March Coming Attractions: Spring Forward Edition

 by Sunny Frazier

Daylight Savings Time means longer days to read outside, maskless and in warmer weather. Enjoy these get-aways to England, resorts, and beaches!

Image Source Penguin

There’s a bit of blackmail going on when a retired Hollywood actor receives letters threatening his wife’s life unless he treads the boards again. It’s The Everest Assignment for Janet Markham Bennett and her ex-spy husband. Asked to tag along with the couple as they promote a London museum exhibit and fly to NYC to open a broadway show. Can our intrepid investigators keep them safe and find out who is making threats? This is the fifth Janet Markham Bennett Cozy Thriller by Diana Xarissa.

Hop on board a fledgling series with the second book in Vicki Delany’s Catskill Summer Resort mysteries. It’s the 1950s and a famous director has picked Haggerman’s Catskills Resort as a shooting location. Resort manager Elizabeth Grady resents his demands and how he undermines her authority. But it’s A Deadly Director’s Cut when he is poisoned during dinner. Now Elizabeth needs to find the killer to save the resort. Suspects are an aging movie star, a harried producer, and victims of his wrath.

Image Source Kensington

She hasn’t acted in almost thirty years, but Poppy Montgomery finds herself on a film set in the Joshua Tree National Park, California. As owner and private investigator of the Desert Flowers Detective Agency, she takes on the task of keeping watch on a rising starlet with a stalker. When the woman is found smothered to death in her trailer, it harkens back to the Pillow Talk Killer operating when she was a young actress. As Poppy, her boyfriend and the agency crew go stalking the stalker, co-stars and the production crew are looking suspicious. Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer is the third Desert Flowers Mystery by Lee Hollis.

Let’s go from the desert to the beach in Charm, North Carolina. Everly Swan, owner of the Sun, Sand and Tea Café and amateur sleuth, believes she’s carrying a family curse when it comes to love. A historian shows up looking into her family’s history but winds up dead in a wishing well. This enforces Everly’s fears that the curse is spreading. Her detective boyfriend takes the case to prove there’s no curse. Pleading the Fish is the seventh in Bree Baker’s Seaside Cafe Mysteries.

Image Source Kensinton

It’s Three Shots to the Wind in the third installation of Sherry Harris’s Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon mysteries. The former librarian left Chicago’s cold weather for Emerald Cove, Florida. While pouring drinks at the saloon, she spots a plane towing a banner that reads: I LOVE YOU CHLOE JACKSON. Next, a bouquet of lilacs are delivered to the bar, followed by her favorite sparkling wine. The gifts aren’t from her boyfriend but from her ex. But when his body is found floating in a lake and clutching a photo of her, the current beau is the prime suspect. Bottoms up!

Jumping from one cove to another, we wind up in South Cove, California. There we find Jill Gardner, owner of Coffee, Books, and More. She’s in love with the Chief of Police and excited about their engagement party. But, when Jill picks up her dress, there’s a corpse in the shop, and the new owner is acting weird. It’s Wedding Bell Blues in Lynn Cahoon’s thirteenth Tourist Trap Mysteries. 

BEST OF THE REST

Jacqueline Winsdpear: A Sunlit Weapon — Maisie Dobbs #17

Miranda James: Hiss Me Deadly— Cat in the Stacks Mystery #15

Rita Mae Brown: Thrill of the Hunt — ”Sister” Jane #14

Margaret Loudan: Peril on the Page — The Open Book Mysteries #3

Nancy Coco: A Matter of Hive and Death — Oregon Honeycomb Mysteries #2

Molly MacRae: Argyles and Arsenic — Highland Bookshop Mystery #5

Gigi Pandian: Under Lock & Skeleton Key — Secret Staircase Mystery #1

Susan Hill: A Change of Circumstance — A Simon Serrailer Case #11 

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section in Kings River Life and in our mystery category here on KRL News & Reviews. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. And check out our new mystery podcast which features mystery short stories and first chapters read by local actors! A new episode goes up next week.

Sunny Frazier worked with an undercover narcotics team in Fresno County for 17 years before turning her energies to writing the Christy Bristol Astrology Mysteries. Based in the San Joaquin Valley of California, the novels are inspired by real cases and 35 years of casting horoscopes.