Coffeehouse Mystery #8 November 2010 On Sale: November 2, 2010 Featuring: Clare Cosi 384 pages ISBN: 0425237885 EAN: 9780425237885 Paperback (reprint) $7.99 Add to Wish List Mystery Woman Sleuth Buy at Amazon.com Holiday Grind by Cleo Coyle Welcome to the Village Blend, where coffee and crime are always brewing… There’s nothing cozier than a winter evening in Greenwich Village. Streetlights shimmer through icy flakes. Cafés glow with welcoming warmth. Boots crunch along cobblestones, and a layer of snow dusts historic townhouses like powdered sugar on Christmas confections. Murder has no place in such a pretty picture, until now… Coffeehouse manager Clare Cosi has grown very fond of Alfred Glockner, the part-time comic and genuinely jolly charity Santa who’s been using her Village Blend as a place to warm his mittens. When she finds him brutally gunned down in a nearby alley, a few subtle clues convince her that Alfred’s death was something more than the tragic result of a random mugging—the conclusion of the police. With Clare’s boyfriend, NYPD Detective Mike Quinn, distracted by a cold case of his own, and ex-husband Matt investigating this year’s holiday lingerie catalogs (an annual event), Clare charges ahead solo and discovers Santa had…

Are you like me, shopping for the perfect gift at this time? Every year I try for that special gift that nobody dared to ask for but had been dreaming of. This kind of experience has happened to me a few times in my life and I know how magical it feels. I remember the Christmas when transistor radios had just been invented (okay, I realize I am dating myself ) and I longed for one. But my parents were giving me the train ticket to a friend’s wedding as my Christmas gift. Besides, transistor radios were a big deal when they first came out and certainly not cheap. So I didn’t even ask for one. Then on Christmas morning I went through my stocking—okay, I know I was a teenager but I still liked my stocking—and came across a battery. What a strange thing, I thought. What could I possible want a battery for? Then I felt hope and amazement flooding through me. It couldn’t be, could it? Not possibly… I went through the rest of the stocking and there at the very bottom was the transistor radio. I still tear up when I think about it now. The…