cozy mystery

The Cats of the Key West Mysteries by Lucy Burdette

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Guest post by Lucy Burdette
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After writing eight installments of the Key West food critic mystery series (the eighth, Death on the Menu, was out yesterday), I’ve developed so many characters that it’s almost hard to keep track of them. “Oh wait,” I’ll say to myself, “what the heck is Lorenzo or Miss Gloria or Officer Steve Torrence doing when all this is happening?” The one thing I never forget to include is the cats. In my real life, I begged for my first cat for my thirteenth birthday, and I haven’t been without one since. So my series wouldn’t feel right without them either.Continue Reading

Review: Lawyer for the Cat

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Romance, mystery, and a black cat – I had a feeling I was going to like Lawyer for the Cat a lot. Set in the beautiful city of Charleston, South Carolina, this book features 50-something year-old Sally Baynard, an attorney who has is asked to represent a cat who is the beneficiary of a multi-million dollar trust and a plantation.Continue Reading

Review and Giveaway: When Bunnies Go Bad

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Bunnies Go Bad cover with girls

Pet behaviorist and psychic Pru Marlowe is back! Let me start this review by saying that even though there is no cat on the cover, the book once again prominently features Pru’s crabby tabby Wallis.

In When Bunnies Go Bad, the sixth book in Clea Simon’s Pet Noir series, Pru discovers a murdered tourist, and ends up caring for his ski bunny girlfriend’s high maintenance spaniel. She is also working with a wild rabbit named Henry, who is supposedly tamed and illegally living with an eighty-four-year-old lady in her home, but is acting out and hiding.Continue Reading

The Ninth Life: When a Cat Mystery Takes a Turn for the Dark

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Guest post by Clea Simon

We authors ask a lot of our readers. When we invite you into our worlds, we ask you to suspend disbelief. To accept that cats can talk, and that ordinary people can solve the craziest crimes. We ask you to give up time out with your family and friends – as well as TV and Facebook – to spend time with an old-fashioned and slow-paced pleasure – a book. We ask that you listen to us, that you let us tell you a story. Most important, we ask that you trust us.Continue Reading

Review and Giveaway: The Cat Sitter’s Whiskers

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The-Cat-Sitters-Whiskers

The Cat Sitter mystery series, featuring Dixie Hemingway, a pet sitter who lives on one of the Florida keys, has been a favorite of mine ever since the first book in the series came out seven years ago. The series was originally written by Blaize Clement. Her son, John Clement, continued the series after her death in 2011. Blaize had been collaborating on plots and characters for future novels with John.

In The Cat Sitter’s Whiskers, Dixie’s heads off early one morning to see her first cat client of the day. Continue Reading

Writing with Cats: A Joy and a Challenge

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Patricia-Fry

Guest post by Patricia Fry

When I decided to add a new dimension to my writing repertoire—to pen a novel—I was pretty sure there would be cats involved.

I’d been writing for publication for over forty years by then—all nonfiction. I was one of those rare birds who figured out how to combine my passion for writing with my need to earn a living and I became a freelance magazine article writer. I also wrote a few books along the way—all nonfiction. While I wrote on a variety of topics, a favorite was cats,Continue Reading

Why Cats Belong in Cozy Mysteries, and a Giveaway

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Guest post by Lucy Burdette and Evinrude the Cat

Lucy: I don’t need to tell you guys: Cats are smart and secretive and mysterious and quiet stalkers–and yet so adorable that we forgive them anything. I’ve had a cat in my life ever since the year I turned 13. I was desperate for a date with Mickey Dolenz for my birthday, but my mother was smart enough to give me a kitten instead. (Yoda, seen below doing his best trick, is our current feline denizen.) All my fictional characters have had cats too–Cassie had Cashbox, Dr. Rebecca Butterman had Spencer, and Hayley has Evinrude.Continue Reading