LET'S GET COZY! MULLED MURDER: A PREVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED
MULLED MURDER

A Pennyfoot Holiday Mystery

BY KATE KINGSBURY

ABOUT THE BOOK:

This holiday season at the Pennyfoot, the head count is down—but the body count is up…

With one of her housemaids leaving to get married, Cecily Sinclair Baxter wants nothing more for Christmas than some good help. Instead of visions of sugar plums, she’s calling the plumber to deal with flooded bathrooms. Then there’s the surly new janitor, who acts like he got coal in his stocking.

But as Cecily scrambles to hire and train new staff in time for the holidays, one of her guests is beyond help. Gerald Evans is found stabbed to death on the beach, and Cecily soon discovers he was a private investigator from London looking into dark doings involving the Pennyfoot. Who among the staff or guests was being pursued, and what secret drove that person to cold-blooded murder?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Pseudonym: Rebecca Kent.
Pseudonym: Allison Kingsley.

I realized, some time ago, that you know nothing about me. Not a good way to run a website. So here are the basic facts, and I'll add to them as I get time.

I was born in England, shortly before the outbreak of WW II. (Yes, I really was!) I spent the war years in London, spending most of my time between school and air raid shelters. When things got a little noisy outside the shelters, and everyone was too scared to sing, I'd get up and start telling a story, making it up as I went along. Before long word got around, and I was asked to entertain on a regular basis. Thus the storyteller was born.

It was many, many years, however before I actually saw my stories in print. My first publishing effort was a letter to the children's page of a British national newspaper. It described how our cat would thrust one paw through the letter box in our front door and bang the doorknocker with the other paw. When we opened the door the cat walked in. It was months before any of us realized why no one was at the door when we answered it. Anyway, I was eight years old and I got paid for the letter. My first sale!

The second came nearly fifty years later. (I'm a late bloomer.) In between I enjoyed a short career on the stage as one half of a sister act, until I emigrated to the United States with my husband. That put pay to my stage career, but I kept my hand in by playing piano and singing at a local English-style pub every month on British Night. I worked as a receptionist, accountant, office manager, executive secretary and for a change of pace, a salad maker in a restaurant. I actually worked with the first prototype computer. It took up the entire room, with tapes almost as big as me. The noise of all those wheels whirring around was distracting. How far we've come in such a short time.

My son was born in 1968, and during the first few months of his life I stayed home and renewed my interest in writing. Then my husband decided to go into business for himself, selling British Foods to the ex-patriots and many Americans (all of whom had excellent taste, of course.) He sold, and I did the accounts. We became partners and incorporated, but the writing bug wouldn't leave me alone. The first manuscript I had the nerve to submit was accepted by Silhouette Books in 1987, and my new career began.

I wrote my first book on a typewriter. I often say that if computers hadn't been invented, I would not be a writer today. As it was, graduating to a computer changed my life. Back then, comparatively few people had access to a chat room. Those who did were usually savvy computer types, business people and writers. With my thirty year marriage breaking up, the chat rooms became salvation. I found companionship, friendship and eventually love.

He lived on the east coast, I lived on the west. That was in 1993, when computer time was charged by the minute. When our computer and phone bills added up to $1500 a month, we decided it would be cheaper to get together. We met for the first time at the airport in Portland, Oregon, and the next day drove across the country to Philadelphia. I had to call my sister and close friends every night to reassure them that I wasn't with an axe murderer. A year later we were married in Las Vegas on our way back to Oregon, where we've lived happily ever since. Now, how's that for romance!

A few years ago we added to our happy home a cute little rat terrier who thinks she's a Great Dane. All fifteen pounds of her. She rules the household, nevertheless. A true member of the family.

SOME OTHER BOOKS BY KATE KINGSBURY:

                    

               

               

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO KAYLEIGH AND THE GOOD FOLKS

AT BERKLEY PRIME CRIME AND PENGUIN BOOKS,

I HAVE ONE COPY OF MULLED MURDER,

TO GIVE AWAY TO A LUCKY READER

 
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GIVEAWAY ENDS AT

6 PM, EST, NOVEMBER 30

  GOOD LUCK!