Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Time for a Gala in the Garden
Cozy Corner / August 1, 2016

Since I’m a secret readaholic who loves cloak and dagger mysteries, my choices this week shouldn’t put you at death’s door or make you scream bloody murder. They should make you want to step into the garden where time stands still for your very own suspenseful reading gala. If you haven’t caught on yet, you will when you see my top three choices of cozy reads this week. Come on! The festival’s about to begin and there are three mysteries waiting to be solved! Find the clues, and you just might solve a murder! CLOCK AND DAGGER by Julianne Holmes Clock Shop Mystery Expert clockmaker Ruth Clagan has another murder on her hands in the second Clock Shop Mystery from the author of Just Killing Time. Ruth has three days to pull off four events—including the grand reopening of Cog & Sprocket, the clock shop she inherited from her grandfather—so she doesn’t have time for Beckett Green’s nonsense. The competitive owner of a new bookstore, Green seems determined to put other businesses out of business by also carrying their specialty items. He’s trying to steal Ruth’s new watchmaker, Mark Pine, not to mention block her plans to renovate the town…

Daryl Wood Gerber | Chocolate Research
Author Guest / August 1, 2016

Hi! I write the Cookbook Nook Mysteries, which means I spend a lot of time researching cookbooks and recipes. Poor me! Also, because I include recipes in my mysteries, I do a lot of taste testing. Feeling sorry for me yet? Probably not. You would if I was a lousy cook, but I’ve been cooking all my life. I catered during high school, and I ran a restaurant in my twenties. However, my protagonist, Jenna Hart, a former advertising executive who moved home to the seaside town of Crystal Cove, California to help her aunt open the Cookbook Nook, a delightful bookstore packed with cookbooks and cooking items, is not a cook. She needs simple recipes, i.e., 5-ingredient recipes. To help Jenna, I include a simple recipe that she could whip up in each book. FYI, she’s determined to become a better cook. In fact, in GRILLING THE SUBJECT, she has advanced to ten-ingredient recipes. How? Because Katie, the chef at the Nook Café, is teaching Jena to think of dry ingredients as one “recipe” and the liquid ingredients as another “recipe.” Then she can combine the two recipes into one. Two fives add up to ten. Does that make…