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!
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries — check out the special editions of the historical novella, An Unholy Death, and the short story, The Christmas Stranger, that my publisher created as part of the celebration! And I’m sharing a new Spice Shop mystery with you.
Pour a cup of something tasty and come on in!
ALL GOD’S SPARROWS AND OTHER STORIES: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection
ISBN-13: 978-1960511744 Beyond the Page Publishing: September 17, 2024
In trade paperback and ebook!
Available for pre-order now at:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Bookshop.org
And your local bookseller!
Born into slavery in Tennessee, the remarkable “Stagecoach Mary” Fields was a larger-than-life figure who cherished her independence, yet formed a deep bond with the Ursuline Sisters, traveling to their Montana mission in 1885 and spending the last thirty years of her life living there or in nearby Cascade. Mary is believed to have been the first Black woman in the country to drive a U.S. Postal Star Route, the source of her nickname.
In All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories, Agatha Award-winning author Leslie Budewitz brings together three short stories, each originally published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, imagining the life of Stagecoach Mary in her first year in Montana, and a novella exploring her later life, including:
All God’s Sparrows, winner of the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Short Story; Miss Starr’s Goodbye, a nominee for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award; Coming Clean, a finalist for the Western Writers of America’s 2021 Spur Award for Best Short Story; and A Bitter Wind, a brand-new novella in which Mary helps a young woman newly arrived in the valley solve the mystery of her fiancé’s death and his homesteading neighbors’ bitterness toward him.
Includes an abbreviated bibliography and historical notes from the author.
TO ERR IS CUMIN
A Spice Shop Mystery, #8
ISBN-13: 978-1645060857
Seventh Street Books
July 16, 2024 in audio
August 6, 2024 in trade paper & ebook!
Available for pre-order now at:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Books-A-Million
Bookshop.org
And your local booksellers!
One person’s treasure is another’s trash. . .
Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, wants nothing more than to live a quiet life for a change, running her shop and working with customers eager to spice up their cooking. But when she finds an envelope stuffed with cash in a ratty old wingback left on the curb, she sets out to track down the owner.
Pepper soon concludes that the chair and its stash may belong to young Talia Cook, new in town and nowhere to be seen. Boz Bosworth, an unemployed chef Pepper’s tangled with in the past, shows up looking for the young woman, but Pepper refuses to help him search. When Boz is found floating in the Ship Canal, only a few blocks from Talia’s apartment, free furniture no longer seems like such a bargain.
On the hunt for Talia, Pepper discovers a web of connections threatening to ensnare her best customer. The more she probes, the harder it gets to tell who’s part of an unsavory scheme of corruption—and who might be the next victim.
Between her quest for an elusive herb, helping her parents remodel their new house, and setting up the Spice Shop’s first cooking class, Pepper’s got a full plate. Dogged by a sense of obligation to find the rightful owner of the hidden treasure, she keeps on showing up and asking questions.
One mistake, and she could find herself cashing out. . .
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.