It's nothing short of inevitable that Cymbeline, Georgia, hosts an annual Shakespeare festival. But stage-struck Nina Fleet is about to learn that putting on an amateur-theatrical production can be murder. Nina's anticipating showbiz glamour and glitz when a community Shakespearean troupe arrives for a two-week stay at her B&B. But the lights dim when she learns the company's director is her nemesis, struggling actor Harry Westcott-who still claims to be the rightful heir to Nina's elegant Queen Anne home.Meanwhile, the troupe members are not content to leave the drama upon the stage. Accusations of infidelity and financial malfeasance make a shamble of rehearsals. And then, two days into the troupe's stay, the lead actor is found dead in Nina's formal Shakespeare garden. Murder most foul!Worse, it seems every member of the amateur troupe has a motive-including wealthy construction-company owner Marvin Jeffers, who seems to have a personal interest in Nina. But when the sheriff arrests the supposed boyfriend of the slain actor's widow, Nina suspects that the wrong troupe member is in jail. She and her trusty Australian Shepherd, Matilda, join forces (none too happily) with Harry to sleuth out the murder plot.Will they find the real killer before someone else shuffles off this mortal coil?
To help run the family peach farm during her parents' absence, Nola Harper returns to her childhood home of Cays Mill, Georgia, and soon discovers that things back at the farm aren't exactly peachy. A poor harvest and rising costs are threatening to ruin the Harpers' livelihood, and small-town gossip is spreading like blight thanks to Nola's juicy reputation as a wild teenager way back when. But Nola really finds herself in the pits when she stumbles upon a local businessman murdered among the peach trees.
With suspicions and family tensions heating up faster than a cobbler in the oven, this sweet Georgia peach will have to prune through a list of murder suspects-before she too becomes ripe for the killer's picking . . .
Nina Fleet might be new to the innkeeping business, but she's savvy enough to know that Cymbeline's tourists aren't enough to keep her fledgling bed and breakfast going. So she decides to tap into the destination-wedding market by taking a booth at the Veils and Vanities Bridal Expo. The twice-yearly event is sponsored by the town's two wedding pros: Virgie Hamilton, the sixtysomething owner of Virgie's Formals, and Roxanna Quarry, a Gen X event planner and Nina's new friend. But everything goes wrong during the expo's fashion show, when Roxanna comes tumbling out of an oversized prop wedding cake, strangled to death by her own scarf.
Virgie is arrested for the crime, thanks to Nina's statement to the police about having overheard the woman accusing her partner of embezzlement. But certain that Virgie's only offense is a bad temper, Nina decides to do her own investigating, and local gossip soon convinces her that others may also have had motive.
As Nina gets close to discovering the truth though, Virgie is bailed out of jail by an unknown benefactor and vanishes. Now Nina has to find her fast-before tying the knot takes on a whole new meaning for them both...
Murder. Mayhem. Pie.
Welcome to Sunshine Springs, the idyllic wine country town where Isabelle 'Izzy' James has moved to follow her dream of opening a pie shop that serves boozy pies. Everything is going according to plan, until a customer drops dead from poison right in front of her cafe.
That's not so good for business.
Izzy suddenly finds herself accused of murder, and she's in a race against time to find the true criminal. Luckily, she has her faithful dog Sprinkles at her side to help her sniff out clues. But the more clues Izzy discovers, the more she realizes that the secrets in this town go deeper than she ever thought possible.
Can this amateur sleuth find the murderer before she loses the pie shop she's worked so hard to open?
Appearances can be deceiving.
Amber Blackwood, Edgehill’s secret resident witch, recently found her parents’ grimoires and the powerful time spells within. The malevolent Penhallow clan has been ruthlessly seeking the grimoires so they can travel back in time to undo their clan’s cursed magic. Because the Penhallows will stop at nothing, Amber must find an impregnable hiding place for the grimoires, though she has no clue where to start looking. When her cousin Edgar suggests the game of Magic Cache, a magic-infused version of geocaching played by witches all over the world, Amber agrees to learn how to play. After all, a weird plan is better than no plan.
When the magical search leads her to the neighboring town of Marbleglen—“the safest town in Oregon”—Amber assumes her only problem will be dealing with its snooty residents. Instead, she gets caught up in a murder investigation where one man is dead and a second one framed for the crime. To complicate matters, the framed man’s condescending daughter, Bianca, wants Amber’s help—and Bianca just happens to chair Marbleglen’s Floral Frenzy Flower Festival Committee, the rival to Edgehill’s own Here and Meow Festival Committee. The two women are thrown into an uneasy alliance.
Joined by her new frenemy, her growing inner circle, and Edgehill’s Chief Brown, Amber works to unravel the mystery to ensure the right culprit ends up behind bars and Marbleglen’s safety is restored. But Amber knows that even if Marbleglen’s mystery is resolved, a bigger danger lurks in the shadows. If the Penhallows claim the grimoires of Amber’s late parents, they’ll use the books’ time-reversal spells to try to stop the curse from ever having poisoned their clan—and, in the process, possibly rewriting history.
This short introductory story takes place three years before the events in Pawsitively Poisonous.
Length: 41 minutes
Welcome to Edgehill …
Amber Blackwood, resident witch of Edgehill, Oregon, is a recluse. Raised by parents who warned her to keep her powers a secret, Amber and her younger sister, Willow, grew up “normal.” Amber obeyed her parents’ wishes, if only because they’d promised to teach their daughters everything about magic and their witch heritage once they were of age.
But Amber’s parents died in a mysterious house fire while Amber was still in high school, taking all their secrets with them.
Now a thirty-something adult, Amber finds it easier to keep to herself in the cat-obsessed town she calls home. When her neighbor invites her to a welcome lunch for the town’s new police chief, Amber reluctantly agrees to attend. Within hours, Amber knows this man could cause trouble for her. There are no romantic sparks; the problem is that he’s too observant, too focused on her odd behavior.
Staying cooped up inside might be safer, but things in Edgehill just got a whole lot more interesting …
Not all secrets are meant to be kept.
After two stressful months, Amber Blackwood is determined to have a few weeks of peace before the Here and Meow Festival descends on her small town of Edgehill, Oregon. That peace doesn’t last long; when she and the committee attend a meeting at the mayor’s house, Amber is pulled aside by the mayor’s daughter, Chloe, who Amber babysat for in high school. The mayor has forbidden Chloe from dating, but she recently met an older boy through a chat app and is desperate to meet him. Amber advises Chloe to tell her father about the boy.
Hours later, Mayor Deidrick frantically puts in a call to Amber: Chloe, the always well-behaved teenager, seems to have snuck out her bedroom window—and now she’s not answering his calls. When Amber helps search the town for the girl, she happens upon Chloe’s abandoned car. Her driver’s side door is open, and while her purse is inside, her phone is gone.
Working alongside Chief Brown, Amber uses her magic to figure out what might have happened to Chloe. The more they dig, the more they unearth secrets about the mayor. The charismatic politician has both a hair-trigger temper and a suspicious death linked to his past.
As if the mayor’s increasingly strange behavior isn’t bad enough, Amber and the chief also contend with an out-of-town private investigator, nosy reporter Connor Declan, and an even nosier population of Edgehill residents who start to question why Amber and the chief are spending so much time together. Undaunted by these obstacles, Amber races against the clock to help ensure Chloe doesn’t become another statistic—assuming the mayor doesn’t stop her first.
Every town has its secrets, but no one has a secret like hers.
Amber Blackwood, lifelong resident of Edgehill, Oregon, has earned a reputation for being a semi-reclusive odd duck. Her store, The Quirky Whisker, is full of curiosities, from extremely potent sleepy teas and ever-burning candles to kids’ toys that seem to run endlessly without the aid of batteries. The people of Edgehill think of the Quirky Whisker as an integral part of their feline-obsessed town, but most give Amber herself a wide berth. Amber prefers it that way; it keeps her secret safe. But that secret is thrown into jeopardy when Amber’s friend Melanie is found dead, a vial of headache tonic from Amber’s store clutched in her hand.
Edgehill’s newest police chief has had it out for Amber since he arrived three years before. He can’t possibly know she’s a witch, but his suspicions about her odd store and even odder behavior have shot her to the top of his suspect list. When the Edgehill rumor mill finds out Melanie was poisoned, it’s not only the police chief who looks at Amber differently. Determined to both find justice for her friend and to clear her own name, Amber must use her unique gifts to help track down Melanie’s real killer. A quest that threatens much more than her secret …
The only thing more twisted than a cursed witch is her family tree.
For the past fourteen years, Edgehill’s resident secret witch, Amber Blackwood, has been haunted by her parents’ deaths. The whole town knows about the tragedy, but the details remain a mystery even to Amber. From her tiny studio apartment above her shop, The Quirky Whisker, Amber can see her partially rebuilt old house out on the edge of town. Although she now has a good life—delighting children with her magically infused toys, concocting healing tinctures for Edgehill’s residents, doting on her cats, Tom and Alley, and sitting on the committee for the town’s annual Here and Meow Festival—she feels stuck in the past.
Amber suspects the fire that killed her parents was set deliberately by a witch from the cursed Penhallow clan, from whom no one has heard even a whisper since the night her parents died. The clan’s sudden disappearance is no coincidence to Amber, but her aunt Gretchen refuses to believe there’s a connection and urges Amber to stop looking for someone to blame. So Amber is shocked when Aunt Gretchen shows up unexpectedly, claiming the Penhallows have resurfaced and that one of them is heading for Edgehill with Amber in his sights.
Aunt Gretchen knows more about the fabled clan than she’s letting on. Amber is determined to find out what her aunt is hiding, and what the Penhallow seeks, before the same treacherous force that took Amber’s parents’ lives claims her own.
Enemies wear many faces.
The Here and Meow Festival has finally arrived! Amber Blackwood and her fellow festival committee members still have plenty to do before the celebration of all things feline begins. Even though Amber’s witchy past keeps interfering, she knows the show must go on. Edgehill’s livelihood depends on the festival’s success.
When two incidents involving her malfunctioning products cause her to shutter the doors of her curiosity shop, The Quirky Whisker, only days before the busiest season of the year, Amber thinks things can’t get any worse. An investigation into the incidents reveals sabotage is to blame—sabotage that only could have been carried out by a fellow witch. Things just officially got worse.
With Edgehill overrun by tourists, any unfamiliar face could be a member of the nefarious Penhallow witch family. Though her parents’ grimoires are hidden in a remote location overlaid with protective spells, Amber fears that won’t be enough to deter the desperate and cursed clan from trying to get their hands on a legendary time-travel spell.
As the opening ceremony of the Here and Meow approaches, Amber contends with a nosy lawyer, mysterious government officials, and a charismatic superstar. Through it all, Amber senses the Penhallows have something planned—something big. With her new circle of close confidants by her side, Amber must find a way to thwart the Penhallow family’s scheme before it’s too late. If she can’t, the Here and Meow will be ruined … and Edgehill could be wiped off the map.
Magic in this witch's family has a name: Trouble.
Things take a mysterious and dangerous turn when Officer Reece and his deputy set a trap to catch the killer, and Sidney volunteers to be the bait. You can bet if Ada-Mae catches wind of this, it will be off with this new witch’s hat! Good thing her grandmother is busy with the mini-golf competition and figuring out how to break the mischievous spell on her daughter.
When Sidney discovers something mysterious brewing at the Mystic Dunes, things take an unexpected turn for the worse. A nexus of magic more powerful than anything Ada-Mae has seen before holds the secret… if they dare to enter it. Can Ben’s and Gramp’s ghosts help them travel through the portal? Who will be waiting for them on the other side? Can Sidney stir up her own magic spell to save her family before it’s too late?
Listen to Paws in Space, book 5 in the Crystal Beach Mystery Series, for a bewitchingly fun paranormal cozy mystery with charming characters that will keep you spellbound!
A whisker away from death ...
A summer in England sounds like a great idea for the Harper family-and the house exchange makes it so affordable. Now they've swapped their New England home for a lovely cottage in a village near London. Why, the house even comes with a cat, a shy marmalade named Esmond. Everything seems purrfect ... until someone tries to kill Mr. Harper.
Now the genteel village feels sinister, the snooty next-door neighbor is acting suspicious, and the house is filled with its real owner's secrets. Numerous attempts on Mr. Harper's life convince his wife that they can't pussyfoot around. They need to investigate, starting with what the mousy orange cat knows.
