Princess Adele's Dragon by Shirley McLain Guest Review & Excerpt!

Princess Adele’s Dragon (Witches and Dragons Book 1) by Shirley McLain

Publisher:  Shirley’s Book (July 23, 2022)
Category: Sword & Sorcery, Fantasy/Romance
Tour dates: January 3-31, 2023
ASIN: B0B7GMCDJ5
Available in ebook only, 220 pages

 

Description Princess Adele's Dragon by Shirley McLain

With the possibility of death before her, Princess Adele sets out to slay the dragon to save her Kingdom.

What she discovers in her quest changes her and the King’s life forever. We follow the lives of the Royalty of Valdoria as their world is threatened. In this medieval story, there are good guys, bad guys, white and black magic as well as goats and dragons. Read this story of love, hate, danger, and evil.

You will turn the page so you can find out what happens next in this gothic adventure.

Excerpt Princess Adele's Dragon by Shirley McLain

 

Miranda stepped through the door into the room, calling out Adele's name. The rising sun gave enough light in the place for her to realize Adele's empty bed. I guess she woke up early and went downstairs to eat breakfast with the King. 

While in the room, she made the bed and straightened up anything that looked out of place. Afterward, she made her way to the kitchen for her breakfast. As she ate her gruel, a maid came in to ask if anything was needed. Miranda asked, "Rose, did you see the Princess in the dining room? When I went to wake her, the bed was empty." 

 "No, ma'am, she wasn't in the dining hall. Only His Majesty and Lord Ashmore," Rose said.

 Now, what is she up to? I'll let His Majesty know what is happening, and Lord Ashmore. Miranda finished her breakfast and then made her way to the dining hall.

She entered the spacious room through the archway. The two men remained at the table talking. "Excuse me, Your Highness, Lord Ashmore." 

"Yes, Miranda, what do you need?" Lord Ashmore asked as he stood by the King’s side. 

The king’s counselor was a striking figure of a man in his middle fifties. He had a full head of salt and pepper hair and vivid grey eyes. His body remained muscular even in his advanced years. 

"I'm sorry to disturb you, but I can't find the Princess. Miranda moved closer to the two men as she spoke. Have either of you seen her this morning?" 

"No, I haven't seen her since yesterday at the evening meal. What about you?" The king asked Lord Ashmore. 

"I haven't seen her either. Now go away, Miranda, and leave us to do our work." 

"Yes, My Lord, Your Highness. She backed up a few steps before turning and leaving the room. Why does Lord Ashmore sound so angry when he speaks where others can hear? 

Miranda went to the stables to check if Champion remained in his stall. She knew he wouldn't be there. As she looked over the gate into the stall, she felt the need of a man pressed against her. 

She wasn't surprised because she knew his touch well. She smiled as she turned, pressing her mouth to his. 

© Shirley McLain

Review Princess Adele's Dragon by Shirley McLain

“Guest Review by Laura Lee

Told through multiple point of views, 'Princess Adele's Dragon,' by Shirley McLain is the type of fantasy novel that can be enjoyed on many levels. Firstly, the setting. The kingdom of Valdoria is as rich and thought-provoking as any classic fantasy land. While reading, I could easily picture myself there fighting dragons or tending to cattle.

Secondly, the characters. I absolutely loved Princess Adele and her kick-butt attitude. I loved that she was a trained fighter (how often do you see that in female characters in fantasy books? Not very often, I can tell you!) and that she also had a sympathetic and very soft side.

I really appreciated Prince Anthony and his story, as well. What a great hero! He reminded me a lot of the hero, Westley in the cult classic novel, 'Princess Bride,' the way he was torn from his love and eventually returned a much different, darker man.

Adele and Anthony had an admirable love that waited for years, but didn't completely take over the plot once they were reunited. I appreciated how developed and subtle the plot was.

The revelation that Miranda, one of Adele's closest friends was secretly attempting to steal the throne took me by surprise and made me grieve for their friendship, despite only seeing it for a short while in the beginning of the book. On top of this, the usage of the dragon and Anthony's need to use it to help secure the kingdom was masterful.

I really enjoyed this book and I think any lovers of fantasy, adventure or romance would, too! McLain has really created a very special world within these novels and I hope to read more of it in the future!

I will most certainly be looking for the second book in this series whenever it is announced! 

About Shirley McLain

Shirley McLain is a retired RN, wife, mother, and grandmother of six and Great Grandmother to four, three boys and one girl.

She is currently living in Sapulpa, Oklahoma where she is enjoying her retirement to the fullest. She was born in California but lived her growing years in Oklahoma. She has done extensive travel within the United States and learned to appreciate each state for its own beauty. Her dream trip is to see Spain and Italy at a slow pace.

Shirley has published a young adult mystery called “Crimes and Retribution”, a book of short stories called, “Shirley’s Short’s and Flashes” and a Christian poetry book called, “Verses For My King.” “Dobyns Chronicles” is a historical fiction in which you follow a family through troubling times. She has published her educational fiction about Bullying. It is for ages 10 to Adult to help them deal with bullying in school. She is now working on a book of short stories called “Shirley’s Compilation of Short Stories,” which is stories of different genres. She plans on having this book out in December 2022.

Shirley’s love of travel, adventure and writing have created works that will hold your attention, and leave you wanting more.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShirleyMcLain93
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShirleysBooks/

Buy Princess Adele's Dragon by Shirley McLain

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Giveaway Princess Adele's Dragon by Shirley McLain

This giveaway is for 3 ebook copies and is open worldwide. This giveaway ends on February 1, 2023 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus Jan 3 Kickoff & Interview

Bookgirl  Amazon & Goodreads Jan 4 Review

Nora S. Storeybook Reviews Jan 5 Guest Review & Excerpt

Gud Reader Goodreads Jan 6 Review

Suzie My Tangled Skeins Book Reviews Jan 9 Review & Guest Post

Linda Goodreads Jan 10 Review

Amy Locks, Hooks and Books Jan 11 Review & Excerpt

DT Chantel  Amazon & Goodreads Jan 12 Review

Mark Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus Jan 13 Guest Review

Lora ettria.com Jan 16 Review & Excerpt

Kimberly Amazon Jan 17 Review

Laura Lee Celticlady’s Reviews Jan 18 Guest Review & Excerpt

Gary L.  Amazon & Goodreads Jan 20 Review

Sal Bound 4 Escape Jan 23 Guest Review

Gracie Goodreads Jan 24 Review

Lisa’s Writopia Jan 25 Guest Post

Bee Book Pleasures Jan 26 Review & Interview

Lisa’s Writopia Jan 30 Review

 

Murder of Pearl: A Silverman Sisters Cozy Mystery (Pearl Party Cozy Mysteries) by Nellie H. Steele Book Tour!

 

About Murder of Pearl

Murder of Pearl: A Silverman Sisters Cozy Mystery (Pearl Party Cozy Mysteries) 

Cozy Mystery 1st in Series 

Setting - Fictional estate of Willow Lake Estate 

A Novel Idea Publishing, LLC (October 21, 2022) 

Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 182 pages 

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1951582780 

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1951582784

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 202 pages 

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1951582675 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1951582678 

Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B5Y497HD

The world’s her oyster…until someone is stabbed with her shucking knife.

With a struggling pearl party business, sisters Kelly and Jodi Silverman are thrilled to land a weekend long jewelry party at a large estate. But the gothic house, complete with its weeping woman fountain, gives Kelly a bad vibe.

A nasty storm strands them at the spooky mansion. And when the birthday gal is found with Kelly’s shucking knife poking from her chest, they’re not only stuck in the creepy house with a murderer roaming the halls, but Kelly’s accused of the crime.

 Can Kelly and Jodi piece together the limited clues, prove their innocence and stay alive? Or will this pearl party be their last?
If you love comedy mystery a la Clue, you’ll love Murder of Pearl, Book 1 in the Pearl Party Cozy Mystery series!

Award-winning author Nellie H. Steele writes in as many genres as she reads.

Addicted to books since she could read, Nellie escaped to fictional worlds like the ones created by Carolyn Keene or Victoria Holt long before she decided to put pen to paper and create her own realities. When she’s not spinning a cozy mystery tale, building a new realm in a contemporary fantasy, or writing another action-adventure car chase, you can find her shuffling through her Noah’s Ark of rescue animals or enjoying a hot cuppa (that’s tea for most Americans.) Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, Bookbub, Pinterest and Tiktok. 

Check out all Nellie's offers at www.anovelideapublishing.com/novels or at her blog, Nellie’s Book Nook, available at www.nelliesbooknook.com! 

  Author Links 

Webpage: http://www.anovelideapublishing.com 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NellieHSteele/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/NellieHSteele

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19769743.Nellie_H_Steele

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nelliehsteele/ 

 TOUR PARTICIPANTS

January 16 – Cozy Up With Kathy – REVIEW, CHARACTER GUEST POST

January 16 – Lady Hawkeye – CHARACTER INTERVIEW

January 16 – Mythical Books – REVIEW

January 17 – Literary Gold – AUTHOR INTERVIEW

January 17 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT

January 17 – Jane Reads – CHARACTER INTERVIEW

January 18 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

January 18 – #BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee Blog – SPOTLIGHT

January 18 – Paranormal and Romantic Suspense Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

January 19 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT

January 19 – Ascroft, eh? – AUTHOR GUEST POST

January 19 – Novels Alive – REVIEW – SPOTLIGHT

January 19 – Baroness Book Trove – CHARACTER INTERVIEW

January 20 – Rebecca M. Douglass, Author – REVIEW, AUTHOR INTERVIEW

January 20 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – CHARACTER GUEST POST

January 20 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

January 21 – Socrates Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

January 21 – I’m Into Books – SPOTLIGHT

January 21 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT

January 22 – The Mystery of Writing – AUTHOR GUEST POST

January 22 – Diana’s Book Journal – SPOTLIGHT

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The Testing of Rose Alleyn by Vivien Freeman Blog Tour!

 

The Testing of Rose Alleyn

England in the year 1900. A vibrant young woman must take control of her destiny.
Vivien Freeman’s atmospheric novel brings late Victorian England hauntingly to life in the mind of the reader. In this beautifully written romance, we explore the choices facing an independent-minded woman at a time when women struggled for self-determination.

Purchase Links

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Testing-Rose-Alleyn-Vivien-Freeman-ebook/dp/B09MSLY8YB/

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-testing-of-rose-alleyn/vivien-freeman/9781739781408

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Testing-Rose-Alleyn-Vivien-Freeman/dp/B09M7JN1Z9/

Extract from The Testing of Rose Alleyn by Vivien Freeman  

It is May 1900.  Since January, sixteen-year-old Rose Alleyn has been living at Mrs Fuller’s hostel for young women, in the market town of Widdock.  Rose has walked home from her work as an assistant at Pritchard’s Bookshop.  The five other tenants are already home.

 As soon as I have closed the front door of Apple Tree House, the kitchen door flies open.

    ‘Yes, it is,’ Winnie calls back into the room.  ‘Come on, Rose, we’ve been waiting for you.’

   What she means, I discover after I’ve flung my hat and coat on the hallstand, is that although the four factory girls have eaten their first course and Lettie is just finishing hers, they are holding back from pudding because, as Meg tells me, we have a treat.

    ‘So, your rhubarb tart lives to fight another day,’ says Priscilla, with a smirk in my direction.  She starts clearing the dirty plates, as I sit down to eat my dinner.

 Jenny, who is Priscilla’s office colleague at the toothbrush factory, comes in at the back door having fetched Mrs. Fuller from her studio in the garden.  ‘What’s all this about?’ she asks.  ‘I can’t wait to be enlightened.’

 It turns out that Winnie and Meg have received an official commendation from their company, Hallambury’s, which produces medicines and surgical equipment.  They used to work in the packaging department but were promoted to the office, where they have been working for three months now.  Not only are their posts confirmed but, because their pharmaceutical knowledge is so good, since they are the daughters of a chemist, they have been told that they may draft proposed replies to enquiries and instructions to be enclosed with orders. 

 ‘Though our manager, Mr. Dixon, will have to approve and sign the letters, of course,’ says Meg.

 ‘He put the idea forward to the Chairman, so he’s just as pleased as us.’

 ‘I bet he is,’ says Priscilla, ‘if you care to think about it.’

 But the rest of us are congratulating the two sisters.

 ‘We thought it was a rather special day,’ says Meg.

 ‘So, we rushed down during lunch break and begged Askey’s to put these aside to pick up on the way home,’ says Winnie bearing in from the scullery, to our gasps of anticipated pleasure, a double-tiered cake-stand upon which are seven mouth-watering Swiss buns, arranged to point outwards as if offering their slim fingers for our delectation. 

 Mrs. Fuller has fetched the finest tea plates from the dresser and, offered first pick, takes her bun and raises it by the underside aloft as if it were a wine glass.  ‘A toast to all you clever girls,’ she says.  ‘Two scientists, two assistants in interesting shops and two office clerks.  I call that impressive.  To all six of you!’

  Lettie can hardly wait till our bedroom door is shut for the night.  ‘Did you see her face – ‘ she breathes,  ‘you know, when Mrs. Fuller - ?’

  ‘I know.’  I say no more, uneasy as I always am, that we might be overheard by someone passing on her way to or from the bathroom. 

  ‘She looked as if she was sucking on a sour lemon.  Trust her to be so jealous of Meg and Winnie’s good fortune, she couldn’t be pleased about Mrs. Fuller’s toast to us all.’

    I simply nod and go to use the bathroom myself.

    It is true that, in response to Mrs. Fuller’s rousing affirmation of our achievements,  Priscilla’s first expression, swiftly blanked, did not echo the appreciation on everyone else’s faces, but Lettie’s deduction doesn’t quite add up, and I don’t want to dwell on any further interpretations.  What remains uppermost in my mind’s eye is how, when Mrs. Fuller included Priscilla and Jenny in the toast, Jenny’s smile froze, as if in shock.

Copyright Vivien Freeman 2021

Vivien Freeman grew up in North London and graduated in Art History from the University of East Anglia before settling in Ware, Hertfordshire. A published poet as well as a novelist, she taught Creative Writing for many years and has an M.A. in Scriptwriting from Salford University. She now lives in rural Wales in the Vale of Glamorgan with her husband, the poet, John Freeman.

Happy Days by Clare Hawken Cover Reveal!

 

Happy Days

Meet Steph Barnacle, an English teacher at a private school, married to Dan. Her son has just left for university, her life is feeling a bit stale … and something weird is going on with the skin on her neck. And then Charles Kurmudge, the man she’s never forgotten, walks back into her world.

Charles’s life has blown up spectacularly – he’s lost his job, his house and his marriage. Determined to get back on track, he’s changed career. He’ll now be working for Steph, whose heart he broke over twenty years ago. He still finds her very attractive. What a shame she’s married.

Her husband, Dan, knows he loves Steph more than she loves him. And now that Charles is back in his wife’s orbit, he’s worried about their marriage. But surely Steph wouldn’t dream of leaving him for Charles, who’d treated her so badly … would she?

Can Steph resist her first love? Or will she give him a second chance?

Publication Date: 3rd February 

You can order here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSDPGWMD

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BSDPGWMD/

 Clare Hawken was born in Zambia and has lived in England, France and Australia. She now lives in Wiltshire with her family and a stubborn springer spaniel. She writes about families, relationships, and the blind spots, mistakes and mishaps that can change life in a heartbeat. Apart from writing, she enjoys reading voraciously across a wide range of genres; other people's gardening efforts; and long walks, if she can persuade the dog to

https://twitter.com/clarehawken

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https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100069410435467

clarehawken.com

Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King Review!

 

 

A fifty-year-old cold case involving California royalty comes back to life--with potentially fatal consequences--in this gripping standalone novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series.

A magnificent house, vast formal gardens, a golden family that shaped California, and a colorful past filled with now-famous artists: the Gardener Estate was a twentieth-century Eden.

And now, just as the Estate is preparing to move into a new future, restoration work on some of its art digs up a grim relic of the home's past: a human skull, hidden away for decades.

Inspector Raquel Laing has her work cut out for her. Fifty years ago, the Estate's young heir, Rob Gardener, turned his palatial home into a counterculture commune of peace, love, and equality. But that was also a time when serial killers preyed on innocents--monsters like The Highwayman, whose case has just surged back into the public eye.

Could the skull belong to one of his victims?

To Raquel--a woman who knows all about colorful pasts--the bones clearly seem linked to The Highwayman. But as she dives into the Estate's archives to look for signs of his presence, what she unearths begins to take on a dark reality all of its own.

Everything she finds keeps bringing her back to Rob Gardener himself. While he might be a gray-haired recluse now, back then he was a troubled young Vietnam vet whose girlfriend vanished after a midsummer festival at the Estate.

But a lot of people seem to have disappeared from the Gardener Estate that summer when the commune mysteriously fell apart: a young woman, her child, and Rob's brother, Fort.

The pressure is on, and Raquel needs to solve this case--before The Highwayman slips away, or another Gardener vanishes.

Edgar-winning mystery writer Laurie R. King writes series and standalone novels. Her official forum is THE LRK VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB here on Goodreads--please join us for book-discussing fun.

King's 2018 novel, Island of the Mad, sees Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes travel from London's Bedlam to the glitter of Venice's Lido, where Young Things and the friends of Cole Porter pass Mussolini's Blackshirts in the streets. The Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series follows a brilliant young woman who becomes the student, then partner, of the great detective. [click here for an excerpt of the first in the series, The Beekeeper's Apprentice] The Stuyvesant and Grey series (Touchstone; The Bones of Paris) takes place in Europe between the Wars. The Kate Martinelli series follows an SFPD detective's cases on a female Rembrandt, a holy fool, and more. [Click for an excerpt of A Grave Talent]

King lives in northern California, which serves as backdrop for some of her books.

Please note that Laurie checks her Goodreads inbox intermittently, so it may take some time to receive a reply. A quicker response may be possible via email to info@laurierking.com

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Now

The day had been going so well, until the bones turned up.

It was a Monday, for one thing. Jen liked Mondays. The Gardener Estate was closed to the public, which always made it feel more like a family home than a place of work. The staff could park where they wanted, dress for comfort, and dive into their tasks without having to dodge the cameras and the clueless. Some of them even came in early, to work up an appetite for the morning break, and at noon they sat down together for an only slightly ironic communal lunch.

This Monday was also a perfect April morning on California’s Central Coast: warm sun, blue sky, the formal gardens a mosaic of glorious color, the Great Field a sweep of brilliant seasonal green, thanks to the series of winter storms. The kind of day that tempted Jen to spurn office work and spend the morning in old jeans, allowing the real gardeners to order her around.

Except that those winter storms had created a problem.

Yes, it was great not to worry about drought for a change, to see the trees leaf out so generously and the nearby reservoir fill. Not so great was how the long months of sodden ground had toppled over three of the Estate’s oldest trees, collapsed a stretch of century-old stone retaining wall, and—this being the matter that was keeping Jen from a day of nice, mindless weeding—lent a Pisa-like tilt to the biggest and most idiosyncratic of the Estate’s outdoor statues.

Rafi, the head groundsman, had noticed the tilt back in February. It wasn’t an immediate hazard, since the statue was outside the formal gardens and easy enough to fence off, but with good weather coming on, picnickers would soon arrive, and small children whose parents ignored the no climbing signs. Normally, a repair order would have gone through, a simple matter of choosing a contractor and having the Estate’s art conservator there to supervise. But for this statue?

Manager, groundsman, and conservator, along with the hard-hatted driver of the big crane idling behind them, stood to survey the job.

“I could just finish tipping it over, so it’s not a hazard,” the driver suggested.

“Let the blackberries grow over it,” Rafi agreed. “Call it environmental art or something.”

“It is the weirdest thing on the place,” Jen admitted. Jen Bachus had been the Estate’s manager since the Trust took over, and before that, a neighbor and regular trespasser. Jen had definite opinions on the weirdnesses of the Gardener Estate—and a sixteen-foot-high, tilecovered figure with long skirts, an odd torso, and a trio of conjoined heads was a thing most visitors found unforgettable. And that was before they got to the expression on its face.

But the conservator was shaking her head. “You can’t do that. It’s a Gaddo.” Although even her voice suggested a tiny bit of agreement: Midsummer Eves was kind of creepy.

Mrs. Dalhousie, the Estate’s archivist and conservator, was only here because of the Estate’s Gaddoes. She’d retired from New York’s MOMA, moved west, and come with a ladies’ group to visit the gardens—where she was astonished to find three (possibly four) sculptures by the artist known as Gaddo, a woman famous in the seventies, notorious in the eighties, and out of fashion by the end of the nineties, when her feminist outrage was superseded by Damian Hirst’s masculine irony of rotting cows and formaldehyde sharks. There were signs that she was now, twelve years after her death, about to be rediscovered as the gynocentric precursor of bad-boy shock art.

Mrs. Dalhousie had instantly volunteered—rather, she walked in and took over. And once she’d sorted out the Gaddoes (which might include the Minoan snake-goddess figure they’d found gathering dust in the attic), she moved on to transforming the archives from a room full of memorabilia into a properly cataloged, scanned, and referenced archive of the Gardener Estate’s century-long history. Mrs. Dalhousie approached every project, be it sculpture restoration or newspaper storage, with a computer’s tireless energy, a monk’s passionate dedication, and precisely nil sense of humor.

But not even Mrs. Dalhousie could claim that Midsummer Eves was the ideal ornament for a part of the Estate given over to picnicking families and long views over rolling hills. The Eves might have two other faces, but the massive laurel hedge made it impossible to tell. For decades, this face had loomed at the top of the Great Field like an avenging goddess, baring her sharpened teeth at passersby and frightening the more sensitive children.

Were it not for the inescapable fact that its creator later became famous enough to be known by a single name, the Eves might already have been allowed to quietly deteriorate, just one more piece of pretentious hippie junk from the Estate’s commune era.

“At least it’s an early Gaddo,” Jen commented. “From her ‘Menacing Feminist’ phase rather than full-on gross-out. Unless you think the grout contains pureed placentas or ground-up human bones.”

The two men looked alarmed. Mrs. Dalhousie looked thoughtful, but only corrected Jen’s terminology. “It’s known as her ‘Sisterhood’ phase, and the dates for this would place it early on, which makes it all the more important. As for the bones in that piece you’re referring to, they were from a monkey, not a human child. At any rate, I shall be quite interested to see the other faces. Gaddo’s sketches for the piece are surprisingly fragmentary.”

“Whatever we find, this thing’s costing us a fortune, even before we look at the renovation costs and security measures. Do you think . . .” Jen fixed her eyes on the statue and tried to sound as if this was something that was just occurring to her. “I don’t suppose we’d be allowed to sell it? Like, to a museum? I suppose a private collector would pay more, but I’d rather see it in public hands. And if a museum—like MOMA—oversaw the renovations, they’d be done right. Do you think the Trust might consider letting it go?”

She could feel Mrs. Dalhousie’s gaze, drilling into the side of her face.

Mrs. D claimed that the Gaddo would generate income from art historians and selfie-seekers—eventually. Jen wasn’t sure the Estate’s bank balance would hold out long enough to see a return on expenditures. However, if they could sell the Eves, there were any number of projects that had been pending for some time . . .

But in fact, the ultimate fate of Midsummer Eves was not up to Jen, or even Mrs. Dalhousie.

“According to the Trust agreement,” Mrs. Dalhousie pointed out, “anything beyond maintenance and repairs requires Mr. Gardener’s approval.”

That reminder took some of the shine out of the morning.

Jen’s gaze slid over to Rafi, who had worked for the Estate longer than she had. “Do you know when anyone last saw Rob?”

“Hmm. November?”

“Oh, right—when he took a shot at those hikers.”

Mrs. Dalhousie blinked, the crane driver looked uneasy, and Jen gave them both an apologetic smile. “Mr. Gardener’s private corner of the Estate is clearly posted against trespassing. Though it was only bird shot, and he wasn’t actually aiming at them.”

Still, the thought of setting off on a death-defying drive to speak with a famously irascible Gardener put a different shade across the job at hand.

“What about his cousin?” Mrs. Dalhousie suggested.

“David is still in Germany.”

An odd silence fell.

The crane driver waited. When no explanation came, he took off his hard hat to scratch his balding head. “Well, anyway. Your problem’s with the base. The thing is held together like crazy—forty years and not so much as a crack—but it doesn’t look like they stabilized the ground underneath it at all, just wove up a bunch of rebar, slapped some forms around it, and poured directly on the dirt. And that’s your problem. It’s so close to that hedge, nobody spotted the stream undermining the whole thing. Look, I’m going to have to pick it up base and all, anyway. If you like, I could just take it a little farther, to that flat place. It could sit there for months. You can even put up a scaffolding and do your repairs there.”

Jen nodded. “That’s probably for the best. In the meantime, Mrs. D, I’ll pencil in a discussion on selling it on next week’s Board agenda. Maybe when David gets back, he can go up and talk to Rob, see if he’s fond of the thing. We might even be able to fit in a preliminary vote on Tuesday, if Rob doesn’t mind . . . retiring it.”

She could no longer avoid Mrs. Dalhousie’s eyes.

The older woman’s expression was clear. I am the veteran of a thousand art-world negotiations. I am not deceived by your act of innocence. At the same time, she was experienced enough to choose private conversation over public argument, so she added her permission for the crane driver to get on with the task of shifting the sculpture, base and all.

My Thoughts

This novel by Laurie R. King, Back to the Garden is about a home that was built by a wealthy family, the Gardeners. It is also about a 50-year-old murder. The home was turned into a commune by Rob Gardener, one of the sons who inherited the home when his grandfather passed. There is another grandson, Fort, who moved away to India in the 70's and really had nothing to do with the commune, although he does come back for a time. Neither one wanted anything to do with the money. Rob in the meantime had enlisted and served in Vietnam.

The title Back to the Garden is in reference to a daylong music event that happened on the grounds, to increase awareness to life in a commune and it was suspected that this was when the person buried under the statue was murdered.

A statue that was erected in the 70's is undergoing some restoration work when it is discovered that there is a skull and other bones buried underneath the statue. Inspector Raquel Laing is sent to investigate. She needs to determine if the bones are connected to other murders that took place in California by a serial killer who is now on death's door in a hospital.

It is her job to interview each person who had lived at the commune in the 70's to rule out suspects and to figure out who was buried under the statue. There are many people that lived there, Rob, Meadow his partner at the time, Jerry, the lawyer, Jen, the manager, among others. Each person becomes a suspect. 

The story is told in two different timeframes, Then and Now. In the Then we learn a bit more about the dynamics of life in a commune and in the Now the reader finds that Raquel is a complex person who is determined to solve the mystery. She also wants to 'find' the victims of the serial killer Michael Johnson, the Highwayman, who abducted and murdered a string of women. This is a daunting task for her, but she perseveres and digs in some places that could cost her job. 

I have read some other reviews and was surprised by some of the comments that reviewers had a hard time getting into it. Not me, I had no issues with the writing. I found the book to be an enjoyable read from start to finish. I love a good murder mystery and this one ranked up there with the best. I liked how the author set up the story in each then and now section, the nuances of the 70's and the hippy lifestyle that went along with it. Free love and all that.

I give it 5 stars.

I received a copy of the book for review purposes only.