The village arrive at the church for the Sunday service but find the vicar’s body at the lychgate. One of the parishioners is Amy Rowlings and she is eager to investigate! She teams up with Sergeant Bodkin against his superior’s orders…
Death at the Lychgate is the second cosy murder mystery book to feature Amy and Bodkin. I have reviewed the first book in the series, Murder at the Mill.
I absolutely love the two main characters. There is a wonderful tension that shimmers between them and I was eager for a romance to develop. The gentle humour in their dialogue and interactions is delightful.
Amy is intrepid and adores the novels of Agatha Christie (which I love too!) She is keen to become a proper sleuth and even gets business cards made to give her an air of authenticity and authority. The murder itself is not grisly and the police investigation is traditional as befits the historical 1930s setting.
Death at the Lychgate is an enjoyable cosy murder mystery. I really like this series and can’t wait for more!
Book Blurb
AMY ROWLINGS RETURNS!
Sunday morning, and the body of Reverend Villiers has been found propped up on the vigil seat in the church’s lychgate. It appears that he has been poisoned.
When amateur sleuth and regular churchgoer, Amy Rowlings arrives she finds DI Bodkin already at the scene. Bodkin tells her about a cryptic scripture reference that has been scrawled in chalk on the stone slabs beneath the body. What the citation hints at, shocks everyone.
Amy, a huge Agatha Christie fan is determined to get involved in the investigation and despite a stern warning from the detective’s boss, Amy and Bodkin team up again to try to solve the most complex murder case he has ever been involved in. When the toxicology report comes back from the lab, the results only add to the mystery.
Meanwhile, Amy looks to her favourite Agatha Christie character, Hercule Poirot for help, and using his techniques, she narrows down the list of possible murderers to just nine suspects.
Can Amy fit together the jigsaw of clues to solve this, the most complex of cases?
Author Bio
T A Belshaw is from Derbyshire in the United Kingdom where he shares a house with his chatty rescue cat, Mia. He writes for both children and adults. A former miner and computer technician, Trevor studied Advanced Creative Writing at the Open University. He is the author of Tracy’s Hot Mail, Tracy’s Celebrity Hot Mail and the noir, suspense novella, Out of Control. Following the sudden death of his wife in 2015 Trevor took a five-year break from writing, returning during lockdown in 2020, when an injury forced him to take time off work. The result of this new creative burst was the Dual Timeline, Family Saga, Unspoken and the Historical Cosy Crime Whodunnit, Murder at the Mill.
Trevor signed his first contract with Spellbound Books Ltd in April 2021. He signed a further mullti-book contract with them in the spring of 2022.
His short stories have been published in various anthologies including 100 Stories for Haiti, 50 Stories for Pakistan, Another Haircut, Shambelurkling and Other Stories, Deck the Halls, 100 Stories for Queensland and The Cafe Lit anthology 2011, 2012 and 2013. He also has two pieces in Shambelurklers Return. 2014
Trevor is also the author of 15 children’s adventure books written under the name of Trevor Forest.
His children’s poem, Clicking Gran, was long listed for the Plough prize (children’s section) in 2009 and his short poem, My Mistake, was rated Highly Commended and published in an anthology of the best entries in the Farringdon Poetry Competition.
Trevor’s articles have been published in magazines as diverse as Ireland’s Own, The Best of British and First Edition.
Follow him at:
Mila and Ben are a pair of star crossed lovers. Finding romance whilst Europe sinks into war, she is a Romani traveller and he is an aristocratic Jew. Can their love and their lives survive the onslaught of Nazism…?
The Maid’s Secret is an historical novel set in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Mila begins work as a maid for Ben’s family. She knows how people judge her family for being travellers. Ben is the black sheep of his family. He can see and fears the imminent Nazi invasion while his family bury their heads in the sand, thinking their status will protect them.
There is so much emotion in this book. Mila is abandoned by her family and is hit hard by the loss. Did they leave to protect her or were they captured? The pair begin a tentative romance but are torn apart. This create a atmospehere of fear, danger and anticipation as we worry for the characters’ safety and whether they will find each other again.
The book is written from Mila and Ben’s alternating first person viewpoints. I loved this way of bringing both characters to life equally and could understand their actions and feelings clearly. Love and hope feature prominently to contrast with the horrific Nazi attacks on their country, family and culture.
The Maid’s Secret is a heartbreaking and captivating novel about love against all odds.
MEDIA PACK
Book: The Maid’s Secret
Author: Shari J. Ryan
Pub Day: Sept 29th 2022
About the Book:
Czechoslovakia, 1940: “We will always have our memories,” he says, as the soldiers pull him away. “You will survive this. You are braver than you know. Remember that, always.” This heartbreaking World War Two page-turner shows that love is more powerful than hatred, bravery can overcome evil, and hope is stronger than darkness.
In the middle of the night, while I am curled in Ben’s arms, there is a harsh knock on the door. My blood turns to ice. The love of my life is Jewish, and I am a Romany gypsy maid; every second that we exist in Hitler’s Europe, we are in danger. Every day, we have been huddling around a crackling radio, listening for news of this evil war. Every night, we have feared we won’t live till dawn.
The banging continues, and we leap out of bed. I can hardly breathe as I open the door, seeing Nazis standing before us. My heart cracks as the soldiers grab Ben. I’m powerless to stop them from shoving him into a wagon, bound for the place of no return.
The love of my life is now imprisoned in wire with thousands of other innocent inmates. For every moment he is trapped behind the gates of hell, he gets closer to death—surviving on scraps of food, and forced to work in gruelling conditions.
The soldiers haven’t arrested me yet, but it’s only a matter of time. I vow to stay alive for Ben, not to give up hope. I’ll stop at nothing to escape the enemy as they hunt me down.
With our fate in the hands of monsters, will we ever see each other again? And will our love for one another save us—or kill us?
Fans of Fiona Valpy, The Tattooist of Auschwitz and The Book of Lost Names will be utterly glued to this heart-wrenching and utterly gripping World War Two novel which shows that, if you have love, you can survive anything…
Author Bio
Shari J. Ryan is a USA Today Bestselling Author of Women’s Fiction, WWII Fiction, and 20th Century Historical Fiction with a focus on the Holocaust and Pearl Harbor.
Shortly after graduation from Johnson & Wales with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, Shari began her career as a graphic artist and freelance writer. She then found her passion for writing books in 2012 after her second son was born. Shari has been slaying words ever since.
With two Rone Awards and over 125k books sold, Shari has hit the USA Today Bestseller List, the Amazon’s Top 100, Barnes & Noble’s Top Ten, and iBooks at number one. Some of Shari’s bestselling books include Last Words, The Other Blue Sky, Unspoken Words and A Heart of Time.
Shari, a lifelong Boston girl, is happily married to her personal hero and US Marine and they have two wonderful little boys. For more details about her books, visit: www.sharijryan.com
Social Media
I may be a little bit in love with my air fryer. I don’t think I have used my normal oven in weeks!
My latest experiment was potato wedges and they were so good that Chris couldn’t believe I’d made them from scratch (especially as it only took 20 minutes!)
Very simple ingredients although I will play with around with different spices:
1 potato cut into 8 wedges
salt and pepper (I used celery salt)
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
Mix the ingredients together and then cook at 200 in your air fryer for 20-25 minutes, shaking halfway through the time
I enjoyed mine with vegan mayo and burger relish: super yum!
The texture of the wedges was just perfect. Not greasy, a little crispy on the outside and soft inside. I’m looking forward to playing around with the spices to make Italian, Indian and Mexican inspired wedges…
Martha Miller is enjoying her celebrity status as an amateur sleuth and is invited to open a fair in a nearby village. But she soon finds a body and is embroiled in another murder investigation…
Daggers at the Country Fair is the second book to feature Martha Miller and vicar Luke Walker. I have reviewed and enjoyed the first book in the series: Poison at the Village Show. The series is set in the south of England in 1947.
The gently blossoming romantic tension between Martha and Luke continues in this book and is a joy to read. The couple are both united and divided as they investigate but maintain the social norms. With regard to their relationship, there are mentions of gender stereotypes and expected behaviour norms which are outdated by odern standards due to the post war setting.
The case itself definitely involves stereotypes from the time. The victim is a young woman with a dubious reputation and had a string of married lovers. She is blamed while the men are blameless but who would have wanted her dead? This got my hackles up but was appropriate to the era the book is set in. Even Martha notes the discrepancy of the gendered behaviour expectations as she herself faces judgement about her errant husband and her potential new romance with the vicar.
There are plenty of suspects and motives so the plot maintained my interest until the end as I tried to figure out the truth. The range of characters all seem very authentic, committed to self preservation which made them difficult to empathise with and condone their behaviour.
Daggers at the Country Fair is a hugely enjoyable cosy murder mystery and I’m really looking forward to the next book in the series.
Daggers at the Country Fair
Winteringham Village 1947
As a thank you for her previous brilliant crime solving, amateur sleuth, Martha Miller is guest of honour at the Winteringham Country Fair. However, this time she is looking forward to simply judging dog shows and eating cream teas rather than apprehending a killer!
And Martha is just beginning to enjoy spending quality time with Vicar Luke Walker away from the prying eyes and gossips of her own village, when disaster strikes, and the local teenage femme fatale is found stabbed to death behind the tea tent by Martha’s trusted red setter Lizzie!
But who would want to kill such a young girl and why? Someone in the village has secrets to hide and it seems Martha and Luke have another case to solve!
Let the investigation commence!
Catherine Coles writes bestselling cosy mysteries set in the English countryside. Her extremely popular Tommy & Evelyn Christie series is based in North Yorkshire in the 1920’s and Catherine herself lives in Hull with her family and two spoiled dogs.
Social Media Links –
Jemima Jago is trying to celebrate a friend’s birthday when she finds a murder victim in a secluded cove. It soon becomes clear that the victim had many lovers as well as a secret past, but who wanted him dead?
A Death at Neptune Cove is the fourth amateur sleuth Jem Jago book, set on the Isles of Scilly with trips to mainland Cornwall.
Once she has recovered from her shock at finding another body, Jem uncovers that the victim had a multitude of enemies. This sets her and her friends off on an investigation into the man’s love life as well as his true identity and possible jewel heists.
The love triangle of Jem, Hack and Rhys, which has simmered over the previous books, may have finally been resolved but I am not sure who I think she should be with. I liked the mix of personal relationships as a background to the murder case.
The tone of the book is quite light hearted and the dialogue ripples with teasing and humour. Even the supposed murder weapon is amusing: a frozen loaf! The victim himself doesn’t not appear to be very easy to like despite his attractiveness to a number of suspects. I had a lot more sympathy with the poor people he used and discarded!
A Death at Neptune Cove is an enjoyable and light hearted murder mystery.
Book Description:
A birthday beach party gone wrong, buried treasure and… a dead body? This might be Jemima Jago’s most baffling case yet!
When Jem knocks on the door of an isolated cottage overlooking beautiful Neptune Cove, she’s hoping for help fixing a birthday cake baking disaster. She’s not expecting to find the tenant dead on the tiled floor, specks of blood on the collar of his navy-and-red satin pajamas…
The victim is Arthur Ajax, a handsome and wealthy American businessman who arrived in the Isles of Scilly as a tourist ten months ago and never left. There have been rumors about him in town, as he was known for his extravagant lifestyle. Perhaps he’d gone overboard, or could his death be connected to an unpaid debt?
Later that same evening, Jem stumbles across a hoard of buried jewelry, dug up from the dunes by little dog Buck, and she immediately wonders if they could be connected to the rich man’s murder. It’s not every day you find expensive—and very real-looking—sapphire earrings stashed away in an antique biscuit tin!
Jem seeks help from a local jewelry expert to identify the gems. But when he suddenly goes missing, Jem knows someone is trying to cover their tracks. Can she catch the killer before he makes her walk the plank too?
A completely gripping cozy page-turner set in the beautiful Isles of Scilly, from the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Emma Jameson. Fans of M.C. Beaton, Faith Martin and Agatha Christie will be hooked by A Death at Neptune Cove.
Author Bio:
Emma Jameson writes mysteries that readers call witty, romantic, and full of surprises. An aspiring novelist since age seven, she took a long, twisty route to the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. After years of working at a major medical center, her first novel, cobbled together on nights and weekends, became a runaway e-book bestseller. Now she writes full-time and has sold over half a million books. A compulsive reader and information hoarder, Emma is always searching for that fascinating nugget or startling fact that will spark another novel. A lifelong Anglophile, she resides in the United States, where she enjoys swimming, yoga, and serving the needs of not one, not two, not three, but four cats.
Buy Link:
You can sign up for all the best Bookouture deals you’ll love at: http://ow.ly/Fkiz30lnzdo
