1–What is the title of your latest release? AFTER EVERYONE ELSE 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? With humor and insight AFTER EVERYONE ELSE tells the story of the relationships between Bailey Edgeworth, her passionate husband, and their troubled daughter. After Bailey is charged with the murder of her ex-husband these relationships are tested by the secrets they keep. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I always love to set stories in New York and Atlanta. Especially culinary stories. Both have such robust and exciting choices. With AFTER EVERYONE ELSE, I just had to sneak in my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Absolutely. Being a restaurant designer, she has an in with all the good restaurants and mixologists in town. It would be fun to see restaurants and cocktails from her point of view. She would always get us a good table. 5–What are three words that describe your protagonist? Creative Ambitious Witty 6–What’s something you learned while writing this book? Because AFTER EVERYONE ELSE is about famous chefs, I have learned to let go and trust chefs in the preparation of…

It’s no secret that I love detective mysteries, but what I really like to read are mysteries from different areas of the world. It’s amazing how different police procedures, organizations and investigations can be, both fictional and real life. Fiona Barton has created one of my favorite female detective persona’s in her Elise King Mystery series. Her writing captures the true struggles female detective face both on and off the job. The job is everything—until it’s not. I hope you enjoy this fascinating series and getting to sit down with Fiona Barton as much as I did.   Kym Roberts:  Welcome to the Cozy Corner, Fiona! Your background in journalism has required you look into some dark events and crimes. How were you able to separate your everyday life from the brutality of some of those assignments? Fiona Barton: It was hard at times – I remember covering the mass shooting of primary school children in Dunblane, Scotland and then returning home to my young family, who were upset about a sick pet. Two different realities but you have to deal with both with empathy. The danger is becoming numb to the terrible events in the news – as a…

Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Tracy Gardner! Writes: Hi there! I write mystery novels laced with romance. Whether set in a small town or the big city, my books have a domestic vibe and plenty of focus on interpersonal relationships. In PERIL AT PENNINGTON MANOR, the characters all know each other directly or via a few degrees of separation. Much of the story takes place in a modern-day castle, with noble and kind Duke Nicholas Pennington distraught at the escalating danger in his summer home while Avery’s team investigates the antiquities on site. PERIL is book two in the series that began with RUBY RED HERRING, nominated for the 2022 Mary Higgins Clark Edgar Award and named a best book in New York Public Library’s Best 100 of 2021. About: I am a slightly awkward introvert, a fiercely loyal friend, and a terrible procrastinator. I have a passion for making up stories and then zooming out in search of the big picture. Every book I write has come about…

1–What is the title of your latest release? AND BY FIRE 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Tempered by fire and separated by centuries, two extraordinary female detectives track a pair of murderous geniuses who will burn the world for their art in this mystery that is perfect for fans of Sarah Penner and Dan Brown. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? London was a foregone conclusion because my historical timeline in And by Fire involves that city’s Great Fire of 1666. And I knew I was going to pair that storyline with a modern one opening with the discovery of a charred figure at the base of Sir Christopher Wren’s monument to the Great Fire. The location of Wren’s monument assured that my modern-day main character, Nigella Parker, would be a Detective Inspector with the London City Police, rather than the Met (aka Scotland Yard). The jurisdiction of the City police is approximately 1.12 square miles (a miniscule portion of the whopping 607 square miles comprising greater London), which makes my modern serial arson/murder investigation multi-jurisdictional—enter Nigella’s former lover and partner-in-crime-fighting DI Colm O’Leary from Scotland Yard. 4–Would you hang out…

Tell me about your choice of setting for this Kate Hamilton mystery series. (setting, history, characters) THE SHADOW OF MEMORY is set in the fictional village of Long Barston in Suffolk as well as the Suffolk coastline, site of a holiday camp where Kate’s friend Vivian Bunn spent her girlhood summers. Near the camp is Netherfield Sanatorium, a derelict Victorian mental hospital being converted into deluxe flats and townhouses. The developer and board of directors have asked Kate and her colleague Ivor Tweedy to appraise a fine collection of antiques that once filled the institution, including a painting attributed to the fifteenth-century Netherlandish painter Jan Van Eyck. But is the painting what it seems to be? And could there be a connection between the hospital and the mysterious deaths of a doctor and his wife? Why Suffolk? I fell in love with the British Isles when I was a student at St. Clare’s College, Oxford. Writing a book means spending a lot of time in the setting you’ve chosen, and Suffolk is one of England’s hidden gems—England the way you picture it in your mind. The “Suffolk Pink” cottages with their thatched roofs and the ancient villages with their cobbled…

What made you choose 1971 as the setting for A Snake in the Raspberry Patch? I chose 1971 because I didn’t want technology such as cell phones or computers to be in the story. Also, since true crime events in rural communities were part of the inspiration for this book, I didn’t want the date to conflict with other mass murders that have occurred in Canada. And in 1971, I was a teenager so could relate quite easily to what it would be like to live in that decade.   Is the story told through one character’s perspective? Liz is the protagonist, so the story is told through her eyes, but Rose, whose personality seemed to jump out early in the writing, took over many of the scenes. She almost came alive as I wrote. I could even hear her voice in my head.   Do you try to maintain the tension throughout the story? The murders, and/or a killer on the loose, so a potential threat to the girls, are mentioned throughout, creating tension. But I also wanted some normalcy – i.e., depiction of life on the prairie in the 70’s.   Families seem to be the heart of…

In your “Travel P.I.” mystery series, your female protagonist Angel Doyle is described as a “semi-reformed thief and accidental P.I.” What made you decide to create that type of character? In my two previous cozy mystery series, my sleuths are from fairly conventional backgrounds. In the Movie Club Mysteries, Maggie is an ex-cop who moves to Ireland and sets up her own P.I. agency. Dee in the Time-Slip Mysteries is a journalist and amateur sleuth. I wanted Angel’s story arc to be different. She comes from a family of career criminals and wants a fresh start on the right side of the law. Yet there’s no denying that specific skills she’s picked up over the years come in handy for her detective work. At the start of KNIFED IN NICE, Angel is on the cusp of significant life changes, and the story pushes her in another direction. She had no ambition to become a detective, but she’s thrust into a situation where she must figure out what’s going on or risk being killed. She’s also a loner, and the story forces her to work with a partner to solve the mystery. What all my sleuths have in common is a…

First, I just want to say that I love this book’s cover! AB: I do too. It fits the atmosphere of the story so well.   As somebody unfamiliar with this series, when I first glanced at the cover and skimmed the description, I assumed the series was primarily a fantasy series. After looking at the description again, I find there are some murder mystery elements as well. How would you describe this book for readers unfamiliar with this series? AB: CROWBONES and LAKE SILENCE, the previous book set in that part of the Others’ world, could be described as urban fantasy cozy mysteries. I was playing with the idea of what a cozy mystery – amateur sleuth(s) finding dead bodies and helping the police solve the crime – would be like in a world ruled by the supernatural beings, and the stories set in the area around Lake Silence are the result. The first five books in that world (the Lakeside Courtyard stories) are urban fantasy. WILD COUNTRY, set in another location in that world, was written over the template of the old Westerns with sheriffs, gamblers, and outlaws. Of course, when the sheriff is a shifter Wolf and…

Danielle Jackson: Welcome to Fresh Fiction, Jesse! We are big fans of your Aunties series and are so excited to celebrate the release of FOUR AUNTIES AND A WEDDING – congrats! What has been the most surprising thing about your publishing journey so far?   Jesse Q. Sutanto:  Oh gosh, to be honest, EVERYTHING has been surprising about my publishing journey! My first book deal, THE OBSESSION, was a humble deal. Everything was about as typical as it went. My second book deal, THEO TAN AND THE FOX SPIRIT, was slightly larger, but still pretty average. Then the following month I sold DIAL A FOR AUNTIES and things just exploded. Suddenly, I was having calls with producers and giant studios, all of whom were clamoring to buy the rights to the TV/film adaptation. It was the kind of story where, if an aspiring author were to say she dreams of having that kind of road to publication, she’d be laughed out of the room because it’s just so ridiculous!   Wedding planning is already a feat, but with her vivacious and nosy aunties “helping,” things quickly get out of hand for Meddy. Were there any aspects of wedding planning and…

Your new book, THE DETECTIVE’S DAUGHTER, involves your main character investigating a cold case for personal reasons. I love stories like that. What inspired you to write about that subject? Are you fascinated by cold cases, or true crime stories? I am definitely fascinated by cold cases and true crime! Of course, I’m not alone in that, which explains the popularity of the genre. Cold cases are fascinating because they’re the ultimate mystery, that dangling thread that never gets pulled, the question mark that never becomes a period. The JonBenet Ramsey case comes to mind. We can’t stop wondering what happened to that beautiful little girl, we want answers, closure. We look at the pieces of that crime puzzle, analyzing each, wondering where the investigation went wrong.   In the case of THE DETECTIVE’S DAUGHTER, I was drawn to the idea of a daughter being pulled into the case, now ice cold, that destroyed her father. Between the case – a murder and kidnapping inside a powerful and secretive New Orleans family – and my protagonist’s history with it, I had lots of good stuff work with. In THE DETECTIVE’S DAUGHTER, is the focus more on the mystery itself or,…