Towhee Get Your Gun - Spotlight & Giveaway

 

Towhee Get Your Gun
by J.R. Ripley

2nd in Series
Lyrical Underground (January 3, 2017)
288 Pages

Synopsis:

When Birds & Bees owner Amy Simms volunteers to act in a local production of Annie, Get Your Gun, she finds herself upstaged by a killer waiting in the wings . . .
Who’s got time for birdwatching? Amy has enough to do running her shop, fighting attempts by the town planning commission to demolish her old Victorian house, and rescuing an injured towhee. Yet somehow she allows herself to get roped into performing in the Ruby Lake, North Carolina, community theater’s new musical after some cast members get injured by mysterious mishaps. The production seems plagued by bad luck, but events turn tragic when a member of the company is found murdered in a locked dressing room.
Trading in her binoculars for a magnifying glass, Amy steps into the role of amateur sleuth and soon discovers the victim ruffled a lot of feathers. With a flock of suspects, Amy will need to beat the bushes before the cagey killer takes flight. After all, the show must go on . . .

About The Author:

J.R. Ripley is the pen name of Glenn Meganck, the critically acclaimed author of the Tony Kozol mystery series. As a member of the Mystery Writers of America, he has chaired the Edgar committee for Best Original Paperback novel and served on the Best Short Story Committee. As a member of the International Association of Crime Writers, he has served on the Hammett Award committee for Best Novel. When not writing books, Glenn is writing songs, often singing them to the consternation of his audience and neighbors, or involved in one of his many passions, none of which have involved any of the dead bodies that seem to keep cropping up in his mysteries. For more information about him, visit glennmeganck.com.

Author Links

• Visit the Author’s Website
• • Leave your Review on Amazon!
  • Leave your Review on Goodreads!

Purchase Links:
Amazon

• Read with Kobo
• Read with Google Play
• Buy at Barnes & Noble

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Spotlight & Giveaway - Die, Die Birdie

Die, Die Birdie

by J. R. Ripley
Cozy Mystery
• New Series
• Publisher: Kensington – Lyrical Underground
• (August 16, 2016)
•Paperback: 200 pages
•ISBN-13: 978-1601838315
• 288 Pages
• ASIN: B018CGZ1J8

For Amy Simms, hatching a birding shop in her hometown of Ruby Lake, North Carolina, hasn’t exactly been a breeze. But could a deadly discovery clip her wings for good?

It’s just days before Amy plans to open Birds & Bees on the first floor of her creaky Victorian house, but delayed seed shipments have prevented the fledging owner from stocking her shelves. And it doesn’t help that Amy’s best friend and business partner is out of town indefinitely. With locals skeptical about the niche shop taking flight, the last thing Amy needs now is a dead man in her storeroom-or for a crotchety tenant to catch her holding a bloody birdfeeder hook over his body . . .

Pigeonholed as a leading murder suspect by police and lacking a solid alibi, Amy’s delving into the victim’s ugly past and buzzing around Ruby Lake for clues on his killer . . . before she ends up like so many of her beloved feathery friends-trapped behind bars! 

About The Author

J.R. Ripley is the pen name of Glenn Meganck, the critically acclaimed author of the Tony Kozol mystery series. As a member of the Mystery Writers of America, he has chaired the Edgar committee for Best Original Paperback novel and served on the Best Short Story Committee. As a member of the International Association of Crime Writers, he has served on the Hammett Award committee for Best Novel. When not writing books, Glenn is writing songs, often singing them to the consternation of his audience and neighbors, or involved in one of his many passions, none of which have involved any of the dead bodies that seem to keep cropping up in his mysteries. For more information about him, visit glennmeganck.com.

Author Links

• Visit the Author’s Website
• • Leave your Review on Amazon!
  • Leave your Review on Goodreads!

Purchase Links:
Amazon

• Read with Kobo
• Read with Google Play
• Buy at Barnes & Noble

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Green Thumb

I have garden designs in my head. I love pouring through seed catalogs, gardening magazines, and Pinterest, looking at all the lovely plants and imagining them in my yard. While I enjoy reading and dreaming about my garden, I don't actually do much with it. Sadly, I tend to neglect my houseplants and most die of thirst. As for the yard, I tend to let things fend for themselves. Perhaps that's why I enjoy the gardening cozy mystery. I get to think about the garden while others do all the work!

Gardening cozies feature, of course, gardeners. Most are professionals working as landscape designers, florists, or people having other, similar careers. Many of these books also include gardening tips.

Looking for an educated look at plants? Want a unique gardening shop in which to putter around? Check out The Peggy Lee Garden mysteries by Joyce and Jim Lavene. Peggy Lee is a botanist who owns a garden shop in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I love the scent that engulfs you when you enter a florist shop. If you can't make it to your local florist, why not try a fictional one? Kate Collins pens the Flower Shop mysteries. Set in New Chapel, Indiana the series features Abby Knight, owner of Bloomers Florists. Bretta Solomon also owns a flower shop, the Flower Shop, in River City, Missouri in the series by Janis Harrison.

Nina Quinn is a landscape designer with a difference-she does surprise garden makeovers in the Nina Quinn mystery series by Heather Webber.

In Virginia, near Washington DC we find Louise Eldridge, an organic gardener who becomes the host of a PBS gardening show on TV in the series by Ann Ripley. While Louise is close to Washington DC and politics (her husband is a CIA agent) Casey Calhoun is even closer. She's a gardener for the White House in The White House Gardener mysteries by Dorothy St. James.

Garden Clubs are great ways for gardeners to get together. They're also a way to find murderers. Alisa Craig gives us the Grub-and-Stakers series which takes place in Lobelia Falls, Ontario, Canada while Susan Wittig Albert takes us back to the 1930's in Darling, Alabama with the Darling Dahlias.

As outdoor gardening is coming to a close for the season, at least in my part of the world, now is the perfect time to pick up a gardening mystery. I hope you'll give one a try!