Skip to main content

Featured

Death at the Village Christmas Fair by Debbie Young #Review #CotswoldCuriosityShopMysteriesBook3 #PublicationDay

  I am delighted to feature this cozy crime novel, Death at the Village Christmas Fair  by Debbie Young . It is published today by Boldwood Books on August 16th.   It’s been a busy year for Alice Carroll, with her Curiosity Shop opening for business, and not one but two murders shaking things up in her quaint Cotswold village. She’s looking forward to her first countryside Christmas, complete with traditional Christmas Fair and Santa Run. But her hopes for innocent festive fun are thwarted when one of the Santa Runners steals something from her mum's knitting stall. His festive outfit makes him hard to spot, until he's found fatally injured outside the village hall with the stolen item. Despite what the police say, Alice suspects there's more to his murder than meets the eye. She's determined to solve the mystery - including why, once more, a stranger thought something from her Curiosity Shop was worth killing for. With the help of her charming neighbour Rob...

Little White Secrets #Extract #Publication Day





Today to celebrate the Publication Day of Little White Secrets by Carol Mason, I have a great extract for you to sample. Before we get to it, here's a little about the book: 


A daughter pushing the limits. A marriage ready to crack. A secret that can break them.

For Emily Rossi, life may not be perfect, but it’s pretty close. She has a great career, a house in the country, a solid marriage to Eric and two wonderful children—tennis superstar Daniel and quiet, sensitive Zara. But when her fourteen-year-old daughter brings home a toxic new best friend, Emily’s seemingly perfect family starts to spiral out of control.

Suddenly Zara is staying out late, taking drugs and keeping bad company. And just when Emily needs Eric to be an involved father, he seems too wrapped up with his job in London to care. What’s more, he’s started drinking again.

When a dark secret from the past emerges, Emily’s life is turned upside down. Struggling to protect the people she loves, can she save her damaged family? Doing so may mean keeping a secret of her own…



                                                        Extract

In the beginning of the book Eric and Emily have been invited to their friend’s wedding anniversary party. After the event, Charlotte, sends Emily a video taken by a fellow guest. Emily is horribly embarrassed by it. Up until this point she’d thought Eric’s little white secret – his drinking - had been kept within their four walls. Little does she know there’s actually a much bigger secret he’s keeping.

‘I love my food,’ he was saying to a rather stiff couple of bookish types, who looked cornered. ‘Basically, if there’s an avocado in it, I’ll eat it.’ He swayed a little, clutching his whisky glass high up by his chest. ‘I bloody love avocados! I bet you don’t love them as much as me. I love them so much I could marry them.’
The stiffs couldn’t bring themselves to look amused, even out of charity, as though Eric’s inanity might be catching. On he prattled about avocados.
Ugh! I groaned, and switched off.
‘No!’ Charlotte said when I rang her and she was done laughing. ‘That’s not the best part! Didn’t you see the rest?’
The ‘rest’, when I looked again, was Eric even more hammered, looming over a startled, fair-haired young woman. ‘I’m a weak man. A bad person. No, you don’t understand . . . I mean a bad person. I’ve done things . . .’ Hiccup. ‘Things I’m not proud of . . .’ He was hanging on to his whisky glass for dear life, talking off to the side of her head like he was losing focus, clearly oblivious to the iPhone camera that was trained on him. ‘Where’s my wife, anyway?’ He turned and scanned the room for me, as though he was trying to peer through molasses. ‘I need to find my wife . . .’ His bleary gaze finally returned to the blonde’s ear.  He suddenly looked somber, haunted. ‘Let me tell you I love my wife. Have you met her? She’s the best… the best person. I don’t deserve her. I will never deserve her . . .
The videographer got bored and panned to someone else.
‘He was drunk,’ I said to Charlotte, flatly, feeling uncomfortably exposed. ‘He’s under a lot of pressure. That’s how he relieves his stress sometimes.’
If she was thinking, Do you have any idea what he was talking about?, she had the good grace not to ask. As I was, I couldn’t have enlightened her. 
 Copyright Carol Mason 2020

About the Author

 Carol Mason was born and grew up in the north-east of England. As a teenager she was crowned Britain’s National Smile Princess and subsequently became a model, diplomat-in-training, hotel receptionist and advertising copywriter. She currently lives in British Columbia, Canada, with her Canadian husband. To learn more about Carol and her novels, visit www.carolmasonbooks.com
You can follow Carol here: Twitter 
Book link: Amazon UK 

Thanks to Carol Mason and Rachel of  Rachel's Random Resources for the extract and a place on the event.
 

Comments

Popular Posts