Indigo Christmas—A Hilda Johansson Mystery
Jeanne Dams
ISBN 978-1-880284-95-7
256 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Publication Date: September 2008
MOOD INDIGO FOR CHRISTMAS
The secret to Dams’s success is in the details.... We learn, without realizing we’re being taught anything at all, about social customs, class divisions, even the day-to-day operations of a wealthy turn-of-the-century household. Great characters, fascinating history, compelling mystery: this series could go on forever.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“If you’re a classic mystery lover, you’re sure to enjoy the books of Jeanne M. Dams. Her characters, setting, and stories have a depth not often seen in this subgenre.”
—Mystery News
Once housemaid to the wealthy Studebaker family in South Bend, Indiana, Hilda Johansson is now married and living a well-to-do life with her new husband. But her Swedish family doesn’t get along with his Irish relations. She’s having trouble finding friends, since she no longer fits into her old world and isn’t accepted in the new one. Just before Christmas, when the husband of her sole remaining friend is accused of theft, arson, and murder, Hilda has to find new ways of investigating a crime that seems to make no sense.
In the hard times of 1904 with bank failures weekly, Hilda tries to help the unemployed youth of South Bend by helping to form a Boys’ Club (modeled after Hull House founded in Chicago).. And she also enlists some of them as “Baker Street Irregulars” in her mystery investigation, giving the reader a vivid sense of the city and street life of the times.
Visit Jeanne M. Dams's website!
Buffalo Bill’s Defunct—A Latouche County Mystery
Sheila Simonson
ISBN 978-1-880284-96-0
280 pages, Trade Paperback Original, $14.95
Publication Date: September 2008
COLUMBIA RIVER CRIME
“Sheila Simonson can always be relied on for appealing, intelligent protagonists, witty dialogue, a great sense of place, and suspense galore.”
—Carola Dunn, author of the Daisy Dalrymple mysteries
“Sheila Simonson’s Buffalo Bill’s Defunct had me from the title. Meg McLean just wants to escape to western Washington and work as a librarian. She didn’t count on the stolen petroglyphs or the body in her garage. The book’s plot, characters, setting, and theme all click together just right to make for highly entertaining reading.”
—Bill Crider, author of the Sheriff Dan Rhodes mysteries
Sheriff’s investigator Rob Neill made a mess of his first case, the theft of sacred artifacts belonging to the Klalo, a Native American tribe from the western end of the Columbia River Gorge. Ten years later, a stolen petroglyph emerges—along with a body buried in a garage. Neill sees a chance to redeem himself, with the help of his new neighbor, librarian Meg McLean. Her information-retrieval skills work together with the police investigation—but the partnership threatens to turn unprofessionally romantic. Meanwhile, two more people are murdered, and the Klalos’ feisty chief, Madeline Thomas, has her own agenda that seems to hinder as much as help. Can a kind of justice finally come to Latouche County?
Visit Sheila Simonson's website!