As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles (A Food Lovers' Village Mystery) by Leslie Budewitz
About the Book
As the Christmas Cookie Crumbles (A Food Lovers' Village Mystery)
Cozy Mystery 5th in Series
Midnight Ink (June 8, 2018)
Paperback: 288 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0738752419
Digital ASIN: B075W25FNF
Cozy Mystery 5th in Series
Midnight Ink (June 8, 2018)
Paperback: 288 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0738752419
Digital ASIN: B075W25FNF
Erin is one smart cookie, but can she keep the holiday spirit—and herself—alive till Christmas?In Jewel Bay, all is merry and bright. At Murphy's Mercantile, AKA the Merc, manager Erin Murphy is ringing in the holiday season with food, drink, and a new friend: Merrily Thornton. A local girl gone wrong, Merrily has turned her life around. But her parents have publicly shunned her, and they nurse a bitterness that chills Erin.When Merrily goes missing and her boss discovers he's been robbed, fingers point to Merrily—until she's found dead, a string of lights around her neck. The clues and danger snowball from there. Can Erin nab the killer—and keep herself in one piece—in time for a special Christmas Eve?Includes delicious recipes!
GUEST POST
One Bell, Two Bells, Three Bells, Four — On Christmas Collecting
by Leslie Budewitz
Christmas seems to lend itself to collecting. Surely you’ve noticed, at year-end when you’re trying to squeeze all the ornaments back into their boxes. How on earth, you wonder, did you end up with seven stars and thirteen angels, five birds and twenty-two bells?
Okay, so maybe when it comes to the bells, that’s just me. The two delicate glass bells, one pale pink and one rose from a shop near Pike Place Market, aptly called Leslie’s. The red and green bells my mother found at the Corning Glass Factory in upstate New York. The wooden bell my parents brought me from their visit to the Swiss village where my father, an Army Air Corps gunner, spent part of World War II after his plane crash landed in Switzerland. The set of eight figurine bells—Mr. and Mrs. Claus, a pair of elves, a couple of reindeer, and a snow couple—I helped my dad choose as a gift for my mother, back before I demanded to know the truth about Santa.
And of course, “silver bells, silver bells, it’s Christmas time in the city!”
Wait. It’s June. Why am I talking about Christmas? Because there is nothing quite like finishing a Christmas book in late spring when the mercury is rising and the apple trees blossoming, then seeing it hit bookshelves a year later, to seriously mess up one’s internal calendar.
But the curious timing has also got me thinking about the importance of collections in our holiday celebrations. “Oh, this one!” we say as we lift the delicate sandstone angel in a clam shell out of her box. “We bought her in that little shop in Gig Harbor—remember?” We smile at the memory of the trip, one of our first together. “And your mother gave us this copper and glass angel with the filigree wings.” We miss her terribly, but she lives on in the annual tradition of wrapping ourselves in memory. The ornaments, the candles, the cups and plates and stockings and music boxes connect us to the friends and relatives who gave them to us, or were part of celebrations past. And as we add to our collections, we know we, and our nearest and dearest, will be reminded of our times together in the years ahead, when setting future holiday tables and trimming future trees.
Many of us cherish collections handed down from our families. I’ve got the three Putz houses, also called glitter houses, that always sat on my mother’s sewing machine cabinet at the holidays. (Where the bottle brush trees went, I have no idea.) The mercury glass ornaments were purchased in the early 1950s, when my parents were newly married. I love their shine and patina, and the memories they evoke.
Not all collections are planned. A friend bought a small serving plate showing a baby penguin playing with his parents amid a snowy holiday scene. Before she knew it, she’d been given penguin salt & pepper shakers, tiny red and green mufflers around their necks, coffee mugs in the shape of penguins dressed like Santa, even place mats with penguins skating across a pond, the trees in the background decorated for the season. One penguin, cute. Ten penguins, too much—for her. Just right for someone else.
Creating my characters’ collections was an exercise in imagination and joy. In the front window of Murphy’s Glacier Mercantile, aka the Merc, is a small tree decorated with miniature cookware—skillets, egg beaters, and such. In another, a train set chugs around a holiday village that resembles Jewel Bay, the town that calls itself “Montana’s Christmas Village.”
Down the fictional street, an antique shop celebrates Christmas all year round in the basement, where dozens of electric and wooden trains circle around holiday villages. Santa soap dispensers sit near to Father Christmases in long red velvet robes and mink caps. Christmas china decorates tables set with linens covered in snowflakes or poinsettias.
In another shop window, hand-made, starched doilies hang on fishing line like snowflakes, no two alike. Just thinking about them makes me smile.
And the best part of collections on the page? They never need to be dusted or packed away!
About the Author
Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries and the Spice Shop Mysteries—and the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction. She lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician, and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat Ruff, a cover model, and avid bird-watcher.
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