Mulled Murder

A Special Pennyfoot Hotel Mystery #21

by Kate Kingsbury

Berkley Prime Crime

November 4, 2014

ISBN-10: 0425262928

ISBN-13: 9780425262924

Available in: Paperback (reprint)

Mulled Murder
by Kate Kingsbury

This holiday season at the Pennyfoot, the head count is down—but the body count is up…

With one of her housemaids leaving to get married, Cecily Sinclair Baxter wants nothing more for Christmas than some good help. Instead of visions of sugar plums, she’s calling the plumber to deal with flooded bathrooms. Then there’s the surly new janitor, who acts like he got coal in his stocking.

But as Cecily scrambles to hire and train new staff in time for the holidays, one of her guests is beyond help. Gerald Evans is found stabbed to death on the beach, and Cecily soon discovers he was a private investigator from London looking into dark doings involving the Pennyfoot. Who among the staff or guests was being pursued, and what secret drove that person to cold-blooded murder?



Kate Kingsbury's Bio

Doreen Roberts Hight was first published at the age of eight. Her letter appeared in the children's section of a national newspaper in her native England. Born in London five years before the onset of WW II, she remembers vividly the days and nights spent in bomb shelters, where she entertained her schoolfriends by making up stories. She often contributes her love of writing about danger and suspense to those perilous times, when just waking up in the mornings was a major victory.

Although she dabbled in writing all her life, it wasn't until after her fiftieth birthday that she saw her first book in print. After reading romance novels since her teens, she blended danger into her love stories, and sold her first romantic suspense to Silhouette Books Intimate Moments line in 1987.

After writing several books for Silhouette under the name of Doreen Roberts, her agent suggested she try her hand at writing mysteries. Thus Kate Kingsbury was born. Many of Kate's characters in the Pennyfoot Hotel series are based on people she met while managing her family's seaside hotel on the southeast coast of England. Her current series, The Manor House Mysteries, was inspired by her experiences during the Second World War.

Doreen now lives in Oregon with her husband, Bill, who is also her manager. They share the household with Tippi, a rat terrier who thinks she's a Great Dane. In the last fifteen years, Doreen has written over forty books, many of which have appeared in countries all over the world. She has made the Waldenbooks Top Ten Romance list six times.