Congratulations to the winners of the last contest. Trisha T. from Easton, PA won Steeped in Secrets. Killer Cupid will go to Marla B. from Las Vegas, NV. The books will go out in the mail today.
This week, I have signed mysteries to give away. Ellen Byron offered to send one lucky winner a signed copy of her first Vintage Cookbook Mystery, Bayou Book Thief. The second in the series, Wined and Died in New Orleans, will be released on Feb. 7. In the first one, we meet amateur sleuth Ricki James. The young widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki’s teen mother disappeared from the hospital. Ricki’s dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, the city’s legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation – collecting vintage cookbooks – into a vocation by launching the museum’s gift shop, Miss Vee’s Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.
If you’d like to learn more about Ellen Byron/Maria DiRico’s mysteries, you can sign up for her newsletter at Cozy Mysteries | Ellen Byron | Author.
I also have a signed copy of V.M. Burns’ latest Mystery Bookshop Mystery, Bookclubbed to Death, to give away. After the local library in North Harbor, Michigan, is flooded in a storm, Sam offers her bookstore as a new venue for the Mystery Mavens Book Club. Unfortunately, she immediately runs afoul of the club leader, Delia Marshall, a book reviewer who can make or break careers—something Sam can ill afford with her debut historical mystery soon to be published. But the next morning, Sam opens her shop to find the unpleasant woman dead on the floor, bashed with a heavy—apparently lethal—tome: the Complete Works of Agatha Christie. While Sam is busy writing her latest British historical mystery in which the queen mother is suspected in the murder of a London Times correspondent, a pair of ambitious cops suspect Sam of the real-life crime. When she gathers Nano Jo and their friends from the Shady Acres Retirement Village to review the case, they discover every one of the Mavens had a motive. With her novel about to hit the stores, Sam must find out who clubbed Delia before a judge throws the book at her . . .
V.M. Burns also has a newsletter, if you’d like to sign up. You can sign up on her website, https://www.vmburns.com/.
Which signed mystery would you like to win? You can enter to win both, but I need separate entries. Email me at Lesa.Holstine@gmail.com. Your subject line should read either “Win Bayou Book Thief” or “Win Bookclubbed to Death.” Please include your name and mailing address. The giveaway will end Thursday, Feb. 2 at 5 PM CT. Entries from the U.S. only, please.
