Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, The London Séance Society? Sarah Penner: I’ve always wanted to write a ghost story, but haunted houses are a common trope, and I wanted to do something different and fresh. Then, one day while chatting with my mom, she said to me, “we should go to a séance. A real séance, not a fake one.” At that very moment, a lightbulb went off: I love the word “séance,” as it feels sultry and mysterious, and I decided my book would, somehow, incorporate a woman who was known worldwide for her skill in conjuring spirits during séance.   Jen: Who is Vaudeline D’Allaire and what powers does she have? Sarah: In 1873, Vaudeline is an internationally-esteemed spiritualist living in Paris. She’s known worldwide for her skill in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identity of the people who killed them. In other words: she’s skilled in the art of séance, and she’s the best of the best. So skilled, in fact, that she’s about to be called to London on a very high-profile murder case, despite the fact that the police banned her from the city several years ago.   Jen:…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, WEDDING OF THE SEASON?  Lauren Edmondson: The idea for Wedding of the Season came about five years ago, when I was visiting Newport on a girls’ trip. We went to visit The Breakers, the grandest of all the historic Newport mansions owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County. I learned that the descendants of the Vanderbilt family, who had called the “cottage” home for 120 years, were moving out of their third-floor apartments, having turned over the rest of the mansion to tourists and preservationists. This relocation was either voluntarily or involuntarily, depending on which source you read. The situation sparked my curiosity, and soon I was down the rabbit hole of Vanderbilt and Gilded Age mansion lore. I saw fascinating parallels between the outrageous spending habits of turn-of-the-century American royals and today’s elite. I also thought it would be great fun to set a story in one of those Newport mansions.   Jen: What brings Cass Coventry back home to Newport, and how does she feel about her return? Lauren: Cass, reluctantly, comes back for her older sister’s engagement party. It’s not that she doesn’t love her sister or her future…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, THE SWEET SPOT? Amy Poeppel: I was inspired in part by the iconic brownstones in my beautiful neighborhood of Greenwich Village, an area that is in many ways the sweet spot of New York City. I wanted to write about a family that is lucky enough to move into a home very near Washington Square Park, although it must be said that this new home is in dire need of renovation! I was also inspired by my many friends who always manage to keep their senses of humor, even in the face of hardship, women whom I admire more and more the older I get.   Jen: Who is Lauren Aston, and what’s going on in her life? Amy: Lauren is an artist, a mother of three, a wife, a daughter, and a sister. Her career as a ceramist, which was already important to her, has suddenly taken off, thanks to the attention of a home design guru named Felicity who commissions a big order of Lauren’s porcelain pieces. Now that Lauren has so much work to get done, the Aston family finds itself with a childcare problem that they temporarily solve by inviting…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, GOOD FOR YOU? Camille Pagan: I can’t remember how this story came to me, which is unusual; I just remember that I was supposed to be writing another book I was under contract for, and I couldn’t stop thinking about this idea. I started writing and a few days later I had several chapters on my hands—which was when I knew Good for You was my next novel. I wrote the entire thing in about two months (which is really fast for me!) then sent it to my agent. We weren’t sure what my publisher would think, but to our relief, they loved it as much as we did.   Jen: What’s happening in Aly Jackson’s professional life? Camille:Aly’s just landed the top job at All Good magazine, a Real Simple-esque publication. She’s been training her entire adult life for the gig, but six months into it, she has a meltdown after hearing her coworkers’ trash-talking her. What they don’t know is that Aly’s recently lost her brother, who was her lifeline. She thinks she’s coping okay—but of course, she isn’t at all. The magazine’s publisher insists she take a month-long leave of…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, THE MITFORD AFFAIR? Marie Benedict: I’ve been fascinated by the rarified, mesmerizing, often strange world of the Mitfords since college when a dear friend and I backpacked across Europe after a semester abroad and I brought along one of Nancy Mitford semi-autobiographical novels to read during our train travels. But when I came across the Mitfords again as I did research about their cousins the Churchills while writing another novel, LADY CLEMENTINE, I learned about the shocking ways in which these sisters were at the epicenter of World War II — and I knew I had to write this timely tale.   Jen: Who are the Mitford sisters? Marie: The six Mitford sisters were the aristocratic “it” girls of the 1920s and 1930s in Great Britain. Each sister was more beautiful, brilliant, and eccentric than the next, and they appeared in the headlines so often their mother publicly stated that anytime she saw the phrase “peer’s daughter” in the newspapers, it was about her daughters. The sisters found themselves in the cross-hairs of the lead-up to World War II.   Jen: What happens in Diana’s life that causes discord among the sisters? Marie:…

Jennifer Vido: What inspired your new release, JUST THE NICEST COUPLE? Mary Kubica: I loved the idea of writing about a missing husband for a change. Many books in this genre – my own included – deal with missing women and missing wives, and I wanted to flip the script and see what it looked like from the other side.   Jen: What was the most challenging part of alternating points of view by chapter? Mary: I’ve always written from multiple points of view, but I don’t write my books in the same way that someone reads them. Just The Nicest Couple, for example, has two narrators: Christian, whose wife believes she was the last to see Jake Hayes before he went missing, and Nina, a woman whose husband didn’t come home after work one night and is desperate to find him. I started with Christian’s story and wrote it almost in its entirety before going back to the beginning and picking up with Nina’s storyline. I’ve done this for all of my novels. I love this method because it allows me to form a clearer picture of the character and to make his or her voice more distinct. One…

Jennifer Vido: For readers new to the Campers & Criminals Cozy Mysteries, please share with us the premise behind this quirky and highly addictive series. Tonya Kappes: Thank you so much for having me! I’m excited to share all about Mae West and the Laundry Club Ladies with your readers. Mae West is a high society socialite from New York who loses everything after her husband is convicted of a Ponzi scheme. The only thing to her name is a run-down camper van and a run-down campground set in the middle of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky. A far cry from her glitz and glamour social life. In her mind, she’s going to drive that awful camper van to Kentucky and sell the campground, but she realizes once she gets there, that’s not going to be the case. The campground is run down and in much need of renovations. Not to mention the nasty mucky lake where she was standing. Not too long after she shows up, the FBI rolls into the campground, accusing her of hiding her husband now that he’s broken out of jail. She informs them that they better find him before she does because…

I love mysteries with a quirky convention or fan festival as part of the story. In your new book BAKE OFFED, you have the “Maryland Mystery Fan Fest”. What was your inspiration? BAKE OFFED takes place at a fictional mystery fan fest. The book was inspired by the dozens of actual mystery fan conventions I’ve attended. I was at one of them, Left Coast Crime, in March of 2020 when Covid shut down the gathering on its first day. At that time, I was plotting my 8th Five-Ingredient Mystery. Realizing it might be a long time before I would once again meet mystery writers and fans in person, I created a fictional mystery festival. Like most such gatherings, the one in my book includes panels, book signings, and a charity auction for book lovers. But it also has a few features not usually seen at a real mystery convention–a Deadly Desserts bake-off and a murder, which the fest attendees are eager to solve.   As is the case with many mysteries, the murder victim in BAKE OFFED seems to be disliked by many, and so there are multiple plausible suspects. Do you have the murderer determined before you write the book, or does the guilty party change as…

Jennifer Vido: For readers new to your brilliantly inventive and deliciously witty metaseries, please give us a quick overview of the three previous titles—The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, and A Line to Kill. Anthony Horowitz:  A private detective – Daniel Hawthorne – has decided to hire an author to follow his investigations and write them as books. The idea is that they’ll split the royalties 50/50. I’m the author he chose and I have to say it hasn’t been easy. Hawthorne’s first case involved the murder of a lady hours after she had arranged her own funeral. Then he investigated the death of a divorce lawyer bludgeoned to death with a wine bottle. On our third outing, we were invited to a literary festival on the island of Alderney. There had never been a murder on the island until we arrived.   Jen: What inspired your new release, THE TWIST OF A KNIFE? Anthony:  The Twist of a Knife tells what happened when a play of mine – it was called Mindgame – opened in London. It was savagely reviewed by a critic called Harriet Throsby and the next day she was stabbed to death at her…

Jennifer Vido: How did your real-life experiences inspire your new release, THE WIDOW? Kaira Rouda: My husband, who had never run for political office before, was elected to congress in 2018 when he upset a 30-year incumbent. The two years we spent serving the country and learning about Washington, DC, inspired the story for The Widow. I also learned about the tradition of The Widow’s Mandate, where spouses step in and fill out the remainder of their husband’s term if they die in office. Statistically speaking, for women who aspire to serve in congress, the best husband has been a dead husband. That’s a great premise for a suspense writer.   Jen: What impact do Jody and Martin Asher have on the political landscape in DC? Kaira: They are senior members of the house, although Martin’s power has been slipping of late. Jody is still the queen of the spouses, and she knows it. She is very concerned that Martin’s behavior is going to ruin everything.   Jen: What happens with Martin that might threaten the couple’s future in politics? Kaira: Well, Martin is most likely having an affair with a young staffer. Jody doesn’t care about the affair, per…