Books

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 My latest release is  Knot What it Seams (February 5, 2013.) Description:

Dwindling membership has the Village Quilters hanging by a thread, and group leader Meadow Downey is desperate to recruit some new folks. With Beatrice’s blessing, she attempts to weave frequent quilt show judge Jo Paxton into their fold. As the town’s irascible mail carrier, Jo delivers trouble wherever she goes. And with all that mail at her fingertips, she knows everyone’s business. Soon Beatrice wonders if they’ve made the right choice.

After a car accident sends Jo to meet her maker, it’s discovered someone tampered with her brakes. Meadow believes someone’s out to eradicate the Village Quilters, but Beatrice isn’t so sure. Now she and her fellow quilters will have to piece together the clues or a deadly killer might strike again…

The Memphis Barbeque Series, by Riley Adams (pen name for Elizabeth Spann Craig).  Barbeque restaurant owner Lulu Taylor dishes out justice, ribs, and humor from Beale Street.

July 6, 2010
Delicious and Suspicious
Publishers Weekly: “A sassy first in a new series from Adams.” Book one of the Memphis Barbeque Series. When a food scout from a cable cooking channel is murdered, it’s only natural for restaurant owner Lulu Taylor to take it personally. After all, her barbeque restaurant served the scout’s last meal. But danger lurks as Lulu investigates the crime. Will she clear the restaurant’s name, or is she next to be skewered?

June 7, 2011
Finger Lickin’ Dead
When an anonymous food critic blasts several local restaurants—including Aunt Pat’s—Lulu Taylor and her customers are biting mad, especially when they learn that Eppie Currian is the pen name of their friend Evelyn’s cheating boyfriend. When “Eppie” gets his own fatal review, the list of suspects is longer than the list of specials at the best BBQ place in Memphis. http://tinyurl.com/2votpjh. Mason Canyon’s review: http://tinyurl.com/6zco594 Review from “My Year on the Grill”: http://tinyurl.com/3bmca52  Review from Genre Reviews: http://bit.ly/lnEd9E Review from Joe Barone’s Blog: http://tinyurl.com/3gqn75e

November 1, 2011-
Hickory Smoked Homicide
Since she runs the hottest BBQ joint in town, Lulu knows just about everyone in Memphis. But one person she’d rather not know is Tristan Pembroke, a snooty pageant coach with a mean streak longer than the line outside Lulu’s restaurant. When she finds Tristan’s dead body stuffed in a closet at a party, the police are suspicious–especially since Lulu’s developed a taste for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Caught in a situation stickier than molasses, Lulu must clear her name–or risk getting fried.

The fourth Memphis Barbeque book, Rubbed Out, will be released on July 2, 2013. 

Reuben Shaw rubs a lot of people the wrong way—including Lulu’s best friend, Cherry, who has the misfortune of being in the booth next to his at the festival. The pigheaded pit master thinks he’s a shoo-in to win the barbeque competition, but he spends more time stirring up trouble than seasoning his
spare ribs. Hours after she gets into a quarrel with him, Cherry finds Shaw dead with a butcher knife in his chest. Now it’s her turn to get grilled—by the police. Lulu sets out to clear her friend’s name and finds Shaw had more secrets
than his BBQ recipe. She’ll need to act fast, because the real killer will spare
no one…including Lulu.

The Southern Quilting Mysteries by Elizabeth Craig for Penguin/NAL. First book–Quilt or Innocence.

As the newest member of the Village Quilters Guild, Beatrice has a lot of gossip to catch up on—especially with the Patchwork Cottage quilt shop about to close. It seems that Judith, the landlord everyone loves to hate, wants to raise the rent, despite being a quilter herself…

But when Judith is found dead, the harmless gossip becomes an intricate patchwork of mischievous motives. And it’s up to Beatrice’s expert eye to decipher the pattern and catch the killer, before her life gets sewn up for good. 

(Second Southern Quilting Mystery is Knot What it Seams…released Feb. 5, 2013.  See top of page for more information or to order a copy.)

Third Southern Quilting Mystery is Quilt Trip, which releases December 3, 2013.

As a quilter, retired folk art curator Beatrice Coleman likes to have all the
seams stitched together—but her plans keep getting tangled up in unexpected
ways…

Beatrice has never crashed a party but now her fellow quilt
guild member, Meadow Downey, is driving them to a Victorian mansion in the mountains beyond Dappled Hills, North Carolina. Muriel Starnes, an elderly
eccentric, has organized a meeting of quilters to pick someone to administer a
quilting scholarship. The fact that the Village Quilters weren’t invited isn’t enough to keep Meadow from speaking her piece.

But once the quilters
arrive at the mansion, it seems they may never leave. An ice storm sends an old
tree crashing across the driveway, leaving them stranded for the night. And by
the next morning, they are one fewer—for Muriel has been sent to meet her maker.
With everyone in the house a suspect, it’s up to Beatrice and the Village
Quilters to figure out who has a guilty conscience before someone else gets tied
up in knots.

The Myrtle Clover Mystery Series
The sleepy town of Bradley, North Carolina, might not be as quiet as it seems. Murders happen at a steady rate and octogenarian amateur sleuth Myrtle Clover is determined to solve them before her police chief son.  The books can be read out of order, but the technical order of the books is as follows: Pretty is as Pretty Dies, Progressive Dinner Deadly, Dyeing Shame, A Body in the Backyard. Coming soon: Death at a Drop-In and A Body at Book Club.

August 1, 2009–Midnight Ink
Pretty is as Pretty Dies
No one in Bradley, North Carolina, is exactly crying into their sweet tea over the murder of Parke Stockard. Certainly not retired schoolteacher Myrtle Clover. Upon discovering the corpse, Myrtle is struck-not with grief, but a brilliant idea! Solving the crime would prove to everyone (especially her son Red, the police chief) that this octogenarian isn’t ready to be put out to pasture just yet.

The victim, a pretty but pushy town developer, had deep pockets and few friends.  Even when another murder takes place, proud Myrtle forges on, armed only with a heavy cane, a venomous tongue, and a widower sidekick.  The Publishers Weekly review: “The amusing first in a new cozy series from Craig…Myrtle’s wacky personality is a delight.”

August 2011
Progressive Dinner Deadly
$2.99–Kindle, Nook, iBookstore.

Octogenarian Myrtle Clover isn’t thrilled when her book club morphs into a supper club. But things get a little more interesting when a body is discovered during the third course. Can Myrtle’s sleuthing smoke out the killer before her goose is cooked?

December 2011: “A Dyeing Shame“–a Myrtle Clover ebook. $2.99.

When Beauty Box beautician Tammy Smith is discovered with a pair of hair shears in her back, there are suspects and secrets aplenty in her small Southern town.

Octogenarian Myrtle Clover, bored by bingo and bridge, is intrigued by the crime…and her neighbors’ secrets. But discovering, and blabbing, secrets got Tammy killed and Myrtle soon learns her sleuthing isn’t just dangerous…it’s deadly.

October 28, 2012–A Body in the Backyard–a Myrtle Clover mystery (now available on e-readers.)

It’s just an ordinary day for octogenarian sleuth Myrtle Clover—until her yardman discovers a dead body planted in her backyard.  This death isn’t cut and dried—the victim was bashed in the head with one of Myrtle’s garden gnomes.

Myrtle’s friend Miles recognizes the body and identifies him as Charles Clayborne… reluctantly admitting he’s a cousin. Charles wasn’t the sort of relative you bragged about—he was a garden variety sleaze, which is very likely why he ended up murdered.  As Myrtle starts digging up dirt to nip the killings in the bud, someone’s focused on scaring her off the case. Myrtle vows to find the murderer…before she’s pushing up daisies, herself.
Coming Soon: Death at a Drop-In. Read chapter one for free by clicking here.