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Back to topChicks on the Case Celebration
Cozy up with these delightful authors and a warm winter beverage, and discover some great mystery titles for your holiday break reading, or to give as gifts. Join Maria DiRico (It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Murder), Jennifer J. Chow (Mimi Lee Cracks the Code), Cynthia Kuhn (How to Book a Murder), and Becky Clark (Fatal Solutions and Police Navidad) as they discuss sleuthing, catering, sassy cats, bookshops, crossword puzzles, meta-mysteries, and more.
There is no charge for this event.
The only thing we ask is that you buy a minimum of one book by one of our authors.
You can do that any time from our ecommerce list below or by calling the bookstore.
Maria and Jennifer will sign books in-person on Thursday, December 9.
Signed and inscribed copies of their titles will ship after their courtyard signing.
Please add any inscription notations for Maria / Ellen or Jennifer to the Comments Section at stage 2 of checkout, after adding books to your ecommerce cart.
Signed bookplates and fun swag are available with purchase of Cynthia and Becky's books from Creating Conversations.
Maria DiRico is the pseudonym for Ellen Byron, author of the award winning, USA Today bestselling Cajun Country Mysteries. Born in Queens, New York, she is first-generation Italian-American on her mother's side and the granddaughter of a low-level Jewish mobster on her father's side. She grew up visiting the Astoria Manor and Grand Bay Marina catering halls, which were run by her Italian mother's family in Queens and have become the inspiration for her Catering Hall Mystery Series. DiRico has been a writer-producer for hit television series like Wings and Just Shoot Me, and her first play, Graceland, appears in the Best Short Plays collection. She's a freelance journalist, with over 200 articles published in national magazines, and previously worked as a cater-waiter for Martha Stewart, a credit she never tires of sharing. A native New Yorker who attended Tulane University, Ellen lives in Los Angeles with her husband, daughter, and two rescue dogs.
Jennifer J. Chow grew up reading Garfield comics and adores creating sassy kit lit. She also writes the Winston Wong mysteries, which feature a regular meowing cat. Her other Asian American novels include Dragonfly Dreams (a Teen Vogue pick) and The 228 Legacy.
Cynthia Kuhn is an English professor and author of the Starlit Bookshop Mysteries and the Lila Maclean Academic Mysteries. Her work has also appeared in Mystery Most Edible, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Copper Nickel, Prick of the Spindle, Mama PhD, and other publications. Honors include an Agatha Award, a William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant, and Lefty Award nominations. Originally from upstate New York, she lives in Colorado with her family.
A highly functioning chocoholic, Becky Clark is the seventh of eight kids, which explains both her insatiable need for attention and her atrocious table manners. She likes to read funny books so it felt natural to write them, too. She published her first novel in 2001 and is a sought-after speaker.
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Astoria, Queens, is decorated within an inch of its life for the Christmas season, and Mia Carina is juggling her job at the Belle View catering hall with a case of murder...
Mia’s busy with a full schedule of events at the family business—among them an over-the-top Nativity-themed first birthday party and a Sweet Sixteen for a teen drama queen. But her personal life is even more challenging. Her estranged mother has returned—and her lifelong friend Jamie has discovered a shocking secret about his past. He’s so angry that he starts hanging out with Lorenzo, who claims to be his long-lost brother—even after it becomes clear that Lorenzo’s story is as fake as a plastic Christmas tree.
Then a body turns up among the elves in a Santa’s-workshop lawn display, and amateur sleuth Mia has a buffet of suspects to choose from. Amid the holiday celebrations, she intends to find out who’s the guilty party...
When murder follows Mimi Lee to her romantic island getaway, she puts on her best sleuthing hat with her sassy cat in tow in this adventurous cozy mystery by Jennifer J. Chow.
Mimi Lee just found an extra perk to being a pet groomer at Hollywoof (other than cuddling animals all day long, that is). Pixie St. James, one of Mimi’s clients and the investor behind Hollywoof, has offered her and her boyfriend, Josh, a getaway at her vacation home, nestled on beautiful Catalina Island. With the island just outside of Los Angeles but still far enough from the hustle and bustle, Mimi, Josh, and their cat Marshmallow (who, of course, wouldn’t be caught dead in a dingy pet hotel) are excited for their relaxing stay.
That is, until Pixie’s last renter, Davis D. Argo, turns up dead. Mimi and Josh’s romantic getaway immediately turns into an enormous buzzkill, especially when Pixie asks Mimi for help. The police suspect Pixie, and Mimi knows a thing or two about wrongful allegations. Mimi figures it couldn’t hurt to snoop a little since she’s already there, and soon discovers that a valuable item is missing. Except Pixie isn’t the only one in the neighborhood who has been robbed. There is something strange happening on the island, and Mimi won’t stop until she finds out what it is.
To help save her family’s floundering Colorado bookstore, Starlit Bookshop, newly minted Ph.D. Emma Starrs agrees to plan a mystery-themed dinner party for her wealthy, well-connected high school classmate Tabitha Baxter. It’s a delightful evening of cocktails and conjecture until Tabitha’s husband, Tip—hosting the affair in the guise of Edgar Allan Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin—winds up murdered.
In a heartbeat, Emma and her aunt Nora, a famous mystery writer, become suspects. Emma is sure the party’s over for Starlit events, until celebrated author Calliope Nightfall, whose gothic sensibilities are intrigued by the circumstances, implores the bookseller to create a Poe-themed launch event for her latest tome. Throwing a bash to die for while searching for additional clues is already enough to drive Emma stark raven mad, but another shocking crime soon reveals that Silvercrest has not yet reached the final chapter of the puzzling case.
Someone in this charming artistic community has murder on the mind, and if Emma cannot outwit the killer, she and her beloved aunt will land behind bars, to walk free nevermore.
1 ACROSS: HUMAN REMAINS
Creating crossword puzzles for the Chestnut Station Chronicle won't allow Quinn Carr to quit her diner waitress job any time soon. But it does provide an outlet for her organizational OCD, and also lets her leave subtle hints for police chief Myron Chestnut, an avid puzzler, when his investigations need some direction. Some mysteries, though, leave even Quinn stumped--like the property deed she finds in her grandfather's old desk. The document lists Quinn's mother as the owner of some land on the outskirts of Chestnut Station, but Georgeanne refuses to discuss it.
8 LETTERS, STARTS WITH "S"
Quinn visits the site, located near a World War II Japanese internment camp that's since been turned into a museum. There she unearths a weathered Japanese doll...and a skeleton. Before she can uncover a killer, she has to identify the victim. Was it an inmate trying to escape? A guard? Or someone closer to home? As Quinn fills in the blanks, she finds an unexpected link between her family and Chief Chestnut's--one that could spell more deadly trouble...
Also available in trade paperback.
A Christmas pageant. A dead Santa. All is not calm, and it's definitely not bright.
The only thing Charlee Russo wants for Christmas are some silent nights so she can work on her mystery manuscript. Instead, she gets snowballed into writing and directing a Christmas play as a fundraiser for an elementary school to be held at the local senior center. But when the actor playing Santa drops dead at rehearsal, Charlee must deck the halls with thoughts of murder.
Rehearsals continue while she is forced to contend with sabotage, assault, and actors-young and old-refusing to learn their lines. As she digs deeper into Santa's so-called accident, she gets a frosty reception from all the suspects on the naughty list. With the school funding at stake and a potential murderer involved in the production, she needs a Christmas miracle. Can Charlee pull off the pageant without anyone else getting sleighed?
Police Navidad is the fourth book in the Mystery Writer's Mystery series. If you like fun, fast stories with warm and witty characters you want to hang out with, then you'll love this cozy mystery from Becky Clark.