A Killer Closet by Paula Paul

Blurb:

Irene Seligman has to quit her job as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan to return to her hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico, when her irascible mother divorces her fifth husband and needs Irene’s help.

Irene opens a haute couture consignment store in Santa Fe and finds a dead woman in her closet on the store’s opening day. This not the old Santa Fe of her childhood.

About the Author:

Paula Griffith Paul was born on her grandparents’ cotton farm near Shallowater, Texas, and graduated from a country high school near Maple, Texas. She earned a B.A. in journalism and has worked as a reporter for newspapers in both Texas and New Mexico. She’s been the recipient of state and national awards for her work as a journalist.

She is also an award-winning novelist. Her most current novel, Crazy Quilt, is her first literary novel. One third of the royalties will go to cancer research.

Review:

It’s a shame when bad editing ruins a good book. A Killer Closet is a fun cozy mystery that grabbed me on the first page, but it was marred by bad editing.

When Irene Seligman gives up her job as an assistant DA in Manhattan and moves home to help her mother in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she plans to open a haute couture resale shop. Her plans go awry, however, when she finds the body of one of her mother’s friends on the floor of her storeroom on opening day. Since her store is a crime scene, she has to push back the opening. Yet the next day when she finally opens, the sheriff takes her to lunch, and then says he’s sorry she had to open a few hours late. What happened to the day in between?

A Killer Closet is rife with similar consistency glitches. Ms. Paul seems to have had difficulty keeping track of the timeline in her book, and none of the high-paid editors at Alibi Publishing, the digital division of Random House managed to catch the trend. I received A Killer Closet from Net Galley, and I can only give it three roses. Again, such a shame.

Author Website:  http://www.paulapaul.net/

Warnings:  Mild Violence

Length:  184 Pages

Digital Price:  $3.99

Buy Link:  https://www.amazon.com/Killer-Closet-Mystery-Paula-Paul-ebook/dp/B01AQO16S4

Thanks for visiting.

The Book Club Murders by Leslie Nagel #CozyMystery #Suspense #Humorous

Blurb:

Charley Carpenter has poured heart and soul into her clothing store, Old Hat Vintage Fashions. She’ll do anything to make it a success—even join the stuffy Agathas Book Club in order to cultivate customers among the wealthy elite of Oakwood, Ohio.

Although mixing with the most influential women in town has its advantages, Charley finds the endless gossip a high price to pay. But after two women with close ties to the Agathas are brutally murdered, everyone falls under threat—and suspicion. When key evidence indicates that both murders are the work of the same hand, Charley realizes that the killer has arranged each corpse in perfect imitation of crime scenes from the Club’s murder mystery reading list. She uses her membership in the Club to convince Detective Marcus Trenault to use her as an inside informant. Not that he could stop her anyway.

Intelligent, fearless, and every bit as stubborn as Marc is, Charley soon learns the Agathas aren’t the only ones with secrets to protect. Passions explode as she and Marc must race against time to prevent another murder. And if Charley’s not careful, she may find herself becoming the killer’s next plot twist.

About the Author:

Leslie Nagel is a writer and teacher of writing at a local community college. Her debut novel, “The Book Club Murders”, is the first in the Oakwood Mystery Series. Leslie lives in the all too real city of Oakwood, Ohio, where murders are rare but great stories lie thick on the ground. After the written word, her passions include her husband, her son and daughter, hiking, tennis and strong black coffee, not necessarily in that order.

Review:

The Book Club Murders was a fun cozy mystery. The small town of Oakwood, Ohio, is shaken when a woman is murdered. It’s a nice little town with very little crime, which is one reason Marc Trenault gave up his job as a homicide detective in Chicago and moved home. The last thing he wants or needs is more murder. Yet, that’s what he gets—not one murder, but two, and then more. And to make matters worse, he finds Charley Carpenter in the middle of every crime scene he tries to investigate. And she’s the one who identifies the crime scenes as set-ups from the book club’s latest reads.

There were plenty of suspects among the town’s elite book club members, and lots of scandal to wade through in figuring out who dunnit. Ms. Nagel kept me guessing right up to the end. Is my brain slowing down or are writers getting better?

Author Website:  http://www.leslienagel.com/

Warnings:  Descriptions of Murder Scenes

Length:  271 Pages

Digital Price:  $3.99

Buy Link:  https://smile.amazon.com/Book-Club-Murders-Oakwood-Mystery-ebook/dp/B01A4ATX9E

You’ll notice we always include the publisher’s buy link. That’s because authors usually receive 40-50% of the net proceeds from the publisher. Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%. When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left. So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40-$2.99. If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $1.70-$2.10.

Download the file from the publisher onto your computer as you would any other file. I’ve created a folder for books on my computer, with subfolders by source (Marketing for Romance Writers, Net Galley, Authors who find me on Kindle lists, etc.). That way, if there’s a glitch with your Kindle, the books are on your computer. Some publishers send books in all digital formats. If my Kindle breaks and my kids buy me a Nook, I won’t have to replace all of my books. If you have a Kindle and your hubby has a Nook, you won’t have to buy separate copies, so buying directly from the publisher can save you money.

Moving the file from your computer to your e-reader is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive. Plug the larger USB end of your e-reader charging chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from the folder into which you’ve downloaded the book to Documents/Books directory on your e-reader. You can move the file by highlighting it and dragging it to the documents directory in you Kindle you want to move it to. Or right click on it, and then left click copy or move. Or hit Control/C for copy, Control/X for cut, and Control/V for paste.

Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting.

I Wanna Be Like Her--Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death by Mark Reutlinger

Blurb:

Move over, Miss Marple—Mark Reutlinger’s charming cozy debut introduces readers to the unforgettable amateur sleuth Rose Kaplan and her loyal sidekick, Ida.

Everyone knows that Rose Kaplan makes the best matzoh ball soup around—she’s a regular matzoh ball maven—so it’s no surprise at the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors when, once again, Mrs. K wins the honor of preparing the beloved dish for the Home’s seder on the first night of Passover.

But when Bertha Finkelstein is discovered facedown in her bowl of soup, her death puts a bit of a pall on the rest of the seder. And things go really meshugge when it comes out that Bertha choked on a diamond earring earlier stolen from resident Daisy Goldfarb. Suddenly Mrs. K is the prime suspect in the police investigation of both theft and murder. Oy vey—it’s a recipe for disaster, unless Rose and her dear friend Ida can summon up the chutzpah to face down the police and solve the mystery themselves.

Review by Rochelle Weber:

Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death is told in first person by Mrs. K’s best friend, side-kick, and God-forbid-we-should-get-caught accomplice, Ida Berkowitz. And since the manuscript is peppered with Yiddish words and phrases, how could a meshggina shiksa (crazy gentile gal) like me possibly understand it? Well, first, Mrs. Berkowitz (aka Mr. Reutlinger) puts the Yiddish words in italics with the English translations in parentheses, as I just did. And second, we live in a multicultural world. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried my way through Fiddler on the Roof, or laughed as Nora Dunn declared she was, “…getting a little verklempt,” and told the audience to, “Talk amongst yourselves” on Saturday Night Live. I grew up watching comics on TV who paid their dues at resorts in the Catskills, known as “The Borscht Belt.” If you pay attention, Baby walks out of the dining room as the resort owner introduces the comic in Dirty Dancing. So, to make a short story long, I was able to hear Mrs. B’s voice in full Yiddish cadence just fine, which greatly enhanced my reading experience, nu? (right?)

Rose Kaplan is not only the matzoh ball soup maven at the Julius and Rebecca Cohen Home for Jewish Seniors, she’s probably the smartest person there, including the staff. Since Bertha Finkelstein was found face-down in her soup having choked on Daisy Goldfarb’s stolen earring, and no one else was allowed in the kitchen while Rose was making the soup, the staff and police figure they have an open-and-shut case. But Rose knows she did not put that earring there, and she’s pretty sure she’d have noticed if someone had stuffed it into the flour or one of the other ingredients. So, she sets out to prove her innocence and find the culprit with her best-friend, Ida Berkowitz in tow. Ida doesn’t always know what Rose is going to do next, but Oy Vey! God forbid they should get caught!

Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death is a warm, witty, suspenseful book that hooked me on the first page and kept me laughing and wondering along with Ida what plot Mrs. K. was going to come up with next to dig up evidence on someone else and find the real culprit/s and clear her name. They go so far as to hire a burglar to search some of the residents’ rooms during a concert, but the burglar is delayed and breaks a leg before she can get to the final room, so Mrs. K. climbs through the window herself with Ida on guard outside on movie night. I wanna be like her when I grow up!

If you’re reading this review before November 18, 2014, reserve your copy now! Otherwise, buy it now! I’m having aftershocks of chuckles just thinking about the book as I write this review. And I’m craving matzoh ball soup. Know of any place in the far north Chicago suburbs that serves a gluten-free version?

Length:  Page Count TBA

Digital Price:  $2.99

Buy Link:  http://www.randomhouse.com/book/246839/mrs-kaplan-and-the-matzoh-ball-of-death-by-mark-reutlinger/ebook

You’ll notice we always include the publisher’s buy link. That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher. Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%. When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left. So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40. If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive. Plug the larger USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory. You can download your books onto your computer using “Save As” to a “Books” file you create and sort them into sub-folders by genre, author, or however you wish before transferring them to your Kindle. That way, if there’s a glitch with your Kindle, the books are on your computer. Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting. Rose, Julie, Donna, & Rochelle

Maxwell Street Blues by Mark Krulewitch

Blurb:

Chicago runs in Jules Landau’s veins. So does the blood of crooks. Now Jules is going legit as a private eye, stalking bail jumpers and cheating spouses—until he gets his first big case. Unfortunately, the client is his ex-con father, and the job is finding the killer of a man whom Jules loved like family. Why did someone put two bullets in the head of gentle bookkeeper Charles Snook? Jules is determined to find out, even if the search takes him to perilous places he never wanted to go.

Snooky, as he was affectionately known, had a knack for turning dirty dollars clean, with clients ranging from humble shop owners to sharp-dressed mobsters. As Jules retraces Snooky’s last days, he crosses paths with a way-too-eager detective, a gorgeous and perplexing tattoo artist, a silver-haired university administrator with a kinky side, and a crusading journalist. Exposing one dirty secret after another, the PI is on a dangerous learning curve. And, at the top of that curve, a killer readies to strike again.

Review:

I think I can say Chicago runs in my blood, too, having been born at Cook County Hospital and raised on the Northwest Side. That’s in the city, not in the suburbs. I always have a bit of steam come out of my ears when I tell people I’m from the Northwest Side and they say, “So am I. I’m from Mount Prospect.” Or Park Ridge. Or Arlington Heights. I try to smile while pointing out those are burbs, not Sides.

Anyway, I’m attracted to books that take place in Chicago. I think my parents took me down to Maxwell Street once or twice on a Sunday after church when I was a kid. It was kind of like a big, outdoor rummage sale. You could get anything and everything inexpensively and there were hotdog vendors on the street. Some of them have now gone indoors and become franchises.

Maxwell Street Blues doesn’t exactly take place on Maxwell Street. That area is on the fringes of the University of Illinois Chicago campus and apparently is a “neighborhood in transition.” The students, faculty, and accompanying upper class are starting to turn industrial buildings into lofts and push out the druggies, pimps, prostitutes and gang-bangers who inhabited that strip between the time the market closed and the University sprawled south of Roosevelt Road. (Mayor Richard M. Daley’s condo near 1400 South Michigan probably helped spur that growth.) And it’s on a University construction site on Maxwell Street that Snooky’s body is found.

Jules Landau takes the case not because there’s much love lost between him and his father, but because Snooky was like a big brother to him, and he wants to find out who killed the guy and why. Snook was a money launderer and a good one, and you don’t kill the guy who’s keeping your money clean. There had to be something else going on, and Jules sets out to discover what that was. Of course, there are people who don’t want him to figure it out and he spends much of the book popping acetaminophen and nursing black eyes and broken ribs, which, as he points out, “don’t heal in four hours.” In that regard, he’s a bit like another of my favorite Chicago PIs, Harry Dresden (without the magic, of course). But Jules doggedly perseveres, tracking down each lead or whisp of one.

It’s a complex, convoluted, jumbled-up case and it kept me guessing just exactly who, what, and why until the end. I hope these books will be on audio when I can afford to rejoin Audible so I can listen to them while working puzzles when I’m unwinding before bed. That’s the only way I get to do any real fan-girl leisure reading these days. And I’ve become a fan of Jules Landau. You will, too, when you read Maxwell Street Blues.

Length:  245 Pages

Price  Digital:  $2.99

Buy Link:  http://www.amazon.com/Maxwell-Street-Blues-Landau-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00IBZ60DW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406618687&sr=8-1&keywords=maxwell+street+blues

Thanks for visiting. Rose & Rochelle