Laughing Can Kill You

Maggie King’s astute cozy-mystery protagonist Hazel Rose of Richmond, Virginia, is thrust front and center in a murder investigation that puts her own life in jeopardy. 

Hazel Rose is a computer-programmer-turned-romance writer who burst onto the cozy literary murder-mystery scene in Murder at the Book Group. In that novel, Book One, she was swept up in solving the murder of a book club member who died after ingesting a cup of tea laced with cyanide. In Book Two, Murder at the Moonshine Inn, Hazel and her book club cronies became embroiled in solving the suspicious death of a high-powered executive found dead in the parking lot of a local watering hole. In Laughing Can Kill You, Book Three in this engaging series, poor Hazel learns that she’s been dumped by her publisher—her romance books have faced lagging sales. Ever resilient and undaunted Hazel decides to sign up for a local course in mystery writing in the hope that by switching gears, she’ll re-energize her career. The problem is, however, there is always one spoiler in every group—and writing groups are no exception.

Self-aggrandizing Randall “Randy” Zimmerman, Esquire—a lawyer-turned-thriller-writer who believes he can give “John Grisham a run for his money”--is that one annoying person in Hazel’s group. Randy is the ex-husband of a book club member. He takes confrontational pleasure in demeaning, belittling and even laughing at the work of his fellow classmates. When Hazel and her true-crime writing husband, Vince, find Randy dead, foul-play looms. Hazel--with the help of her cohorts--once again goes on a dangerous pursuit to root out the killer.  

Readers don’t need to be familiar with King’s prior books to enjoy this one, but they’ll no doubt want to after reading this well-crafted, suspenseful whodunnit augmented with a strong supporting, small-town ensemble cast and a ratcheting plot rife with shifty motives and red herrings.

Laughing Can Kill You: A Hazel Rose Book Group Mystery (Book Three) by Maggie King

Olive Lane Press, $12.99 paperback, 9798985231816, 320 pages

Publication Date: December 6, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

Read my reviews of other Hazel Rose Book Group Mysteries:

MURDER AT THE BOOK GROUP

MURDER AT THE MOONSHINE INN

The Holiday Swap

In this delightful romantic comedy, twin baker sisters secretly swap lives and hilariously discover their true selves by experiencing how the other lives.

Identical twins--20-something sisters who are both successful bakers--switch lives in The Holiday Swap, a fun and quick-witted first novel by Maggie Knox (pseudonym for authors Karma Brown and Marissa Stapley).

 

The story launches days before Christmas in sunny California. Charlie Goodwin, a noted Paris-trained pastry chef, is embroiled in a network reality baking show. Her program--Sweet & Salty, produced for two seasons in Los Angeles and cohosted by Chef Austin Nash--is facing the threat of replacement with another show slated to feature only one chef. Charlie and Austin, who leaves Charlie feeling more "bah-humbug than merry and bright," embark as judges on a 12-days-to-Christmas countdown, where 12 amateur bakers compete for a $25,000 prize.

After a shelving unit tips over, giving Charlie a concussion that strips her of the ability to taste and smell, she is ordered to take it easy. But how can she possibly rest with her show and job on the brink of peril? Afraid to tell anyone of her sensory malfunctions, Charlie secretly enlists the help of her lifelong confidante, her identical twin, Cass, who steps in to save Charlie in her hour of need, agreeing to swap lives temporarily--and covertly. 

 

Knox assembles a memorable cast and whips up inventive switched-lives scenarios filled with a host of mishaps that double the fun. Delightfully romantic plot twists further sweeten this lighthearted, feel-good story with a message that is sure to make rom-com readers hunger for whatever Knox decides to dish up next.

 

The Holiday Swap by Karma Brown and Marissa Stapley

G.P. Putnam Sons Books (Penguin Books), $17.00 paperback, 97805933307398, 352 pages

Publication Date: August 10, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (October 8, 2021), link HERE

 

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (September 3, 2021), link HERE

The Speckled Beauty

Famed serial memoirist Rick Bragg shares a beguiling story of his quest to tame an exasperating, yet utterly lovable, stray dog.

Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirist Rick Bragg (The Best Cook in the World; My Southern Journey) grew out of rural Southern poverty, but the spirit of his storytelling has made him--and legions of readers--rich beyond measure. In The Speckled Beauty, he recalls how an aggressive, one-eyed stray dog, a wayward Australian shepherd, bolted into Bragg's life when he was down and out.

 

Bragg--then 60 years old--had retreated to Calhoun County, Ala., to live and work in his elderly mother's basement. He was there to assist during the pandemic, and he was also recovering from serious complications after battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The unruly dog with speckled markings bounded into Bragg's life and stuck around. Bragg's older brother, Sam, found him to be a pitiful stray with "the attention span of a tick on a hot rock," implying, "A dog like this, wild for so long, would only bring woe." But Bragg, who had always admired the breed, takes up training "Speck" as a cause. The exasperating, fearless dog chronically tests his patience ("The dog would not back down from a rattlesnake"), but he ultimately charms Bragg, his mother and even his skeptical brother with laughable antics: "How could you not love a dog with a toilet-seat halo around his head?" And, Bragg claims, "My dog would battle me to death over the last cold tater tot."

 

Amid dark days, bright Speck shows up at just the right time. How fortunate for readers that the joy of his presence--enhanced by the wit and wisdom of Bragg's inimitable prose--will resonate far beyond the Bragg homestead.

 

The Speckled Beauty by Rick Bragg

Knopf (Doubleday Books), $26.00 hardcover, 9780525658818, 256 pages

Publication Date: September 21, 2021

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (September 24, 2021), link HERE