Sparkling Like Snow by Katharine E. Smith

Christmas is coming, and the goose is not the only thing feeling a little heavier than it used to be.

Alongside the countdown to the festivities, and one of the busiest times of the year, Alice is now well into her second pregnancy, and ticking off the days until she can finally stop work for a little while, and prepare to welcome her baby into the world.
While two-year-old Ben is dreaming of a white Christmas, Alice is floored by the news from her midwife that she is not as well as she might be. Her nerves are set further on edge by a trip to a hidden cove with Lizzie, where she learns the story of a young woman whose baby was lost at sea, and whose ghost is now said to haunt the sands. With some unsettling dreams, and strange goings-on at home and at work, Alice begins to fear for her health and her sanity. Is she being targeted by some unseen force, or might she actually be losing her mind?

Using Sam’s rational nature to help keep calm, Alice resolves to make this a Christmas to remember. This much is guaranteed, but possibly not in quite the ways she’d imagined.

Book Eight of the Coming Back to Cornwall series, Sparkling Like Snow is a Christmas cracker of a book that will have you longing for a crackling fire and a glass of mulled wine, whatever the time of year.

Targeted Age Group:: All
Heat/Violence Level: Heat Level 1 – G Rated Clean Read

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
This is the eighth book in my Coming Back to Cornwall series, which was originally intended to be a trilogy. I've been thrilled by how many people seem to enjoy the books and have already been asked more than once to write book nine
I was not sure I would write an eighth book but I had a flash of inspiration to write something festive and I loved writing it, even though it felt wrong thinking about Christmas during the summer months.

How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
I honestly don't know exactly where they come from. I'd say Alice, the protagonist, and her best friend Julie are heavily influenced by me and my friends, as are their love interests. I suppose there are elements of family members and also people I have worked with hidden in many of my characters, but I am a keen observer of people and really interested in what makes them tick, so I think my characters grow from this.

Book Sample
The owl calls again, and I stop. I look to the sky, but all is dark. No cloud is willing to relent and allow a glimpse of the moon or stars. Turning back, I feel proud at the sight of this beautiful place that Julie and I have helped to create here. Even though most of the rooms are empty, it looks warm, and welcoming. I reach for my phone to take another picture, then hear a rustling from the woods behind me. Meg is instantly alert, her hackles up, standing as tall as her long, lean legs will let her. My skin prickles. I turn, to see a fox, standing still and as shocked as we are, and staring straight at us.
“Leave, Meg,” I say gently, carefully reaching for her collar. Then, “You can go now,” I say to the fox, and it stays looking for just one more moment before it is on its way, leaping and bouncing through the snow, its brush tail straight out behind it.
Meg strains at her collar, but I’m not really sure she’d know what to do if I let her go. “Shhh,” I say. “Shhh, Meg.” As the fox disappears back between the trees, she relaxes, but I hold onto her for a little while longer as we start to make our way back to the house. I realise I’m shaking a little, from the shock, and it just goes to show that I’m still living on my nerves a bit. It also goes to show that I’m being ridiculous. I feel honoured to have seen the fox and, as the fear I’d felt slips away, it is replaced by elation. As we near the Mowhay, however, Meg’s ears prick again, and I stop in my tracks.
I can hear what Meg’s heard. Footsteps.
She takes creeping, tentative steps towards the noise. I don’t know what to do. My heart is thudding. I quietly call her to me, and start to move more quickly towards the houses. But Meg doesn’t come. What should I do?
Then Meg is running, leaping through the snow in her haste.
In the dark silence, I want to call for Julie, but I don’t want to scare the kids, or alert anyone to my presence.
Elizabeth.
The name springs to mind as Meg begins barking, and I am frozen to the spot, with no idea what to do.

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Two Many Sleuths by MK Scott

Can the Brits and Yanks team up to solve a murder?

What should have been an easy week for small town detective Mark Taber and his amateur sleuth and innkeeper wife, Donna Tolllhouse Taber goes awry when a local garden club member is shot. One of the inn guests, a Scotland Yard detective’s insistence on helping could actually make things worse. Can ruffled feathers be smoothed before the killer strikes again?

Find out in Two Many Sleuths.

Targeted Age Group:: 12-99
Heat/Violence Level: Heat Level 2 – PG

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I enjoy reading both cozy mysteries and UK located mysteries, too. I thought pairing a local detective and a UK inspector would be great fun resulting in misunderstandings and mutual admiration. Add in Donna, my amatuer sleuth, the UK inspector's wife, and an aging puggle dog. They race to uncover clues to prove they're more than capable of sniffing out a murderer.

How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
Often, the main characters are a jumble of traits from people close to me such as my mother, husband, daughter, etc. Usually, the non-main characters are completely created from imagination.

Book Sample
A week without a murder or the mention of any crime made Donna Tollhouse Taber grin. She adjusted the car window clamps on the British flags, then stepped back, resting her hands on her lower back. “I think it’s a nice touch.”

Her detective husband, Mark, ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair. “I don’t know.” His face scrunched up. “It might be over the top. Howard doesn’t strike me as the showy type. He keeps things low-key, a proper Brit.”

Typical. Her husband thought he knew all about the neighbors over the pond due to an online relationship he’d struck with Scotland Yard detective Howard Dudley, when he previously researched diamonds and jewel heists. Never mind her husband hadn’t put in the hours she had watching BBC mysteries and The Great British Baking Show. If Howard didn’t appreciate her effort to welcome them, his wife, Elizabeth, certainly would. “A proper Brit might mention they don’t go in for pomp and ceremony, but just look at the royal weddings. They go crazy about those.”

“Well, you’d know more about that than me. All I can hope for is a nice quiet time with no murders. I told the station not to call me unless it’s an emergency. A vacation is still a vacation even if I don’t leave the state.”

“The best thing to do is not answer your phone.” Donna had doubts about her husband not getting pulled into a case.

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About Featured Book: Renner’s Reboot by John McNamara

On the morning of 9/11, Benjamin Renner, late for his appointment with the client firm in the Twin Towers, commits to the unthinkable: let the world…his wife, his family, his colleagues…believe he perished in the horror of the morning. A phrase from childhood echoes: do-over, and its adult equivalent, reboot. Can he pull off such a deception? Help comes in the form of an older woman to whom he confesses his plan and who assists him for reasons she refuses to reveal.
Renner, now Jim Tanner, begins a fifteen-year odyssey, constantly on guard, crisscrossing the country on buses, never remaining in one place long enough for people to grow close to him. Coping with the challenge of maintaining an untethered life fosters guilt, paranoia, and loneliness. Living while looking over his shoulder taxes his determination, but he maintains the façade. He labors as a transient worker from the Pacific Northwest to Key West, accepting an existence disparate to his middle-class upbringing. During his travels, he writes journal entries, letters to his wife, to his family, which he never intends to send, as well as introspective letters to Eve, the woman whose beneficence enabled escape from his previous life. She saves each envelope in a trunk in her Brooklyn home.

He worries that his remains from the collapse of the Towers have never been located, but hundreds of victims remain unidentified.

His wife collects millions in 9/11 survivor benefits, remarries, and finally has children. They quarreled about wanting children. He wasn’t opposed to fatherhood, he simply didn’t want children with her.
His brother names a son after Benjamin. The depth of his parents’ grief remains a mystery, about which he can only speculate. When he worked as a management consultant, Renner embraced planning as a skill, as the essence of his nature. But Tanner enjoys no such luxury. Planning beyond the next day endangers his identity. This internal battle defines his new life.
Soon he discovers the accuracy of the adage: that people need people, that he is no exception. He forms tentative friendships, takes on lovers, the need for intimacy tugging at him, but severs every attachment when the urge to confess his transgression becomes too powerful.
At times he sits quietly, contemplating how in this new life, nicety and necessity conflict.
As the 15th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Tanner visits Eve, whose health has declined, and while caring for his benefactor, questions whether he can or has ever separated himself from Renner.

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From USA Today bestselling author L A Cotton, comes an opposites-attract sports romance. Angst… drama… friendship… and football. Will you survive senior year?

Lily Ford has always been a wallflower.
But it’s senior year, and she wants nothing more than to try and push her boundaries and embrace the last year of high school.

Kaiden Thatcher has always been the star on the football field.
But now he finds himself in enemy territory forced to prove himself to his new coach and teammates.

It starts with a dare. Seven minutes of heaven in a boat shed. But it quickly turns into something neither of them saw coming.

He’s everything she should resist.
She’s everything he shouldn’t want.
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About Featured Book: Enough to Make the Angels Weep by Ernesto Patino

Hired to investigate the murder of an 84-year-old widow, P.I. Joe Coopersmith hits one dead end after another in his search for leads. With few clues and no suspects, he nearly gives up, until he uncovers a connection to a bizarre plot to kill the descendants of Irish soldiers who fought for Mexico during the Mexican-American War. Known as San Patricios, they belonged to the St. Patrick's Battalion, an elite Mexican unit composed mostly of Irish immigrants. When a well-preserved diary of an Irish soldier turns up, Coopersmith knows he's on the right track. He digs deeper into the plot, soon learning the identity of the man behind it and his warped motive for the cold-blooded murder of the elderly widow.

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