Slay Bells

A Pennyfoot Hotel Mystery

by Kate Kingsbury

Prime Crime

November 7, 2006

ISBN-13: 0425212009

Available in: Trade Size

Slay Bells
by Kate Kingsbury

The next Pennyfoot Christmas Reunion features all of your favorite characters, a missing Father Christmas, a mysterious ghost, and of course, a juicy murder or two.

Cecily Sinclair Baxter hosts a holiday party at the Pennyfoot Hotel where the children of Badger's End can meet Father Christmas. Unfortunately, the jolly old man is found dead along with one of his helpers.

The role of St. Nicholas had previously been played by a notorious village drunkard, and the police believe the two men killed each other. But Cecily has her doubts, as the murder weapon was never recovered. And since no one has left the hotel since the crime, she's making a list of suspects—and checking it twice.



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.