FEATURED AUTHOR: LUCY BURDETTE

ABOUT THE BOOK


When a killer strikes just before flan time, beloved food critic Hayley Snow is forced to sniff out the killer before someone else bites the dust.

Hayley Snow, fiery food critic for Key Zest magazine, has just landed a ticket to one of the most prestigious events in Key West: a high-brow three-day conference at the Harry Truman Little White House. Even though she’ll be working the event helping her mother’s fledgling catering business, there’s plenty of spicy gossip to go around. But just before her mother’s decadent flan is put to the test, Key West’s most prized possession, Hemingway’s Nobel prize gold medal for The Old Man and the Sea, is discovered stolen from its case.

Unsavory suspicions point to Gabriel, a family friend and one of the new busboys working the event, who mysteriously goes missing moments later. Anxious to clear his name, Gabriel’s family enlists Hayley to help find him, but right as they begin their search, his body is found stabbed to death in the storeroom.

Hayley has no shortage of suspects to interrogate and very little time before the killer adds another victim to the menu in national bestselling author Lucy Burdette’s delectable eighth Key West Food Critic mystery, Death on the Menu.

Book Details:


Title: Death on the Menu

Author: Lucy Burdette

Genre: Mystery

Series: Key West Food Critic Mysteries, book 8

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books (August 7, 2018)

Print length: 304 pages

On tour with: Great Escape Book Tours

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT WITH LUCY BURDETTE

A few of your favorite things: My elderly Australian shepherd, Tonka, my elderly gray cat Yoda, my (not-so-elderly) husband John, my plum blossom yoga pants.
Things you need to throw out: I swear I will never buy clothes again just because they are on sale! If I haven’t worn them in a year, they need to go. 


Things you love about writing: Rewriting and editing, typing “the end,” seeing the finished copy of a book, seeing the book in a bookstore, hearing from readers who read it and loved it!
Things you hate about writing: Writing the first draft--getting the story figured out--is so hard!

Things you love about where you live: The palm trees, the blue/green water around the island, the wonderful food, the interesting people, the history.
Things that make you want to move: Hurricane season, global warming and sea level rise, crowds of drunken tourists . . . 


Things you never want to run out of: I’m addicted to the Backyard Food Company’s candied jalapenos. I buy them whenever I see them. And good books!
Things you wish you’d never bought: See clothes on sale, above!


Favorite foods: Homemade cake (especially yellow with mocha icing), blueberries and peaches in season, café con leche from the Cuban Coffee Queen, fried shrimp, crab cakes.
Things that make you want to throw up: Liver and any other organ meats.

Things you’d walk a mile for: Having coffee or a chocolate milk shake with my friends or family, bookstores.
Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: Politicians who lie and put themselves first.

Things you always put in your books: Food, restaurants, the Key West police department, my character’s houseboat, her tarot-card-reading friend, Lorenzo, happy endings.

Things you never put in your books: Violence and gore on the page, sex, ditto.

Things to say to an author: I loved your book! Your story made me think . . . made me want to go to Key West . . . made me hungry . . . made me laugh and cry. When is the next one coming? I bought a copy for all my friends. Would you be willing to talk with my book group?

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: Can you give me a copy? When are you going to write a real book?

Favorite places you’ve been: Key West (of course), Paris, Australia, India, Connecticut shoreline, coast of Maine, New York City.

Places you never want to go to again: Any twelve lane highway full of frantic drivers!

Things that make you happy: Good food, animals, friends, good books, my family.

Things that drive you crazy: Woodchucks mowing down our beans and okra plants in the garden!


ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Clinical psychologist Lucy Burdette (aka Roberta Isleib) has published 16 mysteries, including the latest in the Key West food critic series, Death On The Menu (Crooked Lane Books, August 2018.) Her books and stories have been short-listed for Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She's a member of Mystery Writers of America and a past president of Sisters in Crime. She blogs at Jungle Red Writers and shares her love for food with the culinary writers at Mystery Lovers Kitchen. She lives in Madison Connecticut and Key West Florida.


Connect with Lucy:
Website  |  Blog  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  | 
Goodreads  |  Instagram

Buy the book:
Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Crooked Lane Books

CHARACTER INTERVIEW WITH MADDIE DAY'S ROBBIE JORDAN

ABOUT THE BOOK

For country-store owner Robbie Jordan, the National Maple Syrup Festival is a sweet escape from late-winter in South Lick, Indiana—until murder saps the life out of the celebration . . .

As Robbie arranges a breakfast-themed cook-off at Pans ‘N Pancakes, visitors pour into Brown County for the annual maple extravaganza. Unfortunately, that includes Professor Connolly, a know-it-all academic from Boston who makes enemies everywhere he goes—and this time, bad manners prove deadly. Soon after clashing with several scientists at a maple tree panel, the professor is found dead outside a sugar shack, stabbed to death by a local restaurateur’s knife. When an innocent woman gets dragged into the investigation and a biologist mysteriously disappears, Robbie drops her winning maple biscuits to search for answers. But can she help police crack the case before another victim is caught in a sticky situation with a killer?

Book details:

Title: Biscuits and Slashed Browns (A Country Store Mystery)

Author: Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell)
Genre: Cozy foodie mystery, 4th in series

Setting: Indiana

Publisher: Kensington (January 30, 2018)

Paperback: 292 pages

Touring with: Great Escapes Book Tours

ABOUT THE CHARACTER

Robbie (Roberta) Jordan is a twenty-eight year old chef and carpenter living in South Lick, Indiana. She was born in Santa Barbara, California, but has now lived in Indiana for nearly five years. She learned carpentry from her late mother, Jeanine, and used her skills to renovate an old country store into a breakfast and lunch restaurant. She was briefly married but it didn’t work out. Her father is an Italian professor, Roberto Fracasso, who lives in Pisa.

INTERVIEW WITH MADDIE DAY'S ROBBIE JORDAN

Robbie, how did you first meet Maddie? 
I met her back in 2014 when she started writing about me.

Want to dish about her?
She seems to like to complicate my life, which isn’t really fair. On the other hand, she’s a really disciplined writer, and she loves where I live.

Why do you think that your life has ended up being in a book?
No idea! It’s crazy, isn’t it?

Did you have a hard time convincing Maddie to write any particular scenes for you?
At one point I really want to go search in the woods for a missing guy. She kept saying, you have to have someone with you! I tried everybody, and finally convinced my friend Phil to keep me company. But when he had car trouble and couldn’t make it, I told her I had to go anyway.

What do you like to do when you are not being actively read somewhere?
I love a good hilly bike ride almost as much as I like a really challenging crossword puzzle!

Tell the truth. What do you think of your fellow characters?
I adore my Aunt Adele, and have grown fond of Lieutenant Buck Bird, with his folksy speech and infinitely large appetite. My hunky boyfriend Abe O’Neill isn’t bad, either, and I don’t know what I’d do without my young co-chef Danna Beedle.

Do have any secret aspirations that Maddie doesn’t know about?
I love listening to opera – my dad is Italian, after all – and I’d love to take voice lessons some day so I could sing along better. Maddie has no idea!

If you had a free day with no responsibilities and your only mission was to enjoy yourself, what would you do?
I’d ride my bike to the lake (in the summer) with a cozy mystery and a beer in my saddlebag.



Tell us about your best friend.
Lou Perlman is my bff. We ride together, and can talk about anything. She’s super smart, about to get her PhD in sociology, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t also full of fun. 



What are you most afraid of?
I’m afraid of losing any more family. I already lost my mom, and only found my father recently. I don’t have any siblings – well, except for my Italian half-sister and half-brother – and I’m terrified that something bad will happen to Adele or to Roberto, my father.



What’s Maddie’s worst habit?
Frankly, she’s not the best housekeeper around. I guess because she writes three books a year she just doesn’t have time.



How do you feel about your life right now?
I love my life. I’m happy with Abe, my store and restaurant are doing well, and living in a small town like South Lick is the best. I’d rather not run across any other dead bodies or encounter any more murderers, though.

Describe the town where you live. 
South Lick is a small town nestled in the hills of southern Indiana. We have a lovely century-old Town Hall and library, and several Art Deco buildings. The town used to have a mineral springs spa – the “lick” in the name refers to the minerals in the water – and a casino back in the early 1900s. I can walk nearly everywhere and also get out onto country roads within minutes. It’s perfect.

Describe an average day in your life.
I get up and run the restaurant five or six days a week until we close at two-thirty. I play with my tuxedo cat Birdy, go for a bike ride, and do a puzzle if I don’t have a dinner date with Abe.

What makes you stand out from any other characters in your genre?
I’m a Californian transplanted to the Midwest, and I don’t know of any other cozy protagonists who love cooking, carpentry, and crosswords like I do.

Will you encourage your author to write a sequel?
You bet! She’s already written the fifth and sixth books in the series, and she’s hoping for a contract extension for more.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maddie Day is a talented amateur chef and holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from Indiana University. An Agatha Award-nominated author, she is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and also writes award-winning short crime fiction. She lives with her beau and three cats in Massachusetts.

As Edith Maxwell, she writes the Local Foods Mysteries (Kensington Publishing) and the Quaker Midwife Mysteries (Midnight Ink).

You can find all Maddie’s/Edith’s identities at www.edithmaxwell.com. She blogs every weekday with the other Wicked Cozy Authors at wickedcozyauthors.com. Look for her as Edith M. Maxwell and Maddie Day on Facebook and @edithmaxwell and @maddiedayauthor on Twitter.

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