Little Bookshop of Murder: A Beach Reads Mystery
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books (September 8, 2020)
Hardcover

Synopsis

A Shakespearean scholar inherits a beachside bookshop–and a murder mystery–in this delightful new cozy series for fans of Kate Carlisle and Ellery Adams.

 

Summer Merriweather’s career as a Shakespeare professor hangs by a bookbinder’s thread. Academic life at her Virginia university is a viper’s pit, so Summer spends her summer in England, researching a scholarly paper that, with any luck, will finally get her published, impress the Dean, and save her job. But her English idyll ends when her mother, Hildy, shuffles off her mortal coil from an apparent heart attack.

Returning to Brigid’s Island, NC, for the funeral, Summer is impatient to settle the estate, sell her mom’s embarrassingly romance-themed bookstore, Beach Reads, and go home. But as she drops by Beach Reads, Summer finds threatening notes addressed to Hildy: “Sell the bookstore or die.”

Clearly, something is rotten on Brigid’s Island. What method is behind the madness? Was Hildy murdered? The police insist there’s not enough evidence to launch a murder investigation. Instead, Summer and her Aunt Agatha screw their courage to the sticking place and start sleuthing, with the help of Hildy’s beloved book club. But there are more suspects on Brigid’s Island than are dreamt of in the Bard’s darkest philosophizing. And if Summer can’t find the villain, the town will be littered with a Shakespearean tragedy’s worth of corpses–including her own.

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Guest Post

We welcome Maggie to StoreyBook Reviews today and she shares with us one of her pet peeves, which happens to be one of mine too!

One of my pet peeves is book snobbery. Whether it is a literary book lover putting down a romance reader, or a mystery reader rolling their eyes at romances, I don’t like it. It’s none of anybody’s business what other people read and if they don’t invite your comment and opinion, keep yours to yourself. So why did I make my new main character, Summer Merriweather a book snob? Because like all interesting characters, if you scratch the surface of her, there’s more to her traits than meets the eye.

Her mom, Hildy, owned “Beach Reads,” a bookstore specializing in romances and mysteries. Summer was commandeered each summer to work at the bookstore and to share her mom with the customers and the book community she was such a vibrant part of. When summer discovered Shakespeare at school, and understood his plays, and loved his language, it set her mind, body, and soul on fire. Hildy didn’t carry Shakespeare at the bookstore. “Who wants to read Shakespeare at the beach?” She’d say.

So you see, there is a lot to unpack there in just that one paragraph. So when Hildy, summer’s mom, passes away mysteriously and leaves the bookstore to Summer, she faces a conundrum. She’s broke, her career is not what she expected, and her mom’s book friends were there with open arms. They asked Summer to attend a book group meeting in honor of Hildy, so she read the assigned romance, at first, gritting her teeth, but as the story unfolds, she surprisingly finds herself enjoying it.

By the end of the book, while Summer is not an avid romance reader, she’s no longer quite the book snob she was. And, as the series continues, I hope she grows and learns to love all genres.

About the Author

Maggie Blackburn is the author of the Cora Crafts mysteries and the Cumberland Creek mysteries under another pen name. Her books have been selected as finalists for an Agatha Award and a Daphne du Maurier Award and as a Top 10 Beach Reads by Woman’s World. She has also been short-listed for the Virginia Library People’s Choice Award. She is the mother of two young women who are off following their dreams in the music business. She currently lives in Waynesboro, VA, and works at the University of Virginia as a development associate.

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