Historical Cozy – More Mystery Please

The Wharton Plot opens with famed author, Edith Wharton, playing a game of negotiation chess with her publisher over lunch, when a young novelist that “sells well” enters the restaurant in old New York with a chrysanthemum in his lapel and challenges Edith’s ideas of story and what real women are like.

That scene sets our gilded age heroine on a journey to find her next project, her personal next chapter, and a murderer as well.

Fredericks does a marvelous job showing both the rivalry and camaraderie of authors and how Wharton and her circle evolve during this time period, as the old guard and their monuments begin to disappear, and crafts a mystery that keeps the reader or listener guessing.

I will not hold the fact that I didn’t really enjoy listening to The Wharton Plot – my first full-length audiobook – against the author or the book or the narrator. I’ve listened and been moved by NPR Radio’s Selected Shorts but I just didn’t have much patience listening to this novel-length work.

I do, however, highly recommend reading The Wharton Plot. I wish I had. I received this advanced reader audio copy of The Wharton Plot from Dreamscape Media, courtesy of NetGalley.

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

In An Unholy Death, we meet newlywed Kate Murphy and her husband Paddy in 1910 Jewel Bay, Montana. The historical cozy novella offers Leslie Budewitz fans some backstory to the town they’ve come to know and love in her Agatha-Award winning Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, as well as the origins of the Murphy Mercantile, known as the Merc for short in the modern-day series.

It also proves that the Merc’s Erin Murphy is not the first woman in her family to solve a murder. It’s in her blood. After all, the young Kate, not only discovers the body of a respected widowed preacher of the 1910 community, clues fall into her lap that could put her and the preacher’s orphaned daughter in danger.

An Unholy Death is full of plenty of suspects and twists and turns in the plot, which I didn’t see coming. I loved getting to know Kate and seeing the relationship unfold between our protagonist and Paddy, layer by layer.

Although this novella is supposed to have been released as a stand-alone edition from Carried to the Grave and Other Stories, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the series, I do hope we’ll get to read more of Kate and the early days of Jewel Bay. My head was spinning with thoughts of what might happen next.

I highly recommend An Unholy Death for all Leslie Budewitz fans and lovers of historical cozy mysteries. I received this advance reader copy from Beyond the Page Publishing, courtesy NetGalley.

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Tag: Historical Cozy

Edith Wharton – amateur sleuth

More Murphy’s Mercantile mysteries please!