When it turns out a member of Warner Pier’s library board has been
living on borrowed time, Lee is determined to discover who wrote the
victim’s final chapter…
Running TenHuis Chocolade keeps Lee
McKinney Woodyard busy enough, but now she’s been offered two different
positions in the town of Warner Pier—one on the tourism committee and
another on the library board. To decide between the two, she goes to
Warner Pier’s historic library to check out the board’s monthly meeting.
As usual, rumors are flying through the small town—this time, they’re
about the rugged new library director, Henry “Butch” Cassidy, and the
changes he allegedly plans to make. Butch is indeed attractive—but Lee
doesn’t get a chance to find out about his proposed changes. A few
minutes into the meeting, the discussion is interrupted by the terrified
screams of the library clerk.
She has discovered the lifeless
body of Abigail VanRoostock, a prim and proper retiring member of the
board, crumpled in a heap at the bottom of the basement stairs.
Suddenly, everyone in attendance, including Lee, is suspected in her
murder. And as Lee finds out, they’ve all got something to hide…
INCLUDES TASTY CHOCOLATE TRIVIA!
JOANNA CARL is the pseudonym for the multi-published mystery writer Eve K. Sandstrom.
The author writes about the shores of Lake Michigan and has been
reviewed in Michigan newspapers as a “regional writer.” She has also
written about Southwest Oklahoma and once won an award for the best book
of the year with an Oklahoma setting.
Eve K. Sandstrom is an
Oklahoman to the teeth: she was born there, as were five previous
generations of her mother’s family. Both her grandfathers and her father
were in the oil business, once the backbone of Oklahoma’s economy. One
grandmother was born in the Choctaw Nation, and Eve is a member of the
Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Eve and seven other members of her immediate
family are graduates of the University of Oklahoma. Eve even knows the
second verse of “Boomer Sooner.”
Eve wrote two mystery series:
the “Down Home” books, set on a ranch in Southwest Oklahoma, and the
Nell Matthews mysteries, semi-hard-boiled books laid in a mid-size city
on the Southern Plains.
But Eve married a great guy whose family
owned a cottage on the west coast of Lake Michigan, not far from the
Michigan towns of Fennville, Saugatuck, and Douglas. Every summer for
more than forty years she, her husband and various combinations of
children and grandchildren have trekked to the community of Pier Cove
for vacations that lasted from two weeks to three months.
The
area features gorgeous beaches, lush orchards, thick woods, and
beautiful Victorian houses. Eve grew to love it. So when her editor
asked her to come up with a new, “cozy” mystery series, Eve set it in a
West Michigan resort town, scrambling up Saugatuck, Douglas, South
Haven, Holland, Manistee, Ludington and Muskegon with her own ideas of
what a resort ought to be to create Warner Pier.
As further
background, she plunked her heroine into a business which produces and
sells luscious, luxurious, European-style bonbons, truffles and molded
chocolates. Most small towns couldn’t support a business like this, but
the resorts of West Michigan – with their wealthy “summer people” – can.
The “Chocoholic Mysteries” were on their way.
Eve’s editor
requested that she use a pen name for the new series, and Eve picked the
middle names of her three children, Betsy Jo, Ruth Anna, and John Carl.
“JoAnna Carl” was born. So that’s how JoAnna/Eve became a regional
author in two widely separated regions.
JoAnna/Eve earned a
degree in journalism at the University of Oklahoma and also studied with
Carolyn G. Hart and Jack Bickham in the OU Creative Writing Program.
She spent more than twenty-five years in the newspaper business, working
as a reporter, editor, and columnist at The Lawton Constitution in
Lawton, Oklahoma. She took an early retirement to write fiction
full-time.
She and her husband, David F. Sandstrom, have three
grandchildren, whom they love introducing to the lore of their two homes
– Oklahoma and Michigan.
She spent 25 years in the newspaper
business as a reporter, feature writer, editor, and columnist, most
recently at the Lawton Constitution. She holds a degree in journalism
from the University of OK and also studied in the O.U. Professional
Writing program. She lives in Oklahoma but summers in Michigan where the
Chocoholic Mystery series is set. She has one daughter who is a CPA and
another who works for a chocolate company and provides yummy insider
information on the chocolate business.
This series never ceases to amaze me. JoAnna Carl is a wonderfully talented author with so much to offer her readers. The Chocoholic Mystery series is sweet, funny and always has a puzzling mystery that can't be figured out until the very end.
In The Chocolate Book Bandit, the story moves from the Chocolade and in to the town library. The library was a wonderful place for the storyline, and I enjoyed meeting the new librarian! :) Lee was her usual tenacious self, providing a great layout of clues to help readers discover the suspects' secrets as the mystery unfolds with every turn of the page.
This is a great addition to the series, and one that you'll love to curl up with a sweet treat and read! :)
Rating: 4.5 stars
I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All conclusions reached are my own.
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