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About three months ago, I received at notice that I needed to renew my driver’s license. “No sweat,” says Hubs. “Just go on line – you can renew it there.” I go online. Turns out since I renewed online the last time, I have to present myself in person this time. The notice then sits in my bag for two and a half months. With my birthday coming around next month, I finally force myself to go to a DMV office. “No sweat,” says Hubs. “There’s a DMV office just ten minutes from here.” So we drive over to the nearby DMV, stand in line and discover they don’t renew licenses there, only license plates, and they give me the address to the nearest DMV office that does. “No sweat,” says Hubs. “We’ll drive over this afternoon. You can pick up your passport so you can get the new REAL ID license you’ll need to board domestic flights after next May.” We drive over to the recommended DMV office. There are fifty people waiting outside and we’re told there are fifty inside and there’s no possibility I can renew my license that day. “No sweat,” says Hubs. “Go online and book an appointment.” So when we get home, I go online. There are no appointments available at any DMV within a fifty mile radius. The following morning, appointments open up for October. “No sweat,” says Hubs. “We’ll just go to the office in Hillsborough. I went there and it only took 45 minutes.” I notice that walk-ins for license renews can only be done after noon and given the number of people we saw at the last office, we need to leave early in the morning to get in line. We leave really late because Hubs didn’t get home from work until 2 AM. Arriving at the Hillsborough DMV, I notice about twenty people in line. It’s been pouring rain all morning and they are standing under an overhang behind a low brick wall trying not to get wet. “Is this the line for the walks-ins?” I ask. “Yes, and it will be a long wait,” is the reply. I join the line. At noon, about ten people from the line are allowed in, and a woman comes out and gives the rest of us each  a sticky note with a number on it. Mine is 12. “What do I do now?” I ask the young man in front of me. “Wait,” he says. “Then they will let you in and you can get a number to be served.” “I already have a number.” “This is another number generated by a QR code that you photograph when your number is called.” I wait another hour and eventually get in to photograph the QR code and am told I have probably two hours before I will be notified by text message that I can enter the building. “No sweat,” says Hubs. “I know a good place for barbecue not far from here. We can get something to eat.” We do! Sitting in the car, since it is still raining cats and dogs, I have hot hush puppies for lunch while he downs a large cup of Brunswick stew. Then back to the DMV. We sit, we wait. Finally, around 2:30 PM, I get a notice to come in. I enter, I sit, I wait. Every few minutes, a loudspeaker comes on and jolts us all from our seats, announcing a number. I wait for mine to be called. An hour later, it still isn’t. Then a woman comes out from the inner sanctum and announces it. Seems the loudspeaker is no longer working. AT LAST. I reach the inner sanctum. Processing begins but the computers are going in and out. So I sit and wait and wait. My picture gets taken – I look like a dork. I take an eye exam, which is impossible to read because the letters are blanked out on the right-hand side. Finally, everything is done and I get a slip of paper to use for my license in case the real one doesn’t get to me before my birthday. “No sweat,” says Hubs, when I get in the car. It’s stopped raining. “Let’s go home and have a drink.” 1 0

    I gave Tony the eyeball at breakfast the next morning, and when he came over I told him what we wanted. He came to our room a few minutes later.     “Norma? I can give you a lot of dirt on Norma.” He hadn’t failed to notice Little Debbies Mildred held in her hands.     “We really want to talk to you about something else. Sit down, please,” I said, as sternly as I could muster.     “Well, I do need to get back.”     “Sit down or I’ll scream,” Mildred said. He immediately sat, and we both faced him. “You know we’ve been trying to figure out who killed Redwine.”     “Yeah, and you haven’t gotten anywhere or you wouldn’t be pumping me for information.”     “We have gotten somewhere. We think you did it,” I said.       Tony stared at us. He didn’t blink, didn’t look down or up or right or left, and his face remained frozen in a pleasant neutral. Then he laughed, a loud, snorting guffaw. “Me? Why would you think that?”     We focused on his face as I said, “We googled you and you’re a ghost. You have no address, no driver’s license, no family, no history. What are you, an assassin? In witness protection?”     “You two are bat shit crazy if you think I had anything to do with Mr. Redwine’s murder. Why would I want to kill him? You can’t prove I did it, because I didn’t. Look, if there’s nothing else, I have a lot to do this morning.” He stood, winked at us, and left, but not without taking the Little Debbies.     “Hardly what I expected,” Mildred commented. “Did you see any tells? Do you think he lied?”     “I didn’t see a smidgen of a response. Not a blink, a twitch, or an eye roll. And I still think he did it. What about you?”     “Me, too, but I give up, Miriam. We got nothing and he’s not going to tell us anything. I can’t think of where to go from here. Even if it’s not Tony, the murderer may still be here.”    Mildred’s word chilled me, and we put a chair under the door knob at night. ******     Two months elapsed, and Redwine’s murder remained unsolved. The police had interviewed everyone and finally stopped coming around with questions. Tony, bless his soul, still thought our suspicion of him was hilarious and apparently forgave us, because he remained accommodating to our needs and as nice as ever.     We didn’t stop trying to find something, anything about him, slyly probing Norma to no avail and making a failed, middle-of-the-night attempt to get a look at employee files.     More deaths occurred, but only the usual from usual natural causes – old age, dementia, pneumonia. Mildred and I stayed healthy, until she didn’t. She developed a wracking cough and a high fever, and Norma finally called an ambulance. After the attendants lifted her onto a gurney and wrapped her in blankets, she asked them to wait outside, she needed to tell me something in private.     They left our room, and she began coughing again, exhausted from the effort. I took her hand, and looked down at her, feeling indescribable grief.     “Living with you has been the most fun I’ve had in years, Miriam,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’m not coming back, and I need to tell you something.”     I leaned down to hear her weak voice. “That we’re eventually going to meet up again in a place better than this?” I asked her.       Mildred smiled and shook her head, coughing.     By now tears streamed down my cheeks. “I love you, kiddo, and my life will be empty with you gone. You’d better get well.”     “Buck up, cream puff,” she said. “I need to tell you something. You know those lawsuits against Redwine? Follow up on that composer. The one who lost his lawsuit.”     The attendants came back in the room. “Love you, too,” Mildred rasped as they wheeled her out.     I collapsed in our chair by the window, drained and crying, and only roused when Norma insisted I come to lunch. I don’t remember what I ate. I only knew Mildred wasn’t in the seat beside me.     I dragged through the next two days, asking Norma over and over if she’d heard anything from the hospital. To her credit, she did call and ask, but had nothing to report. On the third day, she came to my room before breakfast. I knew the minute she entered what she would say. ******     The next day, my emotions more in control, I sat down at the desk and turned on the computer, then pulled out the notes Mildred had taken in her neat handwriting. Seeing them, my tears started again. I found and Googled the name of the composer who had sued Redwine: Shaunessey, first name Patrick. Found him. I read picked out the two best sources of information about him, Wikipedia and his obituary. According to Wikipedia, he was indeed a classical music composer of some renown, one who had bankrupted himself suing Redwine for stealing one of his pieces. It was entitled The Red Herring Sonata.     I skipped over his early life and the family connections and moved on to the obituary. There I discovered what Mildred wanted me to know: Patrick X. Shaunessey, beloved of his wife Mildred, nee Wrightnour, professor emerita of biology at Boston University. I hope you enjoyed my short mystery! 1 0

Over the next week, Mildred and I sat with as many different residents as possible during meals and spent time in the common room – learning names and room numbers and if they had any connection to Redwine. Turned out the gossip mill continued to churn merrily, so that last query generated a lot of discussion.     In the midst of this, Nurse Wretched came to the table where I ate lunch, leaned over and spoke quietly in my ear, “I can see what you and Mildred are doing.”     Oh, Lord, we’ve been caught!     “I think it is extremely nice of you and Mildred to get to know all our residents better. I wish there were more like you.”     My stomach descended into place, and after mumbling “Thanks,” I downed a glass of lemonade while my heart rate returned to normal. After lunch, I told Mildred what Norma had said to me.     “She told me the same thing. I thought I would die right there with my face in the plate.” She laughed. “And we had gravy on the turkey and mashed potatoes!”     “Okay, so Norma is fine with us. Let’s take stock of where we are.”    We had both taken copious notes and over the next hour, we managed to eliminate all but two people. “I almost wish we had a larger suspect pool,” Mildred said, as we crossed off the last name.       “We’ve forgotten the people who work here! Norma, for example, and the receptionist, the nursing aides, and even Tony.”     “Tony? Surely not!”     “Well, think about it. He’d be happy for us to blame anyone other than him, so it would be in his interest to be helpful.” I paused at that moment and luckily I did, because right then, Tony appeared at our door with the list of Redwine’s and Massey’s visitors for the last three months.     “How’s your investigation going, ladies?”     “We’ve managed to winnow down the likely suspects. Thanks for this list, Tony. I hope you didn’t have any problems.”     Tony smiled, showing dazzling white teeth. “Nah, that receptionist spends more time smoking out back than manning the desk.” After a pregnant pause, he asked, “You got any more of those Nutty Buddies?”     “Sure.” I went into the closet and pulled out another pack. “There you go, and thanks again.”     Tony smiled and left the door ajar as he left the room, whistling as he walked down the hall.     “A bad rendition of Mozart’s Concerto for Bassoon, if I’m right.”     “Dang, Mildred, where did you learn all this stuff?”     She just smiled and said, “Over the years. My husband played classical music all the time at home.”     Tony’s list didn’t provide a lot of help. It included only family members, based on the last name. Two men with the name Redwine, possibly sons, and one woman with the last name of Copper, a married daughter? I added those names to our list. “Time to Google.”     Over the next hour, we first searched for information on the two residents still on our list: Lorraine Pringle, widow of Arthur, who lived in Room 206, and Joseph Entwhistle, Room 214. Lorraine had played the oboe in an orchestra for musical theater in Boston. Entwhistle had practiced law. While I could see where Redwine’s life might have intersected with Lorraine’s, I wondered what his connection was to our lawyer.     “What kind of law did Mr. Entwhistle practice?” asked Mildred.      More key tapping. “Looks like personal property and real estate lawsuits.”     “Can we look up lawsuits against Redwine if we pay for a search? Maybe Entwhistle was one of the lawyers.”     “For just $19.99…” I joked. “Yes, but we’ll have to subscribe.” I looked at several sites and with Mildred’s consent, subscribed to BackgroundSearch.com. I found two lawsuits against Redwine, one for plagiarism and one for property theft. Seems our maestro’s life had had its problems. Public records showed Redwine had been sued of stealing a composer’s symphony, but the suit had been dismissed. And one of his two sons had sued his father over the distribution of his real estate, prior to Redwine’s arrival at Rest Easy. Entwhistle figured in neither suit.     Mildred took notes as I read off the computer screen. “From what I know from my work in the law firm,” she said, “suits for musical plagiarism are a dime a dozen. And the person suing almost never wins. Okay, so the suit filed by one of Redwine’s sons is our main lead. Did the son win the case?”     More clicking of keys. “Yup, and the other son has launched an appeal. No love lost there.” I moved on to the widowed Ms. Pringle, finding very little. She’d lived an exemplary life, not even a parking ticket. And no connection to Redwine through her music, so we exonerated her.     “Let’s look at the visitor list. Which one of the sons visited Redwine?”     Mildred glanced at Tony’s list. “Both, it seems.”     “That’s weird.”     “DINNER IN 10 MINUTES. TURKEY DELIGHT AND SALAD.”      We both groaned. ******     Next, we used our ‘getting to know you’ approach to gather information on Rest Easy employees. Norma seemed inordinately pleased with our effort and nicknamed us the M and M’s. What a hoot!     I googled the employees and the female visitor, who turned out to be Massey’s daughter.  “She’s clean…” I told Mildred, shutting down the search, “…as well as everyone else on our list.    Maybe we missed something.”     “What about Tony?”     “A dead end. I can’t find him anywhere online,” I replied. “It’s like he doesn’t exist. No driver’s license, no address, or birth date. He’s a non-person.”     “Well, buck up, cream puff. We’ve still got three likely murderers. The two sons and Tony. Funny that the sons would visit their father if they’re all

For readers who missed part I, this mystery is set in a retirement home, where Mildred and Miriam have just become roommates. Over the next month, Mildred and I formed a strong bond – she had a wicked sense of humor and, after a time, could mimic almost every one of the other inmates. With her knowledge of classical music, I wasn’t surprised to hear her humming some of the pieces Redwine played, including that often repeated symphony. In return, I treated her to some CDs of seventies rock and roll. Occasionally we danced to it, if you want to call moving our arms and hips dancing. But I swear it improved Mildred’s mobility.     Then a most exciting thing happened. Someone died. And not from ‘natural’ causes.     We noticed something amiss when Norma counted heads at breakfast and asked, “Has anyone seen Maestro Redwine?” When no one answered, she yelled for Tony and bustled off down the hall. Silence, followed by a scream. Almost everyone who could walk abandoned their breakfasts and headed for the double doors, but the massive Tony appeared and blocked us in. “Everyone stay put. There’s nothing to worry about.” He left, closing the doors with a solid thump.     Mildred and I returned to our places at the table. “Where’s Massey? I don’t see him here either,” she commented.     I looked around. She was right. He was also missing. Figures Nurse Wretched would only think about the Maesto..     Just then we heard sirens, and we beat the others to the dining room window. Three police cars pulled up, red and blue lights flashing, and we watched as a bevy of uniformed men got out, looking grim. Then we heard clomping down the hall in the direction of…our room. I looked at Mildred, her face reflecting my surprise. “Something’s happened to Redwine or Massey,” she whispered.     Our room sat kitty-corner to theirs, and I just had to get a look. “Come on, let’s find out what’s going on. I can get us into the hallway, but you need to look agonized. Is that in your repertoire?”     She winked. “Gotcha.”     I opened the doors and pushed Mildred into Tony, who stood guard just outside the dining room. “Tony, Mildred needs to use a bathroom. Right now.” My roomie assumed a pitiful look and hugged her stomach.     He frowned at us. “Use the one across the hall.”     “Can’t. She has special equipment in ours, and this is an emergency.”     He paused for a minute, clearly trying to think. “Okay, go, but don’t blame me if Norma jumps on you.”    As I pushed Mildred down the hall, a woman deputy stood in our way and put up her hand.      “Can’t go down there. Sorry.”     Mildred gasped and clasped her stomach, looking miserable.     “Look, my roommate here is in a wheelchair, needs to use a bathroom, and only ours has the equipment she needs. We’re old, for God’s sake.”     “Alright, alright.” She moved aside and we booked it down the hall, glancing into room 208 as we passed.     Mildred gasped. Redwine lay face down on the floor, blood pooled around him, clearly deceased. Someone had stabbed him in the back with a violin bow. Through the crowd around the body I could just make out Massey’s feet on his bed, and we could hear moaning. I pushed Mildred and her wheelchair to our room, opened the door and shoved her inside.     “Did you see that?” she asked as soon as the door was shut. “But how? Can you really punch a violin bow into someone’s back? It’s not sharp enough.”     “I don’t think it’d be that difficult,” I replied. “I saw cut-off strings dangling from the visible end. He…or she…would just have to hone the wood down. And know something of anatomy to do it, right?”     “Definitely, to know just where to make the fatal insertion,” Mildred replied. “But what about motive? Who here would want to do him in?”     “Well, I don’t think it would be Massey. He’d lose his musical director, unless they had a serious argument over a sonata. Did you hear the moaning?”    “Yeah, I think it was Massey. Everyone else was upright. How can we find out if he’s a suspect?”     We looked at each other and said in unison, “Tony!” ******     After lunch that day – yummy creamed chipped beef on toast, which I’d heard several of our military veterans call shit on a shingle – we pretended fatigue and asked Tony to wheel Mildred to our room.     You live in this place long enough, you learn everyone’s weaknesses, and Tony’s was Little Debbie Nutty Buddy bars. A friend of mine had sent me a huge box of Little Debbie products for Christmas. I would have preferred a visit, but you take what you can get. I saw Tony salivating when he first spied the box, so I gave him some. Now I’d use my strategic reserve of Nutty Buddies to get information. I’d deliberately left two packages on my bed before we left for lunch.     “If that’s all…” he said, after wheeling Mildred in. His eyes drifted and then stopped like a laser pointer on what lay on my bed. He looked at me, his brown eyes pleading.     “Yup, they’re for you, Tony, but we need some information in return.”     “Ah, Miriam, my girl, you know that could get me in trouble. You’re always getting me in trouble.” He rolled his Rs, Boston Irish.     Mildred wheeled her chair to face him and I sat down at my desk. “I need you to tell us what went on in Room 208 this morning,” I said.     “But you saw everything when you went by the door, didn’t you?”     “Not everything,” said Mildred. “Tell us, and those Little Debbies are yours.”     Tony perched

For their first wedding anniversary, Maria and Logan invest all their money in the purchase of a grand residence on a secluded lake in Tree Valley, California. The house needs a lot of renovation to become their dream of an inn. Soon after they snuggle into sleep one night, Maria hears the voice of a woman in the hall outside their bedroom. The voice says, “Find me.” Logan is already awake, drawn by the crash of his guitar falling from its stand downstairs. Another married couple, Helen and Charles, live in the residence by the lake in 1924. They enjoy entertaining, and even though prohibition has been in effect for several years, they serve alcohol at their well-known parties. Because of this, they are sought out by a fanatical minister of the town’s Church of Hope, who warns them they are sinning in the eyes of God and will be punished. As Maria continues to hear the woman’s voice and the guitar seems to hit the floor at night on a regular basis, she becomes determined to find out who the woman is. The ghost is not frightening to her and wants her help. Marie discovers that a former owner of the house, a woman named Helen, disappeared many years ago. She’d been presumed murdered, and Charles was accused of her murder and hung for his crime.  She is certain the voice is Helen’s and that she is asking to be found to exonerate Charles. While Maria and Logan search the attic for furniture and other items that can be used to decorate the house, they also look diligently for her remains. At the same time, a man in black breaks into their barn and kills all their chickens, his threats to them increasing over time. The sheriff is inclined to attribute it to hobos in the area. But Maria and Logan know they are faced with real danger and add locks and bars to the house and barn. They also know instinctively that the solution to their problem is finding Helen’s remains. I loved the dual timeline of this book, the animals (two dogs and two cats) Maria and Logan adopt partially for protection ad partially for companionship, and the dogs ability to help Helen by conveying information about her whereabouts to their new owners. How can you resist a cat called Teacup? The tension builds in both timelines with the intrusion of the community’s church and the strangeness of the neighbors.  The author makes the house a character and rounds out the lives of both couples in great and interesting detail, highlighting their loves and plans for the future, which Charles and Helen, unfortunately, don’t have. All of D.L. Finn’s books are written with an underlying love for the characters and a gentleness even in the face of danger. I found lots of twists and unexpected turns that kept me turning the pages.  This is a fun mystery that warms the heart. I highly recommend it for any reader who likes ghosts, a dual timeline line, and a murder mystery.   About the author D.L. Finn is an independent Californian who encourages everyone to embrace their inner child. She was born and raised in the foggy Bay Area, but in 1990 relocated with her husband, kids, dogs, and cats to the Sierra foothills in Nevada City, CA. Being surrounded by towering pines, oaks, and cedars, her creativity was nurtured until it bloomed. Her creations vary from children’s books, young adult fantasy, and adult paranormal romance to an autobiography with poetry. She continues on her adventures with an open invitation for her readers to join her. You can find her On twitter: @dlfinnauthor/X On her website: https://dlfinnauthor.com 0 0

Here is the first past of a mystery I published in an anthology last year. Stay tuned here to read the next installment. &&&&&&&&& I first met Mildred when she moved into my room at the Rest Easy Retirement Home. My former roommate had died in her sleep, as had many others, which is why no one rested easy here and why we called it God’s Waiting Room. Coughs, whoops, shuffling, wails, music and TV chatter filled the place every day – all of which permeated the any discussions by those of us still mentally capable of it.     Two days after my roommate died, Nurse Wretched, an ascetic busybody named Norma, who slinked around in a white uniform and rubber soled, silent shoes, wheeled in my new roomie saying, “Isn’t this nice! Miriam, this is Mildred Wrightnour. Mildred, this is Miriam Gardner. The sun is shining and it’s warm today, so why don’t the two of you sit out in the sun room and get to know each other.” Mildred had to be in her eighties, with a cap of short white hair, a pleasantly round face with a sharp nose, and so thin two of her could have fit in the wheel chair. She wore a cobalt blue blouse that set off her hair. I wondered what she thought of me, a definite mesomorph with a long white braid, wire-rimmed glasses, and wearing sweat pants.    I looked at Mildred with suspicion. This was my third roommate, and I wondered if she were healthy. “Hi Mildred. Where you from?”    “Just outside of Boston. You?”  She smiled.    I like her immediately. Spare with her words. “A Southie,” I replied.    She nodded at my mention of South Boston. Tony, one of two Irish aides who worked out regularly to maintain his admirable muscle development, came in and deposited Mildred’s suitcases on her freshly made bed. Then he and Norma left us alone.     “Can I help you unpack?” I asked. “That dresser over there is yours.” I bit my tongue not to say, “Still warm from the last resident.” I opened the dresser drawers while she unzipped the suitcases. “You need help in and out of your wheelchair?”     “I’m not that decrepit yet. Just can’t walk long distances. Bad hip. I’ll be fine.” She stood easily and began putting away underwear, nightgowns, and sweaters. She placed three pictures on her dresser along with a comb, brush and a bag of bathroom necessities. “Not much to show for a lifetime, is it?” she commented.     “Nope, but it keeps things simple.” I saw her unpack a Swiss Army knife. “What do you plan to use that for?”     “This? It’s really handy – comes with a nail file, scissors, and this…” She pulled out the corkscrew and winked.     “Just the thing. I’ve been wanting to smuggle in some wine.”     Mildred looked puzzled. “How can you do that?”     “Tony. He’s bribable.”     With the unpacking over, Mildred wheeled herself down the hall to the sun room, pulling up next to a padded chair where I plopped myself down.     “I hear there’s a loudspeaker?” she asked.     “Oh, that bloody thing. It gets us up at 7 AM – don’t think about sleeping in – and announces all meals ten minutes before they serve. Also lights out at 10 PM. It’s like a frigging boot camp.”     She waved her hand in front of her face. “Good Lord, I feel like I’m in a hothouse in here. Can we go outside to chat?”     “They keep it warm because they’re certain we all grew up on the equator. And we need permission to go outside. They have to know where you are at all times.”     “Really? How about an escape? Ever made one?”     I liked this Mildred more and more. Finally, someone with a personality on my wave length. “All the time, because I’m one of the few truly mobile inmates. That door over there leads to a patio. Let’s go.” I checked my watch. “Lots of time before lunch to break some rules.”     When we got outside, I took a deep breath. “Thank God. Smells like eau-de-old-people and Lysol in there. I can’t stand it.”     Over the next hour or so, we talked about our past lives – she, an instructor at Boston University and I, a secretary in my husband’s law firm. Both of us widowed more than ten years earlier. She told me they were nearly broke when her husband died. She didn’t say it, but I got the impression he committed suicide. Her children and grandchildren were the light in her life.     “They visit you much?” I asked.     She looked down. “Not much.” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. “They’re busy with their own lives.” Her face brightened. “One of my granddaughters and I are good buddies, though, and she told me this place is on a bus line, so maybe I’ll see her more often. How about you?’     “No kids. Ben never wanted them, selfish bastard.”     “I take it you had an unhappy marriage?”     “Only when he was around.”     I think she realized from my facial expression I wouldn’t say more on that, because she then asked, “What do you do for fun around here?”     “Eat, read, knit, crochet, play card games, watch TV. An exercise program in the common room every day. And music. It’s so god-damn boring. Did you hear the noise from room 208 this morning when you came in?”     “Romeo and Juliet by Beethoven? That’s not noise – it’s music!”     “Well, look at you, all classical.  Be that as it may, that music used to go on all day and half the night until we gave Nurse Wretched an ultimatum: either shut it down at a reasonable hour or we would riot.”     She chuckled. “You must mean Norma. So who

I am drawn to stories with angels, and this novella by D. L. Finn has to be one of my favorites. It’s a bitterly cold Christmas Eve with the ‘storm of the century’ bearing down on the city. Kenzie’s boss tells everyone to go home, but Kenzie has nothing but an empty apartment to look forward to. She and her boyfriend Heath had planned to get married on Christmas, but he’d dumped her for her best friend, Joy, and now they are getting married on Christmas instead. You feel her despair and loneliness as she walks along in the cold, recalling her life with Heath and details about him that should have set her antennae twitching. And she is in no mood to spend Christmas with Sue and her family, who is a friend to both her and Joy. Halfway across a street, she is nearly run over by a speeding car that looks suspiciously like Heath’s. Kenzie is unaware she’s being followed by someone who prevented her from being hit and another beautiful spirit named Olive, who is present on the street with her former friend, Joy. Joy wants to talk, to tell Kenzie that things aren’t what she thought, but Kenzie dismisses her and walks away. After stopping to have a pizza, she takes the long way home and ends up sitting on a park bench in the cold and thickly falling snow, contemplating just going to sleep and freezing to death. The man with the green eyes who followed her then steps in to change her life. It involves a lost kitten, finding a woman sitting on the same bench where she sat, and the work of the two spirits to repair her life. Will she save the kitten and she renew her friendship with Joy? How will she discover that Heath is a grafter and a murderer? Can he be brought to justice? This is a lovely, sweet tale of angels and their work here on earth and their possible love for each other. The setting in the deep, dense quiet of a thick snowfall is wonderfully atmospheric and lends to the story. And Kenzie and Joy are beautifully and emotionally developed. All of the author’s characters are written with love, which makes her books such a joy to read. A great Christmas story that has a heartwarming ending and I will read it again in December! PS The kitten is named Noelle, so how could I resist? About the author D.L. Finn is an independent Californian who encourages everyone to embrace their inner child. She was born and raised in the foggy Bay Area, but in 1990 relocated with her husband, kids, dogs, and cats to the Sierra foothills in Nevada City, CA. Being surrounded by towering pines, oaks, and cedars, her creativity was nurtured until it bloomed. Her creations vary from children’s books, young adult fantasy, and adult paranormal romance to an autobiography with poetry. She continues on her adventures with an open invitation for her readers to join her. You can find her On twitter: @dlfinnauthor/X On her website: https://dlfinnauthor.com 0 0

I’m soon going to post the review of a novelette by D.L. Finn, which has angels in it! I love angels. Here is a very short story I wrote about my angel not long ago. &&&&&&&&&& The view from the roof’s ridge line is spectacular, he thought. I do love the colors of autumn in this part of the country. He settled back on his cloud cushion with a sigh. “Beautiful, yes?” said his companion, Dara. She ruffled her wings and spread them out to the setting sun. “I never get tired of it.” He’d been enthralled with the seasons for more years than he could count. He also stretched out his wings, and they turned to gold. “How did you get this assignment?” she asked. “HE gave me a vacation after the last one – it had lasted only twenty-nine years, and during the last four, my assignment had cancer. It was hard to watch him losing the fight. I made sure that his family was there to welcome him at the end of his last journey. It was a joyous reunion, but mentally I was drained.” “And this one?” She folded her feathers back into place. “Well, she’s a tough old bird. I expect I’ll be around a while more. I’ve now met the guardians of her children and now her grandchildren. A good lot. You remember I had some heated discussions with her son’s, though – the son was a tough nut, and it was Michael’s first assignment. He seemed ill-equipped to handle the son’s problems. He took my advice, though, and thanks to our combined efforts, the family worked through it. I think the son’s doing fine now. Have you met his daughter’s guardian?” “Not yet. Maybe on their visit this summer.” He settled his wings and leaned back again on his cloud. “It’s been nice having you around, all these years,” he said with a smile and a sideways glance at his companion. “I imagine we’ll be getting reassignments around the same time – how old is he?” “Seventy-nine,” Dara replied, “but still going. Does the Mrs. know you’re here?” “It’s funny,” he chuckled. “I think she’s always known – the church convinces them of our existence when they’re very young, but only lately have I figured in her prayers. It’s so nice to be thanked each night for being here for her. I try to make sure her sleep is restful.” “I hear dishes clattering in the kitchen, and the sun’s left us. Time to go down.”  Her diaphanous form slid slowly through the roof and into the house. Ezrael sighed. Sunsets never lasted, but there would be another one tomorrow. Maybe. He thought he sensed rain. 0 0

This is the second book by Carol Hedges that I have reviewed for Rosie’s website, but I loved the first book so much, I read every single one of them in this series. I always look forward to a new book in this series, and this one lives up to my enjoyment of the others. The author has a phenomenal knowledge of Victorian London – its sounds, smells, street life, and populace – and she brings all this into her vivid descriptions of the city. The story begins with the plight of a young Irish laborer, starving, jobless, and unable to find a place to spend the night because of the prejudice against the Irish. He finally slumps down in an alleyway, his dead body being discovered the next morning. The morgue physician calls in Scotland Yard because the cause of death is similar to the plague, which has brutalized London in the past. Responding to the request are Chief Inspector Lachlan Grieg and now retired detective inspector Stride, who is featured in the earlier books. When the orderly who brought the body to the morgue, dies of similar symptoms, Grieg, stride and Grieg’s assistant detective, Jack Cully, decide the cause of the two deaths must be kept secret, not only from the ravening press but also from the general population to avoid panic. Nevertheless, the news of a possible plague reaches the ears of smarmy Richard Dandy, the editor and writer of a daily rag, from the hospital porter, who found the arrival of Scotland Yard and the guarding of the bodies suspicious and gets paid for his information. When the bones of very old bodies are discovered at a construction site and are dumped by the site owners in the Thames, they end up at the hospital mortuary and the detectives deduce they were removed from a plague pit at the site, where the young Irishman worked. There is always a second line of investigation in Ms. Hedges’ mysteries and this one involves London’s only female detective, Lucy Landseer. She is visited by the elder of two Broxton sisters and asked to locate the daughter of the younger sister, who was born out of wedlock and left as a baby at the Asylum for Female Orphans. The family’s inheritance passes through the female line, and as both sisters are growing old, they need to find the daughter who will inherit. Across town, Jasper Broxton, a greedy and avaricious relative who doesn’t want the daughter found because then he will inherit, makes his income with increasingly disastrous Ponzi schemes. His wife stalks the Broxton sisters and has a spy planted in their house. Broxton’s large and fat daughter Johanna is in the same class with Jack Cully’s daughter Violet and is a merciless bully of Violet and her friends. The author builds these two mysteries like a spider weaving a web. She also does something unusual: she breaks the wall and talks directly to the reader at the beginning of the book (which is when it should be done, if at all), and the rest of the way takes you along on the investigations. In doing so, the reader find themselves personally immersed in a world of shadowy alleyways, filthy streets and squalid houses, and the flickering of gas lights. The characters are so well-drawn, that you can’t help feeling the author’s emotion in creating them. And as I’ve noted before, the author is at once humorous and heart-breaking in her character descriptions, never more so than in the plight of women in that time. I found this book, as all of them in the series, engaging and enticing. I recommend it highly and I think anyone who reads it will read the rest in the series. PS The covers are fantastic! Five stars About the author: Carol Hedges is the successful UK writer of 11 books for teenagers/Young Adults. Her novel Jigsaw was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal. She is currently well into her series of Victorian Crime Fiction novels, set in 1860s London and published under her own imprint: Little G Books. Pride and Pestilence is the eleventh in this series. In the past, she taught at secondary school. Currently retired, she tutors A and GCSE English. She lives in Hertfordshire, England, and is married with a grown-up daughter. You can find her on Twitter (X): @carolJhedges Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carol.hedges.779 And her blog: http://carolhedges.blogspot.com/ 1 0

I was very surprised and chuffed to see a wonderful review for Death at the Asylum posted by Judith Barrow, a fellow blogger. Judith is an author herself of eight books. The focus of her writing is family dynamics, which she treats with great insight and sensitivity. You can find her at https://judithbarrowblog.com. I hope you will visit her blog and check out her books, which are all great reads. Here is her review: Although this is the fifth book in the series it’s also a stand-alone story and is an excellent cozy mystery. The book begins with a brief summary which sets the scene easily and introduces the reader to the backdrop of the sequence. N.A Granger’s story is interwoven and layered with intriguing subplots that flow seamlessly and keep the reader fascinated. Themes of deception and suspense sit alongside themes of family communication and workday differences, all adding to the depth of the story. The chapters alternate between the points of view of Rhe, nurse who works part-time in the police department, and Sam, her husband who is Chief of Police. Both are well-rounded and believable characters (something I expected as their characteristics and dialogue must have developed and grown over the series). This adds to the consistency of the story and is something I admired in this author’s style of writing.  But these two characters don’t carry the plot on their own and the minor characters in the close knit community of Pequod are also extremely credible.   The descriptions of the setting, the coastal town of Pequod give a brilliant sense of place and leaves the reader in no doubt of the area the characters live and move around in. This is my first visit back to this series for quite a while and I had forgotten how much I remembered of this series. I will certainly revisit and catch up on the exploits of Rhe and Sam.   For any reader who enjoys cosy mysteries as much as I do, I highly recommend Death at the Asylum. Death at the  Asylum: Rhe Brewster Mystery Series, Book 5 (The Rhe Brewster Mysteries 13) is available at: Amazon. co.uk: https://tinyurl.com/5ewpcayx Amazon.com: https://tinyurl.com/3vfdt3r6 Thank you, Judith! 0 0