Sunday, September 8, 2013

Great Escapes Book Tours: Bran New Death



Book Details:
Genre: Cozy Mystery – New Series
Published by: Berkley Prime Crime
Release Date: September 3, 2013
Number of Pages: 304
Synopsis
Expert muffin baker Merry Wynter is finally ready to turn her passion into a career. But when a dead body is found on her property, she’s more worried about cooking up an alibi…
Merry is making a fresh start in small-town Autumn Vale, New York, in the mansion she’s inherited from her late uncle, Melvyn. The house is run-down and someone has been digging giant holes on the grounds, but with its restaurant-quality kitchen, the place has potential for her new baking business. She even has her first client—the local retirement home.
Unfortunately, Merry soon finds that quite a few townsfolk didn’t like Uncle Mel, and she has inherited their enmity as well as his home. Local baker Binny Turner and her crazy brother, Tom, blame Melvyn for their father’s death, and Tom may be the one vandalizing her land. But when Tom turns up dead in one of the holes in her yard, Merry needs to prove she had nothing to do with his death—or her new muffin-making career may crumble before it starts…



Review: Bran New Death is the first book in in new series by Victoria Hamilton. I have to admit, I love any cozy mystery that involves food and this one is no different.

Merry Wynter is really a unique character. She's a former plus sized model, turned PA for a Naomi Campbell type turned muffin baker.

Woo hoo! I love her already!

And the townspeople of Autumn Vale, New York...perfectly quirky!

And her inherited property..well you know things are going to be crazy when she arrives and there are hole everywhere! Oh and the property is a castle..in upstate NY! My imagination conjured images of Bodlt Castle which is near the Canadian border...Thousand Islands, NY...sigh..now I want to go there.

Toss in a dead body and let the sleuthing begin.

This is the kind of book that draws you in from the first pages. As soon as see arrives in Autumn Vale the weirdness begins, with the local baker Binny accusing her uncle of murdering her father.

Oh and she's a baker..and well so is Merry...so there's going to be some tension there...there has to be! But wait, there really isn't. They actually become friends as they work to find out who killed Tom and what happened to Rusty, and there's so much more involved in this book than just the murder. Oh and Tom's tied to so much more in this story than just Merry's uncle and his dad.

I absolutely loved this one. Such fun! It kept you turning the pages until the very end and even after the crime is solved, Victoria sets up some new players that will hopefully figure in more in the next book. I'll have to buy this one when it comes out because I need to have the recipes at the end!

Rating: 5 flowers



About Victoria Hamilton
Victoria Hamilton, nationally bestselling author of the Vintage Kitchen Mystery Series, is the pseudonym of Donna Lea Simpson, bestselling author of romance and historical mystery novels.
Victoria starting reading mystery novels at the age of 12 and devoured Agatha Christie mysteries, as well as those of Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh. She still adores mysteries, especially the cozy mysteries of Janet Bolin, Krista Davis, and others.
She loves to cook, and collects teapots and teacups, as well as vintage kitchen utensils and bowls. She also enjoys crafts, especially cross-stitching and crocheting, and summer days in the garden, drinking tea or wine. Besides the Merry Muffin Mystery series (Bran New Death – September 3rd) Victoria writes two other mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime, the Vintage Kitchen Mystery series (Book 3, Freezer I’ll Shoot, debuts November 5th) and the Teapot Collector Mystery series which debuts with Tempest in a Teapot, June 3rd, 2014.
 Links:
Website: www.victoriahamiltonmysteries.com
Facebook:
Victoria Hamilton: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorVictoriaHamilton
Merry Muffin Mysteries page: https://www.facebook.com/MerrysMuffinsMysterySeries
Twitter: @MysteryVictoria
Blog: Killer Characters the 21st of each month… www.killercharacters.com


Purchase Links:
Amazon       Book World      B&N     Powell’s Books      Book Depository

1 comments:

Rita Wray said...

Wonderful review, thank you.

 
Blog Design by Use Your Imagination Designs using images from the Tea Time kit and the Saturday Night kit by MK-Designs