The Evening's Amethyst: A Nora Tierney English Mystery by M. K. Graff
About The Evening's Amethyst
The Evening's Amethyst: A Nora Tierney English Mystery
Cozy Mystery 5th in Series Setting - Oxford, England
Publisher : Bridle Path Press (September 21, 2021)
Paperback : 372 pages
ISBN-10 : 0990828735
ISBN-13 : 978-0990828730
Digital Edition: 336 pages
ASIN : B09JB193D3
Who is Verity? That becomes a central question for American Nora Tierney, who has moved to her new Oxford home with her fiance, DI Declan Barnes, and her young son. Declan's new case at Exeter College coincides with a frantic call from Nora's stepsister, Claire Scott: a fellow graduate student has died in a fall, and Claire begs Nora to help her prove her friend didn't commit suicide. The sisters conduct their own snooping, while Declan and his team juggle this death with a cold case that proves to be more surprising than Declan could ever imagine.
The Evenings Amethyst Excerpt
Cumbria
Spring 1992
It was a warm spring day, with bluebells carpeting the roadside verges as Jim Robson drove past drystone walls and fields dotted with sheep. Wordsworth’s famous daffodils, their heads drowsy, swung in a light breeze as he made his way along the A591 through Windermere and turned off onto the A592.
He drove into the quaint town of Bowness-on-Windermere, past the east shore of the lake. Tired of his wife’s whining about their childlessness, he needed a break, even if that longer route would take him home later than she expected. Dora would complain anyway, so what difference did it make? He remembered the sweet and gentle woman with a core of inner strength he’d married in Glasgow, those halcyon early days of their marriage and their move to Cumbria. Most of all he remembered how disappointment had changed her happy moods, a creeping wall of ivy that had taken hold of her joyfulness and throttled it.
After visiting a large hospital and carrying away a terrific order for the new infant formula, Jim decided to reward himself with a drive past the lake. Salesman were always on the go; why shouldn’t he take a few minutes for himself? He stopped on a whim on his way out of town for a pint of cider, the roadside pub calling to him. He took his pint from the gloomy inside to the sunshine outside, where he sat at one of the garden tables behind the pub, mulling over his life, and how it fallen from his expectations.
That’s when he’d noticed the dingy playpen with the little boy, quietly playing with a stack of blocks. Jim looked around the garden. No one else was out here today. Where the hell was the mother, or for that matter, the father, and what were they thinking leaving a little toddler all alone out here? Anyone could snatch him and be gone.
The thought returned to him over the next weeks as Dora’s depression grew and her crying jags increased. He loved Dora, had hoped to always make her happy after they’d met and she’d charmed him, despite the decade between them. He knew he would be considered old-fashioned, a real throwback, but Dora’s overriding desire even then was to be a mother. Unfashionable for some, but he’d supported her. He’d welcomed the idea of having a wife at home waiting for him, their children clean, dinner ready, and everyone happy to see him.
These years of failure had taken their toll. Their marriage suffered when one fertility treatment after another hadn’t worked. Dora turned sullen and depressed with the adoption wait taking forever. Jim was at his wit’s end. He wanted his wife back.
About M. K. Graff
: Marni Graff is the award-winning author of The Nora Tierney English Mysteries and The Trudy Genova Manhattan Mysteries. The Evening’s Amethyst is the fifth in the Nora Tierney series. Her short story “Quiche Alain” is in the Agatha-winning Malice Domestic Anthology, Murder Most Edible.
Author Links
Good luck with the book and tour!
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