BATTER OFF DEAD IS WOMEN’S WORLD MAGAZINE BOOK CLUB PICK OF THE WEEK!

Pick up your copy of Women’s World!!!

 This is my first Christmas in Honey Springs (because I just moved here) and I have to say that I’m very excited about participating in all the annual activities, not only personally but also professionally.

I entered Pepper into the Christmas Pawrade and so excited to see how cute he’s going to look in his  new sweater I got him from WALK IN THE BARK ANIMAL BOUTIQUE.

Everyone I know with a furry friend will be there too. We get to walk around the town square before the annual Christmas Tree lighting where my fiance, Patrick Cane, is going to be playing Santa for all the little ones. Plus I opened up a pop-up shop in the makeshift Christmas town the committee had made in the town square.

Everyone in Honey Springs will be there along with many tourist who have come to love our small southern town all year long and not just during the summer months. The tourist committee has really worked hard to get the stigma of a “lake town” out of the minds of the tourists. Honey Springs has something every season to offer everyone.

I’m looking forward to seeing all the merchants I share the newly renovated boardwalk with. Especially Otis Peavler. He owns the tattoo parlor, Odd Ink. It’s next door to my coffeehouse, THE BEAN HIVE, and he’s been very quiet lately. I sure hope he’s not getting ill. He’s up there in age and still pretty active, but I guess I just worry about him. After all, I’d heard he’d made a few people mad recently. But that’s just hearsay and around here the gossip is as hot as the coffee….if you know what I mean.

Anyways….Do you have any holiday traditions that you love? Leave a comment along with your name and email address to be entered to win a Tonya Kappes Southern Mystery tote bag along with some goodies! The winner will be announced tomorrow!

SPEND THE HOLIDAYS IN HONEY SPRINGS, KENTUCKY, where the gossip is as hot as the coffee!

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If you were to ask Bitsy, that’d be my mama, why I became a pastry chef, she’d say that it was to make her life all doom and gloom. I’m not going to lie, it was a little satisfying seeing her cringe on the inside when I strategically told her ten years ago in front of her friend at the Rumford Country Club, RCC for short, that I wasn’t going to college and heading to pastry school.

Seriously, you would too if your mama had you call her by her nickname, Bitsy, instead of calling her mom, mama, or mother. Yes. Bitsy is as southern as you can get.

Now do you blame me for getting out of our small southern town of Rumford, Kentucky right out of high school?

Becoming a pastry chef was really a dream of mine. I’d spent the better part of the past ten years going to school and moving up in my industry. Can you imagine my joy and excitement when I hired as the head pastry chef at The Manhattan, the fanciest restaurant in New York City.

It was all mine. All my creations. Then. . .he walked in as the head chef. I can’t even bring myself to say his name because I swore that after dating him for years and then moving in together and then finding him doing more than cooking food in the kitchen of The Manhattan with the hostess, I’d never let his name cross my lips.

This was how Bitsy got back into my life. She might be a hard pill to swallow, but she’s a southern mama and no matter what, she’s loyal to me to the end. With my tail tucked and a couple of weeks off work to get my head on straight, I found myself right back in Rumford where I’d tried to escape ten years ago and in my old bedroom.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, Bitsy definitely dragged me all over Rumford to all her clubs for the first few days.

“Put on some lipstick and put on some more,” she says before we walk out the door. I had to keep up the appearance even though my heart was broken, and I didn’t have an ounce of creative baking in me.

That is until Charlotte, my high school best friend who was getting married over the weekend, cake baker had quit, and she asked me to do her wedding cake. What an honor! I was all over it.

The kitchen at the Rumford Country Club seems perfect until Chef Emile’s body is discovered, sprawled near the stove, a cast iron skillet on the floor close by and Charlotte was the number one suspect.

Charlotte can be bit of a southern pill, but she’s not a murderer. I sure hope I can help her figure out who is framing her so her wedding can go off without a hitch and before I head back to my life in New York.

Besides, I can’t wait to get out of Rumford, like I was ten years ago, because Bitsy keeps telling everyone that I’m staying. . .forever!

YAY!!! I’m beyond excited to let you know A CHARMING BLEND, the short story crossover between June Heal from the USA TODAY Bestselling Magical Cures Mystery Series and the Killer Coffee Mystery Series Roxy Bloom will come head to head in a murder mystery to solve!

Here are the blurbs for the other short stories you’ll get when you purchase COZY CHRISTMAS CRIMES: 

Grab the AUTHORIZED copy of A CHARMING BLEND!! YAY!!

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Christmas Parties are Murder 
By Jenna St. James

Temp worker Amanda Adkins had no idea when she offered to bake her boss a diet cake for the office Christmas party, that someone would use her generosity to commit cold-blooded murder. But that’s exactly what happened.

When the detective in charge looks to pin the murder on Amanda, she has no choice but to enlist the help of her 75-year-old grandmother—an Army Veteran Nurse and “hidden-weapons” specialist.

Together the two ladies set out to prove Amanda’s innocence. When handsome IT expert Blake Wellington offers his help, Amanda is instantly cautious…especially when some of the clues point to Blake being the killer.

Can Amanda and her grandmother track down the killer before Detective Carlson makes good on his promise to arrest Amanda?

Or worse, instead of Christmas being the most wonderful time of the year for Amanda, will it end up being the most deadliest time of the year?

Who knew office Christmas parties could be so dangerous?

THE CANDY CANE KILLER 
by Mona Marple

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

A generic, commercial Christmas that not everyone is happy about. Town mayor Sharon Major is pushing ahead with plans to modernize the town, and stripping it of its character in the process.

Teenagers Sandy and Coral are finally allowed to attend the Christmas Lights Switch On without their father accompanying them. Their excitement about this independence soon changes, when the stage curtains open and reveal the mayor’s dead body.

With no police on the scene, the crowd of people are all held in the shopping centre. With the killer amongst them, Sandy and Coral decide to investigate.

After all, who would suspect two teenage girls of being able to solve a murder case?

A Charming Blend
By Tonya Kappes

When Roxy Bloom and Patrick Cane got a gift card at the Full Moon Treesort in Whispering Falls, Kentucky, they figured it’d be a fantastic honeymoon.

When June Heal heard from the Whispering Falls Newspaper report from editor Faith Mortimer that there was a nosy coffee barista coming to town and she needed an eye kept on her, June was quick to put Mr. Prince Charming on the tourist, Roxanne Bloom.

When a dead body is discovered during the annual Whispering Fall tree lightening, Roxy Bloom just can’t seem to keep her nose out of it, even though she feels like something strange is going on in the cozy town.

June Heal is using powers, she never thought she’d use, to keep tourist Roxy Bloom away from the crime scene.

Will the two feisty sleuths come together to solve this murder before Roxy’s honeymoon is over or before June Heal uses all of her powers to keep Roxy away from their secrets of Whispering Falls?

You won’t want to miss this crossover tale of two of your favorite cozy mystery sleuths, June Heal from the Magical Cures Mystery Series and Roxanne Bloom from the Killer Coffee Series.

A Lime To Kill

By Summer Prescott

A single mom. 
A misplaced millennial. 
The best pies and baked goods in the Keys.

Life is good for SubLime Sweets owner, Marilyn Hayes. That is, until murder shows up on her doorstep. Marilyn’s world is rocked, as she discovers that, things are not always as they seem, she didn’t know her daughter as well as she thought she did, and some old wounds never quite heal.

Will the hunky Detective Cortland save the day? Or will Miss Marilyn be the next victim?

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