Senior Reviewer Debbie Wiley has some great book recommendations for the luckiest day of the year!  St. Patrick’s Day is only a few days away and what better way to celebrate the magic of Ireland than through books! I had the good fortune to visit Ireland several years ago and St. Patrick’s Day brings back those joyous memories. So, let’s dive into the books as the allure of Ireland awaits us. Carlene O’Connor’s biography indicates she spends time regularly in Ireland and her love for the country shows in her Irish Village series. The first book, MURDER IN AN IRISH VILLAGE, introduces us to Kilbane in County Cork where we are immediately immersed into the life of a small Irish village. I love how Carlene O’Connor incorporates the inflections of speech as it makes me feel as if I’m sitting in the family-owned bistro in Ireland right along with the rest of the O’Sullivan clan. Carlene O’Connor’s sixth book in the series, MURDER IN AN IRISH PUB, delves more into the work of the Garda in a small village and is a real treat for readers. I love the direction this cozy mystery series is taking and recommend the Irish…

You know it’s going to happen. You’re going to need to escape. Because on Thursday afternoon, Uncle Bill will be deep in the eggnog—except he won’t be drinking the same eggnog everyone else will be enjoying. Uncle Bill’s special blend will come from the flask in his pocket, and the more he drinks, the louder his political jokes will get. If he was the only one you had to worry about this Thanksgiving, you’d survive. Except he isn’t. Your cousin Lori will be flirting with your brother-in-law, and your sister will be close to murder if he even acknowledges Lori’s presence. Which will exclude your right hand helper from any of the meal preparations—the last thing you need is your sister in vicinity of a kitchen full of knives. Don’t forget the football games. There are three to contend with this year, so unless you’re having a Thanksgiving Day brunch, you better be prepared for your mother-in-law to be very unhappy when you time the meal to coincide with her team’s kick-off. Not that she has a ‘team’ who she loyally keeps up with. She only watches football on the holidays you’ve drawn the unlucky straw to host the holiday…

At the heart of the County Cork Mysteries is the second book I ever wrote, set in a small pub in a very small town in southwestern Ireland. It was inspired by a real pub called Connolly’s, which I’ve come to know well over the past decade (especially after having tea with the owner in the back room, with her Irish Wolfhound by the fire and her cat in my lap). I chose to write about Ireland because I never knew my father’s parents, both of whom were born there (although in different counties), and I thought seeing the country might be a way to get to know them. My grandmother and grandfather came to New York separately, in 1911, and connected when he made milk deliveries to the back door of the house where she was a servant. They didn’t marry until 1918, and they had my father a year later. My grandmother was 38 at the time. They went on to have two more children. My father became a chemical engineer and earned a master’s degree. His younger brother was a nuclear engineer at Stanford, after getting a Ph.D. at Cal Tech. Their baby sister worked in television…

People think I’m crazy because I write three cozy mystery series. Yes, one book per year for each series (for as long as my publisher lets me!). And there are other books I’ve published through a small independent publisher. Can you guess that I like to write? The first question most people ask is, “How do you keep them all straight?” The simplest answer is that they all are based in real places that I know well: western Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and most recently West Cork in Ireland. I don’t know how I could manage if I had to make up a town and keep all the details consistent. Of course the main characters are different people, although at least two of the characters reflect a little bit of me. Or maybe more than a little bit. Write what you know, right? Meg Corey in the Orchard Mysteries has been blindsided by losing her boyfriend, her home and her job all at once, but she’s got generations of New England ancestors (I borrow a lot of my family tree) to pass on their backbone to her, so over the course of that series she’s learned how to manage an orchard and…