Not too long ago, I bumped into Scott Montgomery – BookPeople’s most notable bookseller – while browsing the store’s expansive mystery section. When he saw me pick up Janet Evonovich’s latest book he told me that if I liked Stephanie Plum, I would LOVE Sophie Littlefield’s new series about a woman vigilante who bludgeoned her wife-beating husband with a monkey wrench. 

I snatched up the book and told him, “You had me at woman vigilante!”  Just as I expected I’m  -yet again – sucked into a new mystery series. How could I not be? Sophie is an amazing writer with a natural gift for creating characters that seem so real, they practically walk off the page! Read my review here.

So you could imagine my excitement when I found out she was stopping by  BookPeople with Juliet Blackwell, another chick lit  author who writes a fabulous witchcraft mystery series!  This time, I wasn’t able to harness the self-control to buy just one book. I may be broke for the rest of the month, but at least I’ll be thoroughly entertained with these two fabulous new novels:

A Bad Day for Scandal, by Sophie Littlefield

From Goodreads: When Prosper homegirl turned big-city businesswoman Priss Porter returns to town with a body in her trunk, she calls Stella Hardesty to dispose of it. Her uppity ways don’t convince Stella to take the job, and Priss attempts to blackmail her with a snapshot of Stella doing what she does best: curing woman-beaters by the use of force.      

Stella refuses to cooperate and goes home, only to hear later that Priss and her brother, Liman, have gone missing after calling in a disturbance. Stella is implicated when Sheriff “Goat” Jones discovers the scarf she left behind at the house. He warns her to stay local but Stella and her partner, Chrissy Shaw, go looking for Priss in Kansas City, where they discover that she runs an unusual business. When Priss herself—along with two other bodies—turns up in a pond belonging to one of Stella’s ex-clients, Stella must investigate a host of suspects, including a crooked but libidinous female judge, a coterie of jealous male escorts, and a Marxist ex-professor.

Hexes and Hemlines by Juliet Blackwell

From Goodreads: Lily gets called away from her vintage clothing store to give police a witch’s take on how the leader of a rationalist society could be murdered, surrounded by superstitions he discredited.

Evidence points to dark witchcraft. Lily’s determined to use magic of her own to find the murderer, before everyone’s luck runs out.