Cozy fans – or fans of the traditional mystery, as some now prefer to be called – will find a few new Halloween mysteries on the Library shelves.
Jane Wheel makes half of her living as an antique picker searching high and low at estate sales and antique shops and reselling her finds to other collectors. She makes the other half as a private detective, because she’s just as talented at digging up secrets.
In Scary Stuff, the sixth book of the Jane Wheel series by Sharon Fiffer, Jane returns to her family’s home – just in time for Halloween – to straighten out a mess her brother has gotten himself into. He says he's been verbally attacked three times by men who accused him of swindling them on eBay. It becomes obvious that he has a doppelganger, which fans out into a family drama that takes on Hitchockian airs. Jane finds that besides finding delight in plowing through the accumulations of peoples’ lifetimes, you sometimes uncover secrets that others wish to remain hidden, at all costs.
Blackwork is the thirteenth (appropriately enough) title in Monica Ferris’ Needlework Mysteries.
It's Halloween and Betsy Devonshire, owner of the Crewel World needlework shop and part-time sleuth, is helping with the preparations for the upcoming Halloween festivities in Excelsior, Minnesota. Leona Cunningham, a Wiccan and proprietor of the local microbrewery pub, is mixing a new brew called “Don't Be Afraid of the Dark Ale.” The “potion” is blamed for a series of accidents that start happening around town and Leona becomes the main suspect when the most vocal of her accusers turns up dead without a mark on his body.
Blackwork, by the way, is an intricate reversible form of embroidery. Instructions for a blackwork pattern, “Witchwork,” appear at the end of the book.
Laura Childs’ Tragic Magic, the seventh of her Scrapbooking Mysteries, finds crafty Carmela Bertrand of the Memory Mine scrapbook store in New Orleans helping with some spooky set decorations for “Medusa Manor.” Her best friend Ava Gruiex, owner of Juju Voodoo, is converting an old mansion into an unforgettable haunted house.
When their boss Melody Mayfeldt’s flaming body plummets from the third-floor tower to her death, Melody's husband asks her to look into the death Carmela has to be careful she doesn't end up going down in flames as well.
Scrapbooking tips and recipes, including Mystery Muffins, are included.
In Australian author Kerry Greenwood's fourth Corinna Chapman mystery, Trick or Treat, the witches have converged on Melbourne to celebrate Samhain. Stir in Mistress Dread, proprietor of the local S&M shop, a cache of valuables stolen from Greek Jews during WWII, many cats, and a rash of bad drug reactions. And Corrina already has a lot on her plate dealing with the cut-price franchise bakery that has opened just down the street from her bakery, Earthly Delights.
Visit the Earthly Delights website for a devil’s food cake recipe sinful enough for the devil himself … or your own Halloween revels.
