who wouldn’t otherwise have much of a chance to contribute to the community.

The weight room had become a favorite with visitors to the resort down the road as well as with the locals, and a person would have to be blind not to notice the ogling it had spawned.

“That’s my cue to head to the gym. I want to lay my eyes on Grant’s muscles.” Emmilene and her husband didn’t need an excuse to make doe eyes. They flirted like teenagers in love for the first time instead of a couple who’d been married for a decade or more. “Looks like Kitty’s class is going smoothly, but if you need anything, y’all let me know.”

I waved as Emmilene slipped out the door, then I focused on Kitty.

She walked her class through adding the dye to their pots, making teaching look easy.

She was a born leader, when she wasn’t hiding behind her worries — or her brother.

Maybe I should hire her to teach more than this one class.

Or I could steal her from Daniel’s nanobrewery completely and have her help me in the yarn store when she wasn’t teaching.

“Your skeins have been soaking long enough. Go ahead and lift them out of your tubs and set them into the dye pot. Don’t forget your gloves.” Kitty pulled on a pair of long yellow dish gloves, then lifted her own unwound skein from the soak and set it in her pot of dye. “These mini skeins don’t tangle too badly, but it’s a good idea to get in the habit of tucking the yarn around the edges of the pan so when you move to full skeins you’re less likely to have a knotted mess on your hands.”

Kitty walked along the tables as her students transferred their yarn from one container to the other. She beamed at the woman who kept trying to rush the process. “Remember to be gentle as you press the yarn to submerge it.”

Everyone watched for bubbles as their hot plates heated the dye, and I started to back out the door. Kitty didn’t need me hovering, even if I enjoyed seeing my friend so sure of herself.

I grinned and waved as she glanced my direction.

Kitty froze. Her eyes widened, and the color drained from her face.

I frowned. Was she worried I might be disappointed with how the class was going? She was doing a great job.

Another step backward and I ran into something hard. Hands landed on my shoulders, keeping me from falling over.

“Careful.” The deep voice was tense, as if he was trying to blot out any emotion.

I turned. The man was built like a mountain, all muscles and valleys. Something in his look set me on edge. “Can I help you?”

He shook his head, his eyes glued to something behind me. “I’ve found who I’m looking for.”

I followed his gaze.

Kitty.

She knew him, and from the way her hands were shaking, she didn’t want him here.

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About Rebecca McKinnon

Rebecca McKinnon enjoys playing with her imaginary friends and introducing them to others through her writing. She dreams of living in the middle of nowhere but has been unable to find an acceptable location that wouldn’t require crossing an ocean.

Author Links:

Website    Instagram    Facebook    GoodReads

Purchase Link – Amazon 

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October 15 – Guatemala Paula Loves to Read – SPOTLIGHT, EXCERPT

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October 22 – Lady Hawkeye – SPOTLIGHT  

October 23 – #BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee Blog – SPOTLIGHT

October 23 – BookishKelly2020 – SPOTLIGHT

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Ballistics At The Ballet

A Musical Murder Mystery

by B. J. Bowen

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Ballistics at the Ballet (A Musical Murder Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting – Colorado
Camel Press (September 14, 2022)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 248 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1684920329
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1684920327
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09X3M6ZVL

When temperamental conductor Felix Underhayes is killed before a rehearsal of the Nutcracker ballet, everyone realizes the show must go on. At an already crazy time of year, things become more complicated when Emily Wilson’s nephew, percussionist Charlie McRae, is accused of the crime. Emily’s sister, Kathleen, and their mother arrive to help prove Charlie’s innocence, but in spite of their best intentions, their efforts do more to hinder the police investigation than to help. To secure justice for her nephew, can Emily juggle performances and family dynamics, while she dodges a demented killer who wants to silence her?

About B.J. Bowen

B.J. Bowen is a musician and free-lance writer whose love of music was awakened by her mother, who played the flute. After discovering her lips were the wrong shape and failing miserably as a flute player, at the age of eleven Ms. Bowen began studying oboe, and has since performed and recorded on both oboe and English horn with professional symphonies and cham[1]ber groups throughout Mexico and Colorado. Her inspirational articles have appeared in Unity Magazine and Daily Word, and she won Honorable Mention in the 2018 Focus: Eddy Awards for her article, “Letting Go with Grace,” published in Unity Magazine. Drawing on her quirky fellow musicians and orchestral experiences, she created the mystery series, “Musical Murders.” She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with two canine friends, and has a song for any occasion.

Author Links: Website / Facebook / BookBub

Purchase Links – Amazon – B&N – Target

EXCERPT

As I opened the stage door, I heard Felix shout, “No!” followed quickly by a shot. My ears rang with the sound. It had to have been close…

A few fraught seconds later the exit door slammed, the ensuing silence broken only by Felix’s moaning. I decided the threat had gone and moved across the entry and down the hallway, toward Felix’s dressing room.

The prima ballerina’s door was closed. Next to it, the premier danseur emerged from his dressing room. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know.” I crept cautiously forward, the dancer following.

The next door, Felix’s, stood open. He lay on the floor, groaning. And bleeding.

The danseur turned ashen and his chin trembled. “What . . . what . . .”

I spotted a cummerbund hung over a chair. “Take that cummerbund and press it over the wound on Felix’s chest. I’ll call 911.”

I pulled the phone from my pocket. “Send an ambulance and police to Fleisher Hall. A man’s been shot.”

The danseur knelt on one side of Felix, pressing the cummerbund to the conductor’s chest. I knelt on the other, holding Felix’s outstretched arm, his hand in mine. “It’s okay.” I tried to reassure him. “Help will be here soon.”

Felix whispered, “Tell her she’s the only one . . .”

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Author Guest Post

Many Musings, Mostly Musical: The Show Must Go On

By B.J. Bowen

    Every performing artist knows the show must go on. Partly, it’s a financial directive. The group would go broke if the performance were canceled and ticket money refunded. But partly, too, it’s an existential motive. Artists exist to share their talents, inspiration, support, and vision with the audience. Whatever the reasons, in the second of my Musical Murders series, Ballistics at the Ballet, the symphony is accompanying the ballet in performances of the Nutcracker. When conductor Felix Underhayes is murdered before a rehearsal, the show must go on.

    How do I know this is what would happen? Because it happens in real life.

    Probably the most extreme example of this is the band of the Titanic, which, according to accounts of survivors, assembled on the deck of the doomed ship and played the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee” as it sank. Accounts of performers working around glitches, malfunctioning props, and unexpected occurrences are legion. Even during the pandemic, theatre groups were giving performances virtually.

    I spent nineteen years as a symphony musician. In my own experience, too, the show has gone on. In one instance, the orchestra had just begun the third movement of Mahler’s Symphony #4, which is a beautiful, elegant, singing example of the composer’s art. We had just gotten to the oboe solo when a horrible, bone-shaking roar erupted. The conductor thought a bomb had gone off and stretched his arms out to protect the violins, which were on either side of him. But the oboe? He went on playing until the conductor cut him off and began the movement again. The show went on, although I, and probably many of my colleagues, were shaking. The cause of the sound? Feedback like you’ve never heard. Feedback amplified several times through the error of a recording engineer, and frightening in its intensity and power.

    The show went on, too, the night of 9-11. Yo Yo Ma had been contracted to play a fundraising concert with our orchestra. He had, fortunately for the symphony, flown in a day earlier. After the attacks happened that morning, the Symphony Board met with Mr. Ma and the conductor and determined that we would play the concert. But the program changed. We played elegiac pieces and dedicated them to the victims and first responders of the tragedy: Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber,

and Air on a G String by Johann Sebastian Bach being the most memorable. I was playing English horn in that concert, sitting next to the back of the cello section. At one point I looked up and recognized Mr. Ma, sitting anonymously in the back of the section, playing alongside the orchestra’s cellists. Unheard of. He later played his concerto in the second half. His comment—“It felt like I needed to be beside my fellow musicians.”

    So Emily Wilson and her colleagues are following a time-honored tradition and path when performances continue under the Assistant Conductor. Do you understand the thinking in taking this route? Would you have done the same? Answer below.

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Deuce

A Jax Diamond Mystery

by Gail Meath

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DEUCE – A Jax Diamond Mystery
Cozy Mystery – Roaring Twenties
3rd in Series
Setting – Millbury, Massachusetts
Independently Published (September 20, 2022)
Number of Pages: 200 pages
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09WP9FG3C

One for sorrow, two for spice triggers a game of three blind mice.

While vacationing in New England, PI Jax Diamond and his courageous canine partner, Ace, bite off more than they can chew when two small town deaths reveal two big time killers, and the locals don’t take too kindly to strangers.

Laura Graystone, Broadway star, auto expert, and Jax’s heartthrob, is once again front and center digging for clues while trying to ditch an old boyfriend. That is, until her brother becomes Jax’s prime suspect. Then all hell breaks loose, and Ace is left in the lurch, tracking down leads with his new sidekick, Susie.

A crazy duet of crimes sends Jax, Laura and Ace into a tailspin in small-town USA during the Roaring Twenties. Where no one is above the law, everyone is a suspect, and time is running out before the clock strikes one.

About Gail Meath

Award-winning author Gail Meath writes historical romance novels that will whisk you away to another time and place in history where you will meet fascinating characters, both fictional and real, who will capture your heart and soul. Meath loves writing about little or unknown people, places, and events in history, rather than relying on the typical stories and settings.

The subgenres of her books vary from action-packed westerns, plot-twisting murder mysteries, and biographies of powerful women who defied the strict rules of society fighting for the freedom of their countries. Currently, she is spending all her time writing her new, fun Roaring Twenties Cozy Mystery series, Jax Diamond Mysteries.

Author Links: Amazon / Website / Goodreads / Facebook / BookBub / Instagram / Twitter

Purchase Link:  Amazon 

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Ghost Cat On The Midway

A Tenth Life Cozy Mystery

by Mollie Hunt

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Ghost Cat on the Midway (A Tenth Life Cozy Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting – Ghost Cat on the Midway (A Tenth Life Cozy Mystery)
Independently Published (August 29, 2022)
Print length ‏ : ‎ 195 pages
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B8WGLNMT

This summer, there’s trouble brewing at the Cove County Fair.

Camelia Collins, Ocean Cove’s most recent resident over seventy years of age, is all set to go to the fair! The smell of the popcorn, the roar of the crowd, the Ferris wheel and the pony shows—things she remembers from childhood and looks forward to experiencing again.

But something’s up at the Cove County Fair. When Camelia meets the keeper of a rescued tiger, she could not have predicted that keeper would soon be dead and the tiger gone missing. A rogue band of aggressive animal activists seems the obvious culprits, but they deny the act.

Only one entity knows the truth—the ghost cat Soji, but will the capricious spirit decide to come forward before someone else dies?

About Mollie Hunt

Cat Writer Mollie Hunt is the award-winning author of two cozy series, the Crazy Cat Lady Mysteries and the Tenth Life Mysteries. Her Cat Seasons Sci-Fantasy Tetralogy features extraordinary cats saving the world. Mollie also pens a bit of cat poetry.

Mollie is a member of the Oregon Writers’ Colony, Sisters in Crime, the Cat Writers’ Association, and Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA). She lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and a varying number of cats.

Author Links: Website / Amazon / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter 

Books2Read / Goodreads / Newsletter

Purchase Link –  Amazon

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September 26 – Socrates Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

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September 28 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – REVIEW

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September 30 – Literary Gold – AUTHOR INTERVIEW

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October 1 – Books a Plenty Book Reviews – REVIEW, CHARACTER INTERVIEW

October 1 – Reading Authors Network – SPOTLIGHT

October 2 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

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For a list of my reviews go HERE.

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A Night To Remember

An Adairsville Heritage Mystery

by Danny And Wanda Pelfrey

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A Night to Remember An Adairsville Heritage Mystery
Cozy Mystery
2nd in series
Setting – Georgia
CrossLink Publishing (September 14, 2022)
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 209 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1633574229
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1633574229
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09Z1L8YL7

Riley Gordan is back in Adairsville, Georgia anticipating a leisurely vacation from the rigors of law school with her college friend, Trish. Then, as part of a political plot, one of her Sunday School girls is kidnapped. Stumbling upon the abduction, Riley and her friends are drawn headfirst into a search for the girl.

Their probe leads them into a fast paced and dangerous string of encounters that include a Neanderthal named Houston, searches in some of the most hazardous places in North Georgia, a green Kia Soul, an old man with a big gun, and ultimately murder.

It is an adventure that provides some unusual twists and turns and is highlighted by a beautiful relationship between an old baseball player entering politics and a spunky adolescent who are jointly known around town as “Nate and The Kid.”

About Danny and Wanda Pelfrey

Danny and Wanda Pelfrey are graduates of Atlanta Christian College (now Point University). Danny earned a masters from Kentucky Christian University. He spent 45 years in the pastorate. Wanda served as a primary Montessori teacher for twenty-four years. They have two daughters and are blessed with five amazing grandchildren.

Wanda’s career as a writer took off shortly after college, when she started writing curriculum and educational aids for a variety of publishers. Her book, MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR CHILD’S TEACHABLE MOMENTS, published by Moody Press went through several printings and brought her a lot of attention and respect as a writer. However, she put her writing career on hold shortly thereafter to become a teacher.

Danny’s interest in writing was fostered by his wife’s love of the craft. He wrote articles for various publications, a newspaper column, and eventually three non-fiction books. Traditional publisher CrossLink released three of the four Davis Morgan Mysteries co-authored by the couple, as well as the first two books in the Adairsville Heritage Mystery series. A NIGHT TO REMEMBER is #2 in the Adairsville Heritage series.

The Pelfreys live in their little Cape Cod cottage in their small north Georgia hometown of Adairsville, Georgia which serves as the setting for their mysteries with a message. They enjoy a life that is often centered around their five grandchildren and their love for putting words on paper.

Author Links:  Webpage / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads

*Purchase Links:

Amazon    Barnes & Noble     CrossLink

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September 27 – BookishKelly2020 – SPOTLIGHT  

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Thanks so much for visiting fuonlyknew and Good Luck!

For a list of my reviews go HERE.

For a list of free eBooks updated daily go HERE

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