Cozy Monday

Black Cat Crossing (Bad Luck Cat Mystery #1) by Kay Finch (Berkley Prime Crime mass market paperback, 1 September 2015).

After Sabrina Tate's Aunt Rowena breaks her leg in a fall, she moves to Lavender, Texas to help Rowe manage her vacation cottages.  The move is also supposed to provide time for Sabrina to work on her novel, but that's not going well at all.

In fact, she finds herself searching for distractions, like proving that black cats are not bad luck. Rowe's handyman, Thomas, complained about "El Gato Diablo", a black cat that had been around since he was a boy.  Sabrina wisely doesn't mention that "El Gato Diablo" would be over thirty years old if he'd been around that long, but she does take exception to his assumption that his clumsiness resulted from a black cat crossing his path.

Sabrina keeps seeing the cat, whom she eventually dubs "Hitchcock" all over the place.  Though she does wonder how he gets the several miles from the cottages to the town of Lavender within a few hours, she just assumes he's sneaking into someone's car.

Driving home from town one night, she see's something shining to the side of the road.  She finds Hitchock next to the body of Rowe's cousin Bobby Joe.  Bobby Joe had appeared out of the blue, trying to scrounge money from Rowe, and they'd had a heated argument.  As a result, Rowe becomes a prime suspect, despite the fact that she has a broken leg and can't get around on her own.

Of course, Sabrina has to keep Rowe out of jail, but she's on deadline for her novel, too.  Can she manage to do both, before Rowe is arrested for a crime she didn't commit?

Despite being a small town, Lavender has a fantastic bookstore, and a coffee shop called Hot Stuff, where Sabrina can drink fancy coffee to a disco soundtrack while she writes.  But as one would hope, it does have its share of quirky characters, including an an elderly woman who owns a junk shop and can apparently see the future.

The book includes a few recipes for things that Sabrina likes to bake late at night when she can't sleep.




The publisher has generously offered a copy of BLACK CAT CROSSING to one of my readers.  Please comment below by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, September 13th.  Please don't forget to include an email address where I can contact you if you win.  Entries from the US only, please.



FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book.

A Taste of Friendship

by guest blogger Sofie Ryan.

I’ve been cooking since I was a kid. I started because my mother didn’t like to cook. She was the baby of the family and she never learned. “I was spoiled,” she’d say with a bit of a smile.

When my mother and father got married the only thing Mom could do was make a cup of tea. She couldn’t even make toast because she was baffled by the two-sided, hand-me down toaster that had come from my aunt. In one of those wonderful twists life sometimes takes, Mom’s closest friend was an excellent cook who could make dinner for two dozen people and whose cookie jar was never empty. She’d send her kids and me out to pull rhubarb in the late spring and up to the blueberry fields in the summer with the promise of rhubarb crisp or blueberry grunt.

Like my mother, Sarah Grayson in The Whole Cat and Caboodle can’t cook. And like my mother she’s managed to surround herself with women who can, like Rose Jackson. Just like my mother’s best friend, Rose loves to feed people and one of the things she likes to make is blueberry muffins.


Rose’s Blueberry Muffins

3 cups all-purpose four
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ cup soft butter or margarine
2 eggs
1 cup evaporated milk
1 ½ cups of blueberries, washed and drained
Juice of one lemon
Grated rind of half a lemon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease muffin tins or line with paper liners.
In a large bowl mix the flour, sugar, and baking powder. Save a tablespoon of the floor to coat the blueberries. In a smaller bowl beat the eggs with a whisk and add the milk, lemon rind and lemon juice. Stir the liquids into the dry ingredients just until mixed. Sprinkle the saved tablespoon of flour over the blueberries and stir gently. Carefully fold the coated blueberries into the batter.
Divide the batter into the muffin tins and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown on top. Makes 12 large muffins.

Notes:

• You can use frozen blueberries. Don’t thaw them first.
• I’ve also used buttermilk instead of evaporated milk for a slightly tangier muffin.
• Coating the berries with a little flour helps keep the batter from turning blue.

Enjoy with a cup of tea and a good book!

Sofie Kelly and Sofie Ryan are pseudonyms of young adult writer and mixed-media artist, Darlene Ryan. Sofie/Darlene lives on the east coast with her husband and daughter. In her spare time she practices Wu style tai chi and likes to prowl around thrift stores. And she admits to having a small crush on Matt Lauer.  






Berkley Prime Crime has generously offered a copy of The Whole Cat and Caboodle to one of my readers.  To enter, please share your favorite food in the comment area below.  Please don't forget to include an email address where I can contact you if you win.