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Articles by Edith Maxwell
Carla Loves To Read
Each month I am going to pick a theme or grouping of books that I want to read. This is my own personal challenge, so I will see how this works. It will be my monthly reading list, but I have a tough time following them. I will see how this goes. I can’t believe it’s already September. More than half the year is already gone and I don’t know where it went. I have completed all 7 of the personal challenges I’ve set for myself this year. I hope it continues.
Carla Loves To Read
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.
Top Ten Tuesday: Check Up Time (2025-12-30) #TTT
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. This weeks topic is: Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf.
In the Spirit: Keeping it simple
In Quaker tradition, Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter are to be viewed the same as all other days. Earlier members of the Religious Society of Friends believed that every day was an opportunity to celebrate God’s presence in their lives. In current times, many Friends do celebrate Christmas. Amesbury Friends Meeting hangs wreaths on the front doors of our historic Meetinghouse.
Unmasked: A Halloween Mystery Short Story By Edith Maxwell
by Edith Maxwell This is our first Halloween short story of the season. Last week though we did have a Spooky one. You can find all of our Halloween/Spooky stories for this year in our Terrific Tales Section. This story has never before been published. Maybe All Hallow’s Eve should be called All Hallow’s Evil, Dot Henderson mused as she watched the costumed Bostonians parade by that October night in 1926. A leering Harlequin slid into the shadows.
In the Spirit: That of God
About seven years ago, an old friend and his wife visited with their daughter. The parents follow the Baha’i faith. The daughter was on a kind of gap year from the eighth grade, and her parents were taking her on a tour of the United States and its history. Janelle made a disparaging comment about the president at the time. Her father, my old friend, said, “Remember, he is also a child of God.” The daughter nodded and did not press the point.
Memorial Day Cake @MaddieDayAuthor #giveaway
MADDIE DAY here with a jump on the US Memorial Day holiday, coming up on Monday. This is a yummy sour cream cake that's easy to decorate with a sour cream frosting and red and blue fruit. See, you can use it for the 4th of July, too! You're welcome. Memorial Day Cake Who doesn't love a red, white, and blue dessert for Memorial Day? This cake is adapted from a Sweetest Menu recipe.
Rose Lives On
Edith/Maddie writing from northeast MA, where flowers are trying to bloom. Big news – my Quaker Midwife short story collection is out today! I introduced you to it here in January, and it’s finally release day. Read down for a giveaway. But first some background. The Quaker Midwife Mysteries series began with a short story originally titled, “Breaking the Silence,” which appeared in Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold.
Guest John Hoda - Following the Clues
Edith/Maddie here, with my last guest of the month. John Hoda was kind enough to invite me as a guest to My Favorite Detective Stories, his popular podcast, a few months ago. Our own Julie was a guest, too. When I found out this private detective’s debut cozy mystery was coming out, I wanted to return the favor! Here’s the blurb for Milford Elementary: One deceased groom-to-be. One dead-end clue. One last chance at redemption. Gwendolyn Strong feels lost outside the classroom.
Death in the New Land By Kaye George: Review/Giveaway
by Edith Maxwell Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of the book, and a link to purchase it from Amazon. I have read every book in Kaye George’s People of the Wind prehistory series, and I love Death in the New Land as much as the earlier books.
Guest Leslie Karst, plus #giveaway
Edith/Maddie here, writing north of Boston and gearing up for a fun month! (Can you spell vacation?) Leslie Karst is my third Leslie guest in a month, and certainly not least (none of them is). I’m so excited to have her back with the Wickeds, because that means she has a new Sally Solari mystery for me to inhale…I mean, read. If you haven’t read this wonderful foodie series set in Santa Cruz, California, you need to catch up, stat. Let’s see what The Fragrance of Death is like.
Around the Kitchen Table - Sunday Dinner + 4-Book & Recipe Card Collection #giveaway
MADDIE DAY here, delighted to have the Kitchen crew sitting around my table again. I hosted all the usual suspects (son and wife, plus a crew of friends who are like family) for Easter dinner two weeks ago, as I do every year except the dreaded 2020, and I got to thinking about Sunday dinners. In some families a big weekly dinner might still be a tradition. I don't have family living close enough to come every week, but I wish I did.
Guest Ann Parker plus #Giveaway
News Flash: qnofdnilesblog is Ann’s lucky winner! Please check your email. Edith/Maddie north of Boston, where spring might be peeking at us! I’m super happy to welcome Ann Parker back to the blog. I love her historical mysteries, which began in Leadville, Colorado, and followed Inez Stannert to San Francisco. I can’t wait to read The Secret in the Wall, book #8 in the Silver Rush Mysteries series, which came out last month. Here’s the blurb: Inez Stannert has reinvented herself―again.
Peppermint Mocha Muffins from @MaddieDayAuthor #giveaway
MADDIE DAY here to get you into the holiday spirit even before our #Christmas recipes launch into full swing! I bring you a delicious recipe from Candy Slain Murder, last year's Christmas mystery. The muffins are easy and tasty and festive, and Robbie Jordan offers them in her country store restaurant. I hope you love these muffins while you're wrapping or sharing a coffee with a friend.
#Halloween Pumpkin-Carrot Muffins from @MaddieDayAuthor plus #GIVEAWAY
MADDIE here, with Halloween muffins! I realize they don't have jack-o-lantern faces or scary spiders painted on. But sometimes you want a tasty pumpkin-flavored muffin while you're carving that pumpkin or hanging your big scary spiders over the front door. I consider this recipe my public service for the week! Plus, pumpkin flesh is readily available this time of year, whether fresh or canned, as are plump local carrots.
How to Find Order
Edith here, loving summer! I’m also loving that I have a new collection of short stories to dive into. Author and editor Judy Penz Sheluk is here to talk about how she decided on the order of the stories in the just-released Moonlight & Misadventure. Take it away, Judy.
Guest Laura Walker #giveaway
News Flash: Judith is the lucky winner of Laura Walker’s giveaway! Judith, please check your email. Edith here, stunned at this heat at the start of June. But I don’t want to seem ungrateful. I have my health, a loving family, a career I love, and some special friends. Including Laura Jensen Walker, who has a new book out and is here to talk about gratitude! She’s even giving away a copy of Deadly Delights to a commenter.
Review | NetGalley
Review by Kristina A, Reviewer Last updated on 25 Aug 2020 My Recommendation Speaking of Murder by Edith Maxwell was originally published in 2012 using the pseudonym Tace Baker. Lauren Rousseau is a linguistics professor at Agawam College. She lives in a condo with her dog, Wulu, a cockapoo. Lauren has recently obtained tenure along with her colleague and friend, Ralph Fourakis. She has been dating Zac Agnant, a Haitian American videographer.
Heartbreaks and Half-truths
Our friend from our neighbor to the north, Judy Penz Sheluk, has compiled and edited a new anthology of short crime fiction. Heartbreaks & Half-truths: 22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense includes a slew of talented authors, including several long-time Friends of the Wickeds. Lovers and losers.
Hid From Our Eyes Release
Edith here, still hunkering down. The title of this blog could be rephrased as, We Love Julia Spencer-Fleming. She has a new (ninth) book out in her most wonderful Clare Fergusson / Russ Van Alstyne mystery series. Hid from Our Eyes releases next Tuesday! It’s been a little while since the last one, and I wanted to have her here as our guest. She’s a Mainer, our friend, and has had huge success with the prior books in the series.
On Being Honored
Edith here, writing from Amesbury, Massachusetts, where carriages no longer traverse the roads and paths. But where one happy author is delighted to announce that Charity’s Burden, my fourth Quaker Midwife Mystery, has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Historical Novel! It’s the fourth nomination for the series, and my seventh Agatha nod (hint, the paperback is on sale over on Amazon). Read on for a giveaway.
Murder on Cape Cod is Everywhere
Edith/Maddie here, secretly pleased to have the house cleaned, restored to its non-holiday state, and quiet again, no matter how much I loved having my family home for the holidays. Read on for two special giveaways! It’s release week for Murder on Cape Cod, Maddie Day’s first Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery. What, you ask? Didn’t that release last year? Sigh. Yes, it did, but only from Barnes & Noble and only in paperback.
Guest: Nancy Coco & #Giveaway
Edith here, happy to welcome my friend Nancy Coco (aka Nancy J. Parra) to the blog with the first book in a new mystery series! Death Bee Comes Her blurb: Meet Wren Johnson, owner of Let It Bee – a shop that sells all things honey, from candy to lip balm to candles – in the small town of Oceanview along the Oregon coast. One day when Wren is walking her cat, Everett, on the beach, the kitty points Wren to the prone body of Agnes Snow among the dunes.
Guest Victoria Thompson
Edith here, basking in having family around me. Our guest today is the fabulous Victoria Thompson. City of Scoundrels, her third Counterfeit Lady Mystery, came out last month and I just finished reading the latest adventure of Elizabeth Miles. I wanted to be sure our Wicked fans knew about it too, so I invited Victoria back on the blog. She’s giving away a copy, too! Imagine getting sick with a deadly disease for which there is no treatment or cure.
Guest Carol Pouliot
Edith here, happy to welcome fellow Sister in Crime Carol Pouliot to talk about time-traveling characters. Threshold of Deceit, her new time-travel mystery, came out this week from Level Best Books, in a series with a very cool premise. Read on! On a sunny spring day in 1934, a local lothario is murdered in broad daylight.
Cozy Capers Cover Reveal & #Giveaway!
Edith here, feeling a little like a truck hit me – but in a good way! This has been a record-breaking year for me, bookwise. As of tomorrow, five books of mine will have been published since January. In order of release starting clockwise from Murder on Cape Cod. Whew. And now I won’t have a new book out until March, although Murder on Cape Cod goes to wide release on New Year’s Eve. All you Kindle readers and dedicated Amazon shoppers can finally dive in.
Judge Thee Not Releases!
Edith here, so happy that Quaker Midwife Mystery #5 is now in the hands of readers! Here’s the blurb: No stranger to judgmental attitudes in her small town, 1880s Quaker midwife Rose Carroll is nonetheless stunned when society matron Mayme Settle publicly snubs Rose’s good friend Bertie for her nontraditional ways. When Mrs. Settle is later found murdered—and a supposed witness insists Bertie was spotted near the scene of the crime—the police blame her.
Guest Judy Sheluk
Edith here, milking the end of summer for all it’s got! And happy to welcome Judy Penz Sheluk back to the blog.
Taking a Break
Edith here, writing from steamy north of Boston. I just got back from six days way, way off the grid, with no internet or cell service. I didn’t catch up on Facebook or email. I missed hearing that Strangled Eggs and Ham was a Fresh Pick over at Fresh Fiction. I couldn’t read and comment on this blog or on Jungle Red Writers, as I do every morning. I didn’t hear a single piece of news. And I survived. What made it easy was being at Pyramid Lake and the Women’s Writing Retreat.
Book Release Week!
Edith here, delighted to be releasing a new book tomorrow on the same day as Wickeds Barb and Liz (mine is written as Maddie Day and Liz’s as Cate Conte). You’ll be hearing about our books here and elsewhere all week. Please check out all the blogs I’ll be visiting or have visited in this release season, many of which offer a chance to win a book. Link is on this page. And I’ll give away a copy to one commenter here, too. I knew I wanted to set one of my Country Store Mysteries in August.
Guest Lucy Burdette
Edith here, still coming down from Malice, but delighted to welcome a good friend of the Wickeds, Lucy Burdette – who has a brand-new Key West Food Critic mystery out! She’s giving away a copy to one lucky commenter.
When it Takes a Village: Lea Wait
Edith, posting from Silver Spring, Maryland the day before Malice starts! Please join me in welcoming back a woman with amazing strength of character and will – and talent, too – the lovely Lea Wait.
CHARITY'S BURDEN
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My Chick Bad: Unlikeable Heroines in Crime Fiction
When I started writing They All Fall Down, my intent wasn’t to write an unlikeable character. Miriam, in my mind, was simply a mother… who may have gone too far. What woman, hell, what parent, can’t relate to that? Yelling at the ref during Soccer Saturdays. Sending the kid to the liquor store to buy two soft packs of Newports. Going up to the school to talk to a teacher, crowbar in hand. We all have come short of the glory of the Lord.
Aspects of Police Procedure in the Late Nineteenth Century
Edith Maxwell, author of Charity’s Burden, discusses Massachusetts police procedures she learned while performing research to write the Quaker Midwife Mystery series. My Quaker Midwife Mysteries series begins in 1888 and is set in Amesbury, Massachusetts, in a then-thriving textile mill and carriage factory town in the northeast corner of the state. Midwife Rose Carroll is an amateur sleuth, but of course, Amesbury had a police department whose business it was to solve crimes.
Writing Short
By Edith, scribbling north of Boston where a chilly rain is falling and I’m grateful for light, heat, and a solid house. I’ve been working on a couple of short stories this fall. One was inspired by an article I read in the New Yorker about hyperpolyglots – people who easily learn more than a dozen languages and are always eager to acquire more tongues. My mind naturally turned to crime fiction.
June/July 2018 Full Issue Access
Friends Journal Published by Friends Publishing Corporation, an independent Quaker 501c3 nonprofit organization 1216 Arch Street, Suite 2D Philadelphia, PA 19107 (215) 563-8629 (800) 471-6863 [email protected] Our federal tax ID is 23-1465406.
Writing and Marketing Crime Fiction
I am a Friend, and I write and publicize novels about murder. How do I reconcile what at first glance might appear to be opposing values? Let me give you, dear reader, a little background. I have been a member of Amesbury (Mass.) Meeting for nearly 30 years. Amesbury is a former mill town tucked into the northeast corner of Massachusetts, and our unprogrammed meeting is a monthly meeting of New England Yearly Meeting.
Guest V.M. Burns on Write What You Know
Edith here, writing from Cape Cod, and delighted to welcome Agatha nominee V.M. Burns back to the blog! She’ll give away a copy of her newest mystery, The Read Herring Hunt, to one lucky commenter here today, too. Here’s the book blurb: To the town of North Harbor, Michigan, MISU quarterback Dawson Alexander is a local hero. To Samantha Washington, owner of the Market Street Mysteries Bookstore, Dawson is more than a tenant—he’s like an adopted son.
Guest: Beth Kanell
Edith here, en route back from Malice Domestic and so very happy to welcome fellow New England Sister in Crime Beth Kanell as a guest on the blog. Beth has a new crossover Young Adult historical mystery out – and by crossover, I mean everyone should read it! I was luck enough to read an early copy and enthusiastically offered an endorsement: “Beth Kanell’s The Long Shadow is a beautifully written novel addressing themes of family, friendship, and the fight to end slavery in 1850s Vermont.
CALLED TO JUSTICE
On Independence Day 1888, Rose Carroll of Amesbury, Massachusetts, is approached by a fellow member of the Religious Society of Friends who’s in desperate straits. Hannah Breed, who works at the Hamilton Mill with Rose’s niece, tells Rose that she’s pregnant, raped by a man she will not name. Before Rose can do anything to help, Hannah is shot dead at the fireworks Rose is attending with Dr. David Dodge, her beau.
Wicked Cozy Authors
Edith here, happy to introduce fellow Kensington Publishing author Lynn Cahoon. Sherry and I met Lynn at Bouchercon last fall and were delighted to meet a new-to-us mystery author. Take it away, Lynn! Hello Wicked Cozy Authors and blog readers. Thanks for having me over today. I’m excited to be here. New England has been on my travel wish list since I was a kid.
NORTH SHORE BOOK NOTES: 'Best New England Crime Stories: Red Dawn'
Reading “Best New England Crime Stories: Red Dawn” is a bittersweet delight. It is the latest in an annual anthology of short crime fiction by New England authors. Multi-published and award-winning writers’ work is always included, as well as stunning works by writers never before published. But “Red Dawn” might also be the last of these anthologies. Level Best Books, a small-press cooperative, has been publishing the collection for 13 years, with editorial management changing only once.
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