The various story-lines of cozy mysteries never get old for me. Carving, cooking, knitting, sewing, surfing, travel, witches. What’s not to like? But my favorite theme has always been a story within the story. The mysteries wrapped around an author’s words and bound together in one beautiful package. The month of June promises to fulfill my late night reading binges with new who-dun-its from some of the best in the business: Elaine Viets, Lorna Barrett, and Kate Carlisle. Add them to your to-be-read file, they’re the perfect addition to every cozy mystery library. CHECKED OUTA Dead-End Job Mystery By Elaine Viets When book-restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright temporarily relocates to her parents’ place in Northern California, she finds that wooden barrels aren’t the only things buried in the wine caves of Sonoma…. Excited to explore the secrets of wine country, Brooklyn attends an excavation of the caves hidden deep under her parents’ commune—and the findings are explosive. A room is unearthed, and it contains a treasure trove of artwork, rare books, a chest of jewelry…and a perfectly mummified body. A closer examination of the murdered man’s possessions reveals a valuable first edition of Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of…

I’m actually not kidding. I was trying to write my first romance, but I came to the genre much later than to any other. I discovered action adventure with CALL OF THE WILD and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY at age eight. I first read science fiction at ten and THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES by the time I was twelve. NARNIA and THE HOBBIT opened up fantasy for me in my teens. I was hot on the trail of Ludlum and Follett from their very early books. Classics consumed much of my twenties. I didn’t read my first romance until attending RWA’s National conference in my mid-thirties. I chewed my way through a dozen of them before I was handed Susan Wiggs’ THE CHARM SCHOOL and Laura Kinsale’s THE PRINCE OF MIDNIGHT. That launched me into Nora’s Born in trilogy and I was gone. I already had written and sold a couple of science fiction and fantasy novels by that point and wanted to try my hand at a romance. But I’d also been dying to tackle a thriller. What I was waiting for was the right idea. I wrote a light-hearted foodie thriller entitled: Swap Out! It has a love…

Why did you decide to write your mystery series in the Hamptons and not a fictional location like many authors do? I love the Hamptons, especially Montauk, because it has it all: celebs, sandy beaches, fabulous restaurants and a rich history. Each book in my Hamptons Home and Garden Mystery series takes place in one specific Hamptons town–or should I say each murder. In book one, BETTER HOMES AND CORPSES, the murder takes place at the fictional Seacliff estate in East Hampton. Book two, HEARSE AND GARDENS, takes place in Montauk. In my third book, the mystery takes place in Sag Harbor. The setting for book four will be either Bridgehampton or Southampton, I can’t decide which. My protagonist, Meg Barrett lives in Montauk. What is it about Montauk that you love? I live on Long Island and Montauk has always been my favorite getaway spot. I may be prejudiced, but I think Montauk is one of the most beautiful spots in America. When I first vacationed in Montauk and climbed to the top of the Montauk Point Lighthouse (commissioned by George Washington) that sits on a rocky cliff next to the Atlantic on easternmost point of Long Island, I…

New York Times bestselling author Kate Carlisle is a native Californian who worked in television production for many years before turning to writing. It was a lifelong fascination with the art and craft of bookbinding that led her to write the Bibliophile Mysteries, featuring Brooklyn Wainwright, whose bookbinding and restoration skills invariably uncover old secrets, treachery and murder. Visit Kate online at www.KateCarlisle.com. Have you ever browsed through the old books at antique stores or flea markets or estate sales and wondered about the stories those books could tell? Not just the story in the book, but the story of the book. Who owned it? How did they acquire it? What did it mean to them? What sorts of people bought the book and then safeguarded it for 100 years or more? That very intriguing idea is what prompted me to create the Bibliophile Mysteries. At the center of each mystery is a rare book being restored by preeminent bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright. As I craft the plot, I echo the themes of the rare book, but with a modern twist. I think of it as a puzzle within the mystery, a bonus gift to my readers. In RIPPED FROM THE…

I’ve always had a fascination with the paranormal, so it’s really no surprise to me that I started writing witches, psychics, and empaths… My early love of I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and more recently, my slight addiction to Long Island Medium have all have influenced me. But alas, I’m not a witch. Or a genie. Or a psychic. Instead of writing what I know (a common phrase in fiction writing), I simply write what fascinates me. Beyond pop culture influences, I’ve also had some personal incidents in my life that have made me take note of the paranormal. When my twenty-two-year-old son was three, it was early morning when I heard him talking in the other room, having a full conversation with someone I couldn’t see… When I asked him who he was talking to, he said quite seriously (yet calmly), “The man.” Spooky, right? It was for me too—at first. But my grandfather had died the week before, before he’d had a chance to meet my son… I like to believe that they were getting to know each other. For years, I’ve noticed that when I get into my car, my rearview mirror is tilted. If I run…