Blog Tour for Verity Bright’s A MIDWINTER MURDER

December 4, 2024November 30, 2024 / drbethnolan / Leave a comment

If you know me, you know I love a good, historical mystery, and this series with Lady Eleanor is so fun to read. It reminds me of an Agatha Christie – lots of good suspects and everyone is gathering on estates and such in England in the past. Plus Lady Eleanor has a sweet doggo – what’s there not to like?

It’s hard to believe that this title is number 20 in the series. I have read them in order as they came out, but you can read them as stand alones, too. This one had a Christmas theme — fun reading!

Thank you for my copy and for having me as part of the tour!

Here’s the scoop:

Homemade baubles, reindeer-shaped cookies and snowy walks across the rolling moors… but Lady Swift’s festive plans are ruined when a body turns up!

Winter 1924. When Lady Eleanor Swift unexpectedly finds herself a guest of the reclusive Duke of Auldwyke, she’s determined to enjoy Christmas with all the trimmings at his sprawling manor house. And that includes kisses under the mistletoe and cozying up by the fire with her fiancé, dashing detective Hugh Seldon.

Instead, the season of goodwill turns frosty as she finds the Duke’s studious secretary, Mr Porritt, dead in the storeroom. Clasped in his chilly hand is a golden pendant in the shape of a rose. The Duke denies ever having seen the necklace before. But Eleanor can see the lies in his eyes… Did it belong to his mysteriously absent wife?

Hugh and Eleanor must ditch relaxing with hot cocoa in favour of interviewing the Duke’s holiday guests. Every suspect has a secret they’d kill to keep: the socialite with the false name, the Sir with a questionable inheritance and the husband hiding a crack in his marriage.

As the blizzard outside rages, Auldwyke Hall becomes cut off. Trapped by the snow, Eleanor and Hugh must skate around the increasingly secretive Duke to unwrap the identity of the killer. But does the answer to the secretary’s murder lie with a ghost of Christmas past? And when an attempt is made on the Duke’s life too, they realise the killer is closer than they think…

A gripping and twisty Golden Age murder mystery set in a country house on the Yorkshire moors, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, T.E. Kinsey and Lee Strauss!

Author Bio:

Confident woman at office with laptop computer, mobile phone, and schedule notebook.Gradients, Blending tool, Clipping mask is used.

Verity Bright is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing partnership that has spanned a quarter of a century. Starting out writing high-end travel articles and books, they published everything from self-improvement to humour, before embarking on their first historical mystery. They are the authors of the fabulous Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery series, set in the 1920s.

https://twitter.com/BrightVerity

Buy Link: NOT affiliated with BBNB

Amazon: https://geni.us/B0DH4SVQ3Wsocial

Blog Tour for: The Kensington Kidnap by Katie Gayle

December 4, 2020December 6, 2020 / drbethnolan / Leave a comment

I’m thrilled to take part in the Bookouture Books-on-Tour blog tour for The Kensington Kidnap. This was a great cozy mystery that I really enjoyed. I love the main character Pip, and I be thrilled to read more mysteries featuring her. She reminded me a bit of my favorite sleuth Agatha Raisin — sometimes fumbling, always intrepid, and laugh out loud funny!

This book was written by two authors, but the final product is seamless.

Highly recommended if you enjoy cozy mysteries! Thank you for making me part of the tour and for my kindle copy!

Here’s the overview:

A missing teenager, a mysterious cult and a case of mistaken identity – just another day’s work for Epiphany Bloom.

Epiphany ‘Pip’ Bloom is down on her luck. She can barely afford cat food, and just because Most has three legs doesn’t mean he eats any less. So she absolutely can’t afford to mess up her latest temp job. But when she walks through the door of the private investigation firm, her new boss mistakes her for a missing persons expert. He then charges her with finding Matty Price – the teenage son of two A-list celebrities – who has mysteriously disappeared from his home in Kensington.

It ought to be a disaster, but Pip reckons it’s actually an opportunity. She’s always been curious (nosy, her mother calls it) and has an uncanny knack for being at the wrong place at the right time (she doesn’t want to know what her mother thinks of that). After years of trying to find something she’s good at, has Pip managed to walk straight into the job she was born to do?

She owes it to herself and poor missing Matty to find out.

But searching for Matty takes Pip into the strange, intimidating world of the rich and famous. And it soon becomes clear that some of these people’s love for themselves doesn’t extend to their fellow humans.

As Pip investigates further, she realises the question isn’t whether Matty ran away – it’s whether Pip will find him alive and make it home safely herself…

An absolutely brilliant, light-hearted cozy mystery for fans of M.C. Beaton, T E Kinsey, Lauren Elliott and Joanne Fluke, featuring an irresistible new heroine.

Author Bio:
Katie Gayle is the writing partnership of best-selling South African writers, Kate Sidley and Gail Schimmel. Kate and Gail have, between them, written over ten books of various genres, but with Katie Gayle, they both make their debut in the cozy mystery genre. Both Gail and Kate live in Johannesburg, with husbands, children, dogs and cats. Unlike their sleuth Epiphany Bloom, neither of them have ever stolen a cat from the vet.
https://twitter.com/KatieGayleBooks

Buy Links : These are not affiliated with BBNB Amazon: https://bit.ly/396HfGhApple: https://apple.co/33eKAi1Kobo: https://bit.ly/35pAIF0Google: https://bit.ly/2FobH1R

A Question of Devotion by Anita Kulina

March 31, 2017March 25, 2017 / drbethnolan / 2 Comments

Question of Devotion Tour

Here I am today as part of the Virtual Author Book Tours, chatting it up about Anita Kulina’s new cozy mystery: A Question of Devotion.

Here’s the scoop on the story:

Question of Devotion by Anita Kulina

Publisher: Brandt Street Press (November 8, 2016)
Category: Cozy Mystery, Women Sleuths
Tour Date: March & April, 2017
ISBN: 978-0974260761
Available in: Print & ebook, 256 Pages

Then she saw it – a sheet of paper in the mailbox, underneath the mail. It was white with large black letters and said LEAVE IT ALONE.

Mrs. B has a quiet life, and she likes it that way. Morning pinochle games at St. Mary’s Senior Center. Afternoon lunches with Myrtle, Anne and Rose. Peaceful evenings with a cup of coffee and the classic movie channel.

But one day she wakes to a phone call, which leads to consequences she could never have foreseen. Secrets snowball and threaten to change the neighborhood of Burchfield forever. Someone has to make things right. It’s up to Mrs. B.

Praise for Question of Devotion by Anita Kulina

“If you can picture Columbo when he’s retired, and spending more time in church and the kitchen, and Polish, and wearing a babushka, you have a sense of the down-home detective that Anita Kulina has created. I love Mrs. B!”-Brian O’Neill, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist and author of The Paris of Appalachia

“A Question of Devotion is a comforting snapshot of an aging population, where the way of life is still bound by churches, neighborhoods, and countries of origin. Its heroine, Mrs. B, is not just an old woman living out her twilight years at the senior center, but an able detective engaged in solving a mystery as cozy as cocoa and afghans on a cold Western Pennsylvania day.”-Kathryn Miller Haines, author of the Rosie Winter Mysteries and the Iris Anderson Mysteries

About Anita Kulina

Anita Kulina Photo.jpg

Like most people who love to write, Anita Kulina has been telling stories since she was old enough to hold a pen. Her first publication was in the letters-to-the-editor column of Adventure Comics #341. Nowadays, much of her work centers on the rich and colorful lives of Pittsburgh’s working poor. Since Anita spent much of her life in those ranks, it’s a subject dear to her heart.

Her book Millhunks and Renegades won her the Achievement in Literature award from the community of Hazelwood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is currently at work on the next two Mrs. B books.

Website http://www.brandtstreetpress.com/books/mrsb1.html
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/anita.k.smith
Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/anita-kulina-smith-4094812?trk=hp-identity-name

Buy Question of Devotion by Anita Kulina

Amazon
Barnes&Noble
IndieBound
BookDepository

This was an easy and enjoyable read. I just loved the character of Mrs. B — a sort of Miss Marple who leads a simple and quiet life. There’s a subplot in here about her relationship with the little girl across the street — sweet. I see that it is the start of a series.

Anita Kulina is a new author to me, but she is not new to writing. She has two more Mrs. B books in the works.

Thank you for making me part of the tour and for my e-copy!

vabt-highresolution (1).jpg