Leslie Budewitz is the three-time Agatha Award winner and bestselling author of the Food Lovers’ Village and Spice Shop mysteries, continuing with the 8th installment, TO ERR IS CUMIN (August 2024), and ALL GOD'S SPARROWS AND OTHER STORIES: A STAGECOACH MARY FIELDS COLLECTION (September 2024), a collection of historical mysteries featuring a remarkable figure from Montana history. She also writes standalone moody suspense as Alicia Beckman. – What a delight to return to the Spice Shop, a fictional shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, a place I fell in love ages ago as a college freshman. I made it my mission to eat my way through the place, and since it’s constantly changing, I’ll never be done! In TO ERR IS CUMIN, Spice Shop owner Pepper Reece claims a ratty old wingback chair left out for the taking, and finds an envelope stuffed with cash inside. When a disgraced restaurant owner she’s tangled with in the past begs her to help him find the woman who owned the chair, she says no—until he’s found floating in the city’s Ship Canal. His mistakes—and one or two of her own—lead her to investigate, and set her on a trail of deception, embezzlement, and murder that puts her own life deep in danger. Writing about the city never gets old. Plus it's an excuse to keep up with a place I love, and to make regular research trips. And by research, you know I mean eat! ALL GOD’S SPARROWS AND OTHER STORIES imagines the life and heart of Mary Fields (1832-1914), a real-life woman born into slavery who spent her last 30 years in Montana, where she found freedom and community, and her own place in the West, bringing solace and justice to those in need. The collection brings together three stories originally published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, and a new novella, “A Bitter Wind,” set in 1897 and 1914, in which Mary helps a young picture bride solve the mystery of her fiancé’s death, his homesteading neighbors’ bitterness, and her own future. The title story won the 2018 Agatha Award for Best Short Story; others were finalists for awards from the Short Mystery Fiction Society and the Western Writers of America. I’m also the author of the Food Lovers' Village Mysteries, set in fictional Jewel Bay, Montana. DEATH A DENTE, first in the series, won the 2013 Agatha Award for Best First novel. My guide for writers, BOOKS, CROOKS & COUNSELORS: How to Write Accurately About Criminal Law & Courtroom Procedure, drawing on my long career as a lawyer, won the 2011 Agatha for Best Nonfiction. I’m a past president of Sisters in Crime and former regional and national board member of Mystery Writers of America. I love to cook, eat, hike, travel, garden, and paint—not necessarily in that order. My husband and I live in northwest Montana with our gray tuxedo cat. For regular updates, please visit my website and join my newsletter community for book news, peeks inside the writing life, and more, along with two free short stories. Readers are my favorite people. Drop me a line or join me on Facebook at Leslie Budewitz & Alicia Beckman.
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