Friday, January 26, 2018

What is Molly MacRae reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Molly MacRae, author of Scones and Scoundrels.

Her entry begins:
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been reading an odd mix of books and enjoying them all. Because I work in the children’s department of a busy public library, three of them are children’s books.

The first is a picture book - Roger is Going Fishing, written and illustrated by Koen Van Biesen. Think of it as laying the groundwork so preschool children grow up to properly crave caper novels by writers like Donald Westlake and Timothy Hallinan. This is a story of unintended consequences with a full complement of onomatopoetic sounds. It’s about Roger, his young friend Emily, and their bicycle trip to the lake for a day of fishing. What could possibly go wrong as Roger peddles along the busy city sidewalks with Emily sitting in the seat behind him holding...[read on]
About Scones and Scoundrels, from the publisher:
The new mystery in the Highland Bookshop series, bringing together a body outside a pub, a visiting author determined to find the killer, and a murderously good batch of scones...

Inversgail, on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, welcomes home native daughter and best-selling environmental writer Daphne Wood. Known as the icon of ecology, Daphne will spend three months as the author in residence for the Inversgail schools. Janet Marsh and her business partners at Yon Bonnie Books are looking forward to hosting a gala book signing for her. Daphne, who hasn’t set foot in Scotland in thirty years, is ... eccentric. She lives in the Canadian wilderness, in a cabin she built herself, with only her dog for a companion, and her people skills have developed a few rough-hewn edges. She and the dog (which she insists on bringing with her) cause problems for the school, the library, and the bookshop even before they get to Inversgail. Then, on the misty night they arrive, a young man—an American who’d spent a night in the B&B above Yon Bonnie Books—is found dead outside a pub.

Daphne did her Inversgail homework and knows that Janet and her partners solved a previous murder. She tries to persuade them to join her in uncovering the killer and the truth. To prove she’s capable, she starts poking and prying. But investigating crimes can be murder, and Daphne ends up dead, poisoned by scones from the tearoom at Yon Bonnie Books. Now, to save the reputation of their business—not to mention the reputation of their scones—Janet and her partners must solve both murders. And Daphne’s dog might be able to help them, if only they can get it to stop howling...
Visit Molly MacRae's website.

My Book, The Movie: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Plaid and Plagiarism.

The Page 69 Test: Scones and Scoundrels.

Writers Read: Molly MacRae.

--Marshal Zeringue