Hi! My name is Bethany O’Shay. I’ve been friends with Val Deniston ever since she moved to Bayport on Maryland’s Eastern Shore almost two years ago. I’m a first-grade teacher, and Val manages a café at the athletic club, where we both play tennis. She also caters small parties and solves murders. I sometimes help her with both of those.
Her most recent gig was catering the grand opening party at Bayport’s new bookshop, Title Wave. The party took place during the town’s Spooktacular weekend right before Halloween. I kept the children occupied making boo-nanas and creating jack o’lantern faces on tangerines. Val served her delicious sweets to the adults—crypt Suzettes and mummy hand pies. A costume contest was part of the festivities. The contestants dressed as characters from books, as did all of us who assisted at the shop’s grand opening. Not surprisingly, Val came dressed as Nancy Drew. The morning after the party, one of the contestants was found dead in what looked like an accident . . . to everyone except Val and her grandfather.
Val manages to solve perplexing mysteries, but her romantic life is as empty as a graveyard at midnight. One reason she moved here was that her fiancé in New York cheated on her. As a result, she avoids commitments. At the Title Wave’s opening party, I tried to interest her in the bookshop owner’s son, Bram. She was dead set against him, and not just because he dressed as Count Dracula. I told her she was haunted by the ghosts of boyfriends past.
Speaking of haunted, Val and I have gone to some eerie places while she was tracking down killers. A year ago we got lost in a haunted corn maze with a murderer on the loose (Final Fondue). Then in January, around the time of Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday, we crept around a nearby “House of Usher” to look for body buried there (The Tell-Tale Tarte). I confess that I was responsible for dragging Val to those locales, with help from Val’s granddad, who is a hoot. I talked her into going to the Bayport Haunted House on Halloween this year. Then, darn it, I came down with a terrible cold, and Val had to go there without me. To find out how that turned out, you’ll need to read Crypt Suzette.
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Crypt Suzette (A Five-Ingredient Mystery) by Maya Corrigan
About the Book
Cozy Mystery
6th in Series
Kensington (August 27, 2019)
Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
Val Deniston is catering the debut of Bayport’s newest bookstore—but the death of a customer is about to draw her into a real-life murder mystery …
Suzette Cripps has been occupying a spare bedroom at Val’s granddad’s house while she takes classes in this Maryland Eastern Shore town—but she’s always seemed a little secretive and fearful, and any talk about her past is a closed book.
After winning the costume contest at the Halloween-themed bookstore party, Suzette is mowed down by a hit-and-run driver—and Val and her grandfather start to wonder whether it was really an accident or if someone was after Suzette. Granddad is a little distracted by his new enterprise as a ghost-buster, but as Val talks to Suzette’s coworkers and fellow creative writing students, she grows more convinced that the dead woman’s demons weren’t imaginary—and that she needs to rip the mask off a killer …
Includes delicious five-ingredient recipes!
About Maya Corrigan
Maya Corrigan blends her love of food and detective stories in her Five-Ingredient Mystery series set in a fictional historic town on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The first book in the series, By Cook or by Crook, was published in 2014.
Before taking up a life of crime (on the page), she taught university courses in writing, detective fiction, American literature, and drama. She won the 2013 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Unpublished Mainstream Mystery / Suspense. Her short stories, written under the name of Mary Ann Corrigan, have been published in anthologies.
When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, tennis, trivia, cooking, and crosswords. Her website features trivia about food and mysteries.
WebPage: mayacorrigan.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Maya-CorriganBooks/305167769636032
Purchase Links Amazon B&N Kobo Google Play
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Hi Kathy, Thank you for featuring my book on your blog. I enjoyed writing from the point of view of my sleuth's fun-loving best friend. ~Maya
ReplyDeleteLove reading mysteries and this looks like a great one. Thanks for your generosity.
ReplyDeleteThe cover of Maya Corrigan's latest book, Crypt Suzette is so eye-appealing. Thank you for hosting her and her book on your blog.
ReplyDeleteThank you for being part of the book tour for "Crypt Suzette" bMaya Corrigan. Enjoyed hearing from Bethany O’Shay. Can't wait for the opportunity to read this great sounding book on my TBR list.
ReplyDelete2clowns at arkansas dot net
Love the cover - another book to add to the TBR list.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy reading cozies and mysteries. Thanks for this opportunity.
ReplyDeleteMaya I really like reading cozies with my puppy of 12 weeks is asleep on my lap or for the night and my 4 yr old chihuahua is doing the same. I appreciate that you are doing a print giveaway as for those like me that have a disease that you can only do print Rsd which has crippled my fingers and also great pain throughout the body! I sure hope doing this tour will gain a lot of attention to your books! peggy clayton ptclayton2@aol.com
ReplyDeleteLinda, Robin, Kay, Mary, Nancy, and Peggy,
ReplyDeleteThank you for commenting. I really appreciate your support.
~Maya