Part of Series
With a very busy summer behind her, Vivienne Finch is looking forward to her first year hosting a small, yet tastefully elegant, Thanksgiving dinner. With the guest list topping out at four, she is confident she can pull off a beautiful occasion that would look worthy in any home entertaining magazine article. Before she has even purchased her first bag of stuffing, her plans are turned upside down with the news that the Arkins family, a dozen strong, will be visiting Cayuga Cove for an unexpected family reunion. To make matters worse, the Brass Cricket Inn has no rooms to spare for the holiday, leaving Vivienne with a house full of guests to entertain for the long weekend. As pots simmer on the stovetops, tempers flare when dueling mothers each try to ensure that their familiar family traditions are carried out. Yet, that is only the start to Vivienne’s troubles when the owner of Slate’s Pub & Grill is found dead in the establishment’s kitchen. Ghoulishly bound with cooking twine and stuffed head first into the gas oven, news of the murder spreads faster than butter on a hot dinner roll. An investigation soon reveals a cornucopia of illegal football gambling pools, personal grudges, and the inclusion of several of Joshua’s family members as possible suspects in the gruesome crime. With the timer counting down to disaster, it will take all of Vivienne’s magical and sleuthing skills to stop a cunning killer who has placed murder on her exquisitely prepared holiday menu!
Author
J.D. Shaw has always been drawn to the creative arts and all things spooky, even as a young child. Good grades eluded him in art class because no matter what the subject, he would always add a skeleton, pumpkin, witch, or bat into the mix. Why? Because he loved Halloween more than any other holiday and his mother has the picture of him at four years old kissing his carved pumpkin goodnight to prove it! After high school, he attended community college for a business management program, but dropped out several weeks later when he found the drama club. He devoured every theatre and literature course the school offered, making Dean's list several times. But, it was a creative writing course that changed his fate. It was there, in a small classroom with about twenty students, where he finally figured out what it was he wanted to do. He was going to write books. Books with spooky things in them. Upon his acceptance into the Odyssey Writing Workshop run by Jeanne Cavelos in the summer of 2008, he spent six weeks with the best authors and professionals in the business. He learned the art of how to tell not just a story, but a great story. He learned that the cozy mystery genre was his strength. A few years after the program, he had finally crafted his mystery series idea. The Vivienne Finch Magical Mysteries is the result of this hard work and he couldn't be more proud of the result. He lives in Elmira, NY and is hard at work on the next book in the series.
