Staging Wars (A Laura Bishop Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Publisher: Henery Press (April 28, 2020)
Hardcover: 254 pages

Synopsis

Laura Bishop’s new home staging business is growing in popularity, though not with her nemesis. Laura has long suspected established interior designer Monica Heller of sabotaging her fledgling company—and having an affair with her late husband.

When the ultra-chic Monica is caught at the scene of a murder, Laura is plenty happy to imagine her languishing in a prison cell with bedsheets far from her normal 600-thread Egyptian cotton. But her delight is short-lived.

 

When Laura’s friends land on the police’s radar, Laura must overcome her dislike of Monica to help solve the crime. Not an easy task since Laura and Monica have been at war since the second grade.

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Guest Post

Finding Pleasure

By Grace Topping

For a number of years, my family and I lived in a 1950s home with a bathroom with pink fixtures and black tile. Not a terrible combination and something we could live with, except for the garish plastic toilet seat that didn’t match the rest of the pink. So you might imagine how pleased I was after an extensive search to find a good quality toilet seat in the right shade of pink. To say it made me happy is an understatement.

So what’s so exciting about finding a pink toilet seat? What it says about me is that I can still find pleasure in little or simple things.

You might ask what that has to do with writing mysteries? On April 28, my second mystery, STAGING Wars will be released. I started the first one ten years ago, so to finally reach this point is quite thrilling. In an ideal world, it will become an instant best seller, selected by Oprah for her book club, made into a Hallmark TV movie, or optioned for Hollywood by Reece Witherspoon.

It would be great if even one of those things happened. But being realistic, I doubt my cozy mystery is going to hit the big time. It will give me pleasure hearing that people enjoyed my book, read reviews that say some good things about it (and learn from the things readers didn’t like), and be invited as a guest to some book clubs. In comparison to having my book made into a Hallmark TV movie or adapted by Hollywood, having someone say they loved my book might be a little thing. But it will give me immense pleasure. And sometimes that’s enough.

But if you hear Reece Witherspoon is looking for me, please give her my contact information.

About the Author

Grace Topping is a recovering technical writer and IT project manager, accustomed to writing lean, boring documents. Let loose to write fiction, she is now creating murder mysteries and killing off characters who remind her of some of the people she dealt with during her career. Fictional revenge is sweet. She’s using her experience helping friends stage their homes for sale as inspiration for her Laura Bishop mystery series. The series is about a woman starting a new career midlife as a home stager. The first book in the series, Staging is Murder, is a 2019 Agatha Award nominee for Best First Novel. Grace is the former vice president of the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime, and a member of the SINC Guppies and Mystery Writers of America. She lives with her husband in Northern Virginia.

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