Poisoned Pen Press

Catherine Bruns: In the Blink of a Pie

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Maple Syrup Mysteries #3

In the Blink of a Pie is Catherine Bruns’ third Maple Syrup Mystery. Sugar Ridge, Vermont, is where Leila Khoury manages the family business, Sappy Endings farm. It’s a maple syrup haven that has a farm, store, and café that all work together. Her mother runs the café, and her very serious boyfriend Noah Rivers also works at the farm and makes many a sugary treat. To celebrate the oncoming Thanksgiving season, Sappy Endings is hosting a pie-baking contest. The town is elated, and soon Leila finds herself drowning in pie entries. A very tasty problem to have, but tricky to manage when one has to keep track of who entered what pie and then choose a winner. Luckily her friend Heather, her mother, and even Noah’s daughter are all there to help keep things as organized as possible. read more

Dana Mentink: Spoon to be Dead

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Shake Shop #3

Dana Mentink’s Shake Shop series is joined by her latest addition: Spoon to be Dead. Trinidad Jones, owner of the Shimmy and Shake ice-cream shop, is facing every ice-cream shop’s biggest obstacle: winter. It’s hard to tempt people with an icy treat in the middle of a blizzard, no matter how tasty. While her business partner Juliette has a much more optimistic attitude, Trinidad fears the failure of her shop might be just around the corner. Given that she came to Sprocket, Oregon to set up a new and better life for herself and her Papa, she is finding the risk of closing almost unbearable. Luckily, she comes up with some less frosty options to try and float her business through the cold, including catering deserts at an event on a local steamboat. While worried, Trinidad is more than ready to face the challenges. With her Papa, her newfound boyfriend Quinn, found sisters (and fellow ex-wives of one Gabe Bigley) Juliet and Bonnie, she has enough confidence to come up with plenty of shop-saving ideas – then the unthinkable happens. The notorious ex-husband Gabe Bigley walks right into their shop and back into all their lives. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he confesses to having possibly killed someone before he passes out and letting the ladies take over. read more

Sulari Gentill: The Woman in the Library

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This odd, endearing and weirdly tricky book is a meta meditation on the traditional detective story.  Playing off of Agatha Christie’s The Body in the Library, author Sulari Gentill yanks this classic into the present.  In Christie’s Body the corpse of an apparently unknown young woman appears in the library of a private home.  In Gentill’s update, four young people are sitting near each other in the Boston Public library.  The main character, Freddie (or Winifred), a mystery writer, is working on a new book and she’s observed the others sitting near her, giving them nicknames as she slots them into a possible book.  Freud girl, Heroic Chin and Handsome Man have all invaded her imagination, when their real iterations hear a blood-curdling scream. read more

Denise Swanson: Body Over Troubled Waters

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Denise Swanson remains one of my favorite cozy writers.  Now twenty-three books into her Scumble River series (now billed as “Return to Scumble River”), she’s still cooking with gas.  The books are packed with humor as well as real world details of main character Skye Dennison’s work as a school psychologist, a job Swanson herself held for many years.

Cozy writers have to strike a tricky balance between addressing an issue but not being too harsh with it.  In a bravura first sequence, Skye is attending a meeting with Superintendent of schools Shamus Wraige, who has unceremoniously fired the school security officer because Scumble River is a small town and “It’s not as if anyone here is going to pull a Columbine or a Sandy Hook.” read more

Caroline B. Cooney: The Grandmother Plot

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This was a blast of a read, akin to the kind of great caper novels written in the past by Donald Westlake, and more recently by talented writers like Jeff Cohen and Catriona McPherson.  This is a caper novel with a broken heart at the center.  While Westlake stuck pretty strictly to the caper element, Cooney brings the reader in emotionally as well.

The story centers on sweet, stoner Freddy, who makes glass beads and pipes for a living, and who has ended up caring for his grandmother who has dementia.  Freddy is a regular visitor to his grandmother’s memory care home and knows the staff and patients well.  He slips in the back door of the facility and doesn’t sign in, doing this, like everything in his life, just off the grid. read more

July & August Book Clubs

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July Book Club will meet in person on Sunday, July 18, 2pm at my home.  We’ll also be meeting via zoom on Wednesday, July 21, at 7pm.  Please message me if you’d like to attend either iteration and you don’t have the relevant details or zoom link.  We’ll be discussing Sarah Stewart Taylor’s wonderful novel, The Mountains Wild.

August book club will meet in person on Sunday, August 22 at 2p.m and via zoom on Wednesday, August 25 at 7pm.  We’ll be reading Caroline B. Cooney’s Edgar nominee, Before She Was Helen. read more

A Bouquet of Historical Mysteries

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To my mind, historical mysteries are some of the best mysteries being written at the moment.  They combine classic elements of detective fiction, unmarred by cell phones or computers, and combine it with fascinating time periods and characters.  These wonderful books are now all available to order on our website, along with many other historical mysteries (have a browse!) Kathleen Marple Kalb’s first novel came out this April, a difficult time for a first novel, with no bookstore events or conferences to attend.  I am not a fan of the cover art, but I am a huge fan of this charming debut.  My review ran in Mystery Scene, and you can read it here.   The main character, Ella Shane, is a “trouser diva”, an opera singer who sings men’s roles in 1899.  At the time, opera was a travelling proposition, as the Met was new.  If you enjoy books by C.S. Harris, Anna Lee Huber or Dianne Freeman, check this one out. read more