Book Title: MURDER IN A CUP
Character Name: Shay Myers
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
My childhood was amazing. I was lucky to have had two very loving parents who were there for myself and my older sister, Jen. Sadly, though, on my eighteenth birthday, a boating accident took them away from us. After that, life was pretty much a blur for a few years.
What was your greatest talent?
I’m not sure if it’s a talent or a curse, but I’ve always had what my sister called “inky feelings.” I could and still can sense things about people or situations, but I often struggle to know what to do with them.
Significant other?
There was one until I discovered my ex-husband, Brad, and my assistant were having an affair for two years and had, during that time, stolen all my money and my gemstone and jewelry company out from under me and destroyed my reputation and. Yes, I was naive, but, in my defense, Brad was my accountant, and I loved him and trusted him right up until I couldn’t.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
Trust to be sure.
Where do you live?
After spending 16 years in New Mexico, where I studied geology and then opened my gemstone and jewelry shop, which my ex, Brad, stole from me, I’m back home in my hometown of Bray Harbor, California. It’s a small village not far from Carmel by the Sea, just south of Monterey.
Do you have any enemies?
I never did until I came into an inheritance left to me by Bridget, my birth mother. Now I’m not sure who I can trust and who I can’t. On one hand that in itself is scary, but it’s also made me realize those inky feelings I’ve had my whole life are invaluable because, even though I don’t always know what they mean, they’ve helped save my life or the lives of others.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
No children, and I’ve never consciously decided to have a pet, but there is this white German shepherd that seems to have adopted me.
What do you do for a living?
I was a geologist and jewelry maker. Now it seems I’m the proud owner of a tea shop. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m a diehard coffee drinker at heart, so it’s been a real learning curve to convince myself that I belong in the tea-drinkers’ world.
Greatest disappointment?
The list has grown since the discoveries about my ex. I guess I have to add discovering that I wasn’t who I thought I was and learning that my birth father would stop at nothing, even my murder, to get his hands on Bridget’s amulet that I now possess.
Greatest source of joy?
Being close to my sister again the other friends who have come into my life since moving home.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
Hmm, fun? What’s that? All joking aside, I’ve been too busy learning the tea trade to have fun. Add on learning what all the plants are growing in my greenhouse, and I don’t think I could even spell fun. Well, that might not be entirely true. The upper floor of my shop was developed into a plant conservatory, and my birth mother used to grow and dry all of her own tea plants and herbs. It’s a fun environment and learning the different types of plants has kept me active and busy.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
Not opening my eyes sooner about Brad, my ex, and not being emotionally open right now to open my heart to someone else. Perhaps someone like my too-handsome-to-be- real, Irish neighbor, Liam.
What keeps you awake at night?
The enemies I seem to have inherited along with the shop, seaside cottage, and the mysterious amulet with a power that I still don’t understand. Quite frankly, it scares me, and I only hope that one day, I will truly know how to channel its powers for the good.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
Keeping someone I care for deeply out of prison, which is proving difficult because of the mounting evidence against them.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
Finding out who my real father is and making sure he can never get his hands on the amulet and never hurt anyone again.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
The only description I have of my birth father is that he was a very handsome fairy man (according to family legend), and he seduced my naive sixteen-year-old birth mother and attempted to steal the very amulet I wear around my neck at all times.
MURDER IN A CUP by Lauren Elliott
A Crystals & CuriosiTEAS Mystery #2
As an eclectic tea shop owner descended from an Irish witch, intuitive Shay Myers has been living her most authentic life since moving home to California’s scenic Monterey Peninsula. Yet not even her heightened senses can predict how to run a business—or catch a killer . . .
Self-taught “seer” Shay has much to learn as autumn hits the quaint coastal town of Bray Harbor. Since attempting the art of blending herbs at her popular shop, Crystals & CuriosiTeas, she’s set on growing ingredients in the mysterious greenhouse on the second floor—if only she can separate the medicinal plants from the deadly ones. Her new skills are put to the test when she meets pub owner and ex-detective Liam Madigan’s Gran. A psychic from Ireland known for interpreting tea leaves and people, Gran encourages Shay to build upon her natural talents and hold her own group reading . . .
Despite Shay’s reservations about putting herself in the spotlight, the evening goes off without a hitch. At least, until she does a reading and a customer goes from chatty to dead in a flash, poisoned after sipping a toxic substance recently grown in the greenhouse. Worse, Shay’s assistant is suspected of intentionally serving the lethal brew and committing cold-blooded murder. Now, aided only by Liam and her dog Spirit, Shay must exonerate her employee and save the future of Crystals & CuriosiTeas. But when clues start lining up like leaves in a teacup, she’ll need to understand the signs right in front of her to catch the manipulative murderer before it’s too late . . .
Mystery Amateur Sleuth | Mystery Cozy | Mystery Culinary [Kensington Cozies, On Sale: November 28, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781496739070 / eISBN: 9781496735249]
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About Lauren Elliott
USA Today Best-Selling author Lauren Elliott grew up devouring the entire Nancy Drew series and then graduated to Victoria Holt, Agatha Christie, Barbara Erskine, Lynn Kurland, and Michael Crichton to name a few of her favorite authors. When it came time for post-secondary education, journalism seemed like the logical choice as she had written for as long as she could remember. Soon after graduation, while working for a small publication, she discovered that reporting wasn’t what fueled her writing passions. As someone with an additionally strong background in professional theatre who had the love of storytelling and captivating and holding an audience, her fiction-writing career began to take center stage.
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