
In small towns and big cities alike, secrets abound …
Whether in my cozy mysteries, written as Leslie Budewitz, or my suspense novels, by Alicia Beckman, I write to explore women’s lives, using crime to dive into the mysteries that unsettle us and the truths that lie beneath them. I love taking readers to memorable places, introducing you to their intriguing inhabitants, and digging into the hearts and minds of my story people. And if I can make you think, laugh, and rumble your tummy all at the same time—well, then, we’ve got the perfect author–reader friendship!
Pour a cup of something tasty and come on in!

BETWEEN A WOK AND A DEAD PLACE
A Spice Shop Mystery, #7
ISBN-13: 978-1645060543
Seventh Street Books: July 18, 2023
In paperback, ebook, and audio!
Available now for pre-order at:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Bookshop.org
And your local booksellers!
It’s the Lunar New Year, and fortunes are about to change.
Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. So what could be more fun than a food walk in the city’s Chinatown–International District, celebrating the Year of the Rabbit?
But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man’s body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out. Who was he? What was he doing in the dust-encrusted herbal pharmacy in the hotel’s basement? Why was the pharmacy closed up—and why are the owners so reluctant to talk?
With each new discovery, Pepper find herself asking new questions and facing more brick walls.
Then questions arise about Roxanne and her relationship to Pepper’s boyfriend Nate, away fishing in Alaska. Between her worries and her struggle to hire staff at the Spice Shop, Pepper has her hands and her heart full. Still, she can’t resist the lure of the Gold Rush and its tangled history of secrets and lies stretching back nearly a century.
But the killer is on her tail, driven by hidden demons and desires. As Pepper begins to expose the long-concealed truth, a bigger question emerges: Can she uncover the secrets of the Gold Rush Hotel without being pushed from the wok into the fire?
BLIND FAITH
ISBN-13: 978-1639101788
Crooked Lane Books: October 11, 2022
In hardcover, ebook and audio!
Available now at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Books-A-Million
Bookshop.org
Indie Bound
And your local booksellers!
Long-buried secrets come back with a vengeance in a cold case gone red-hot in Agatha Award-winning author Alicia Beckman’s second novel, perfect for fans of Laura Lippman and Greer Hendricks.
For decades, the unsolved murder of Father Michael Leary has haunted Billings, Montana, the community he served. Who summoned the priest late one autumn night, then left his body in a sandstone gully for the ravens and other wild scavengers?
And it’s haunted no one more than Lindsay Keller, who admired and confided in him as a teenager. Compelled by his example to work for justice, she became a prosecutor. But after a devastating case left her shattered, she fled the rough-and-tumble for the safety of a desk, handling real estate deals and historic preservation projects. Good work, but not what she’d dreamed of.