If you haven’t read my Green Dory Inn Mystery series, now’s the time to get started!
And if you have, now’s the time to share this sale with your mystery-reading friends.
The digital versions of books 1 and 2 are reduced to 99 cents each until August 2 (AU, CA, NZ, UK, US). Find them wherever* you buy ebooks, or use these links:
In 1929, desperate to provide for themselves in a small town that’s turned against them, three young women choose to become rum-runners. They know it’s illegal and dangerous, and it doesn’t sit well with their faith, but they see no other way.
Local superstition blames Duska for the accidental death of her fisherman husband—because she’d been helping him on his boat and superstition marks a woman on board as bad luck. Larkin’s rum-running father has been killed by the mob, leaving her to care for her young brother. And Jolene is fleeing an abusive relationship when everyone tells her to stay and be a submissive wife.
The Bad Reputations is a compelling tale of courage, loyalty, and friendship in a fictional Nova Scotian town during Prohibition, when women’s options were limited. It takes an honest look at how people of integrity, including Christians, can find themselves making the wrong choices out of fear. The results we see are characters whose guilt makes them feel separated from God, avoiding Him instead of drawing close.
A different type of turmoil honestly addressed is Duska’s unexpected attraction to one of the police officers when she’s still grieving for her husband.
As well as strongly-defined characters, there’s some evocative description. Here’s one of my favourite samples:
The moon is hidden behind clouds in a charcoal sky. Darkness falls like a blanket over the ocean. Far out, green buoy lights flash, but nothing else. The vast blackness makes me uneasy. …I drive through the quiet streets of town. Yellowish-white fog slithers over the road like long, fat pythons. [paperback, pages 62-63]
The Bad Reputations is award-winning author Karen V. Robichaud’s seventh novel. Previous works include Tears in the Desert and The Unforgiving Sea. For more about the author and her books, visit her Author Page on Facebook.
“Help me.” The words, spoken to Valerie Rankin as a man she trusts is arrested for murder, leave her wanting to help without knowing how. Circumstantial evidence and a criminal past make Rankin’s General Store employee Duck MacDonald the prime suspect in a murder.
In the small fictional town of Gasper’s Cove, on Nova Scotia’s Atlantic Coast, everybody knows everybody’s secrets… or so they think. Yet past generations’ rumrunning and other illegal acts have influenced the present. Suddenly it seems to Val that strangers and friends alike are on the search for hidden treasure. And nobody’s concerned about clearing Duck’s name.
Author Barbara Emodi has a keen sense of descriptive details that bring the town and its characters to life. As an example, chapter 12’s scene at a fundraiser with “church-basement, made-by-the-women’s auxiliary sandwiches” will have Atlantic Canadians of a certain age nodding and remembering. She also includes a fair sprinkling of humour.
Protagonist Val is a sewing instructor and an empty-nest single mother. Her way of solving a mystery is to jump to a series of wild (and wrong) conclusions, embarrass herself by insisting the police should act on what she says, be proven wrong, and try again. Until she accidentally stops the killer and solves the case. She’s persistent, determined, and she genuinely cares for the people in her community.
She’s also a character I need to take in small doses. By hyper-focusing on her current stress or idea, she misses social cues and responds inappropriately. Like the brisk brush-off to a date invitation from a man she likes. Or like dashing off to confront her son in person when he sends a text asking for a bit of space.
Book 1 in the series is Crafting for Murder. As well as her Gasper’s Cove mysteries, Barbara Emodi has written instructional books on sewing. To learn about the author and her work, visit babsemodi.com.
Empty-nester Valerie Rankin has returned to the tight-knit—and tiny—community of Gasper’s Cove on Nova Scotia’s Atlantic coast. She’s housesitting for her vacationing aunt and teaching sewing classes and trying to set up a crafter’s co-op to boost tourism.
But home isn’t the stable, unchanging place she remembers. Suddenly, she’s trying to save the family store and investigate a murder. The locals she’s known all her life aren’t who she thinks they are. At least one is a killer.
I really enjoyed this book and will definitely read the next one. The town feels like a character in its own right, and I like how ordinary Valerie and her rescue dog, Toby, are. The mystery is solid, but it’s the interpersonal relationships that unfold that make the story stick with me.
This isn’t one of those stories where the amateur sleuth has a knack for quietly finding and piecing together the clues. Valerie is impulsive, she jumps to conclusions, and she antagonizes a lot of people in her quest for justice.
One of the people she accuses says, “Maybe you should slow down on trying to figure people out and maybe notice who they are more.” [p. 157]
In short, Valerie’s a lot like most of us would be in her situation. And she has a good heart. She may be going about this the wrong way, but she’s sure it’s for the right reasons.
Crafting for Murder is sure to appeal to fans of small-town cozy mysteries. You don’t have to be a crafter or a Nova Scotian to engage with this story, but if you are you’ll feel an extra connection.
As well as her mysteries, Barbara Emodi has written instructional books on sewing. To learn about the author and her work, visit babsemodi.com. Book 2 in the Gasper’s Cove Mysteries series, Crafting Deception, is scheduled for release in December 2023.
Happy “book birthday” to the newest Green Dory Inn Mystery, Bitter Truth! The paperback version sneaked onto the scene early, and now the ebooks are live too.
Click the image to reach the buy link or click here to for more about Bitter Truth.
When I miswrote the title of this post, I realized I had stumbled upon truth.
Instead of “Words aren’t Enough,” I wrote “Word aren’t Enough.”
But wait! The Word is enough.
Only Jesus, the Living Word, can comfort the Nova Scotian families* (and others) who are grieving.
Only He can wrap them in His loving arms and sustain them today, tomorrow, and into the future.
Only He can give them the strength to put one foot in front of the other.
Only Jesus can stir the compassion in our hearts and remind us to pray for those whose hearts are broken.
Only the Living Word is enough!
And only the Written Word, the Scriptures, are enough to satisfy our desperate need for answers.
We won’t find the specific answers to the whys of this tragedy, but we will find the answers to questions we didn’t even know we were asking.
Can God really be trusted?
Does He care about what we do to one another?
Does He leave us on our own?
Will He hear me when I cry out to Him?
What does He know about the pain I’m going through?
Dear readers, may you find comfort in the Written Word. And may you come to the Living Word, who promised His followers, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30 ESV).
I know it doesn’t feel this way now, but when we humble ourselves and acknowledge our need of the Saviour, we learn that He is willing to bear the heaviest part of our burden on His own shoulders.
My words most definitely aren’t enough, but I pray that you will come to know the One who is the Word.
*[Note: I thank Steph Beth Nickel for this very timely and personal guest post written for Nova Scotians (of whom I am one) in the wake of Canada’s largest mass shooting, which claimed over 22 lives April 18-19, 2020. With all the world dealing with COVID-19 and other issues, this post still has something for everyone! Many thanks, my friend. ~Janet]
Steph Beth Nickel
Photo credit: Jaime Mellor Photography
As an editor, Steph Beth Nickel has the honour of coming alongside writers to help them polish their work. As the coauthor of Paralympian Deb Willows’s memoirs, Steph has been blessed to work with this amazing woman. And as a future self-published author, with the Lord’s help, Steph has taken brave steps toward publication.
Before Canadian East Coast music hit the national/international scene, we locals had been enjoying it for years. I remember sitting in a small auditorium, feeling the power of the audience singing along to “We Are an Island.”
The song is Cape Breton Island’s unofficial anthem. Cape Breton is a large, beautiful island on the north-eastern tip of Nova Scotia, and many of its sons and daughters have “gone down the road” to find employment. Like the other Atlantic Canadians, they’ve taken their music with them.
Singing along, caught up in the longing for home even though I was home, I found myself wishing for my own musical links. Yes, Nova Scotia has its own unofficial anthems but lovely as they are, they don’t resonate that way with me. And I’m blessed to be still living in my native province.
Songs of home implies the love and longing for a place we can’t yet be. Like the East Coast music to a displaced Maritimer or Newfoundlander. Like the songs the Israelites sang in the Babylonian captivity.
Not that I ever wanted to be exiled or homesick! But when you listen to the songs, there’s a sense of unity, of belonging. A sense of something bigger than the individual.
Years later, I know I’ve found my songs of home, and they’re everything I thought they’d be.
I’ve stood in crowds of concertgoers, united in our longing for God, singing worship songs led by the Newsboys, Robin Mark, Steven Curtis Chapman, David Crowder. I’ve stood in smaller congregations on Sunday mornings, singing songs of home led by worship teams or solo musicians. And I’ve sung along to my mp3 player when only God was listening.
Fourteen-year-old Roland lives in the dying seaside town of Deeper Harbour, Nova Scotia. His parents have separated, and when he’s with his police-chief father, he sleeps at the jail while his dad does night patrol.
Except when his grandfather convinces him to sneak out for some prank-type vandalism. That’s how the story opens, and lest parents be concerned, there are consequences and restitution. There’s also, through a madcap series of events, the inspiration of how to revitalize the town’s tourist industry so Roland’s mom won’t make him move to Ottawa in search of a better future.
Roland, along with Grandpa Angus, 15-year-old Dulsie, and her father Warren, will create a sea monster. And they do—through spreading rumours and building an actual “Fogopogo” for the townspeople’s “sightings”.
The story is told in the first person with evocative descriptions like this one:
I … squoodged the sleep-sand out of my eyeballs with the sides of my fists. (p. 3)
And observations like this one:
The idea that had been sneaking around the basement of my imagination jumped up and smacked me directly between the eyes. (p. 30)
This is a fun novel, heartwarming in places, and with plenty of humour. It also has plenty of depth, which, sadly, makes for a more realistic ending than I’d hoped. But the characters are delightful, and Roland discovers new layers to these people he’s grown up with and thinks he knows.
I heartily recommend Sinking Deeper for young adult readers and adults who are still in touch with their 12-to-14-year-old selves. Sinking Deeper was nominated for the Silver Birch and Hackmatack Awards.
Steve Vernon is the author of four collections of Maritime ghost stories, the children’s picture book Maritime Monsters, and more. He and his publisher, Nimbus, are local to me, but I heard of this book through a blog giveaway (and won!) You can learn more about Steve Vernon at his blog and on Facebook.
Gailynn MacDonald designs artisan jewellery and works as a medical receptionist in the small seaside town of Hum Harbour, Nova Scotia. She’s perky, impulsive, and afraid of the ocean. And she can’t seem to stop getting involved in murder investigations.
She doesn’t go looking for them, but she does walk the beach each day looking for bits of seaglass to use in her jewellery. That’s how she found the first body (Mystery in Hum Harbour), and it’s what now brings her within earshot of screams from Hunter Hall.
Heavyweight champion Claude Oui (affectionately dubbed “Wee Claude” because of his large size) lies dead in the Hall, his wife Carrie Hunter-Oui helplessly trying CPR.
Claude suffered from post-concussion syndrome, and Gailynn’s fiancé Geoff, the town’s doctor, is afraid he missed a clue that could have saved the gentle giant’s life. Or did Claude trip on the stairs? Or fall victim to the burglar who stole some of Carrie’s collection of frog ornaments?
This last frightens Gailynn most of all, since her young cousin Ashleigh’s boyfriend has been stealing other frog ornaments as gifts. Josh seems like such a nice guy. But what if he’s a murderer?
Gailynn tries to leave the murder investigation to her police officer brother and his team, but she can’t help her suspicions. And she can’t stop asking questions, even though she’s supporting the grieving Carrie (including chairing the Hum Harbour Daze committee) and trying to plan her own wedding.
Death of a Highland Heavyweight is a cozy mystery with a strong sense of place and with characters who could be ordinary people like you or me. Well, not the athletes, but Gailynn, Geoff, Ashleigh and their families are everyday people.
I like Gailynn, with her kind heart, gentle spirit and overactive imagination. I like Geoff, too. He’s a decent man. And I like reading stories set in my home province. Locals like me can hear little things in the dialogue that authenticate Jayne Self’s right to write about us. This was true in Murder in Hum Harbour too. She knows this setting, despite living “away”, and that knowledge adds depth.
I also like the humour. It’s dry, understated, and slips in when you least expect it, adding yet another thread of pleasure to the story. I hope there’ll be a Seaglass Mysteries #3 in the works soon.
It’s 1958. Fourteen-year-old Jonah Morgan and his best friend Beaz live on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia (Canada). Nearby Oak Island is forbidden territory, so naturally it’s a rite of passage to row to the island and search for the legendary treasure.
This summer vacation, Jonah and Beaz are set to hit the island, but they’ll be even more secretive about it than most teens. Jonah’s mom is overprotective since his older brother died, and he’s pretty sure Beaz’s mom is abusive.
What they find on the island piles secrets on secrets. Jonah doesn’t want to lie, but he can’t tell the whole truth. When missing 16-year-old Charlotte Barkhouse turns up dead, surely what Jonah knows wouldn’t make a difference. Would it?
His parents and his dead older brother seem perfect, and Jonah can’t measure up no matter how good his intentions. As he wrestles with how much truth to tell and how much to hide, he begins to suspect that everyone has secrets of one sort or another and that life is more complicated than it looks.
Oak Island Revenge is a coming-of-age story that evokes the feel of 1950’s small-town Nova Scotia in a mystery for young adult readers. It’s one of those satisfying novels where all the threads weave in perfect balance to make an organic whole.
Author Cynthia d’Entremont has a fresh, vivid writing style with a satisfying splash of humour. She’s also the author of the award-winning young adult fantasy novel Unlocked.
[Review originally appeared on the Maranatha News site. Review copy provided by the author.]
