Guest Post Victoria Abbott

It's a great Monday when these lovely ladies are here!! Victoria Abbott stoped by to chat with us for a while!!

Hi Ladies, welcome!! I am so pleased to have you with us today!! I am a huge fan of your books and also love the covers and the story!

It never gets old!  This month marks the release of the third Book Collector mystery.  It’s just as exciting as the first one for us.  In The Wolfe Widow, our young researcher, Jordan Bingham, is enjoying her wonderful job helping the reclusive and grouchy book collector, Vera Van Alst. The job provides quaint accommodations, terrific food and a book environment. For Jordan, the first person in her large family to go straight, it is a dream come true. Then the dream turns to a nightmare when Jordan is fired, losing job, home and access to three meals a day. But worse, she is convinced that the person who has orchestrated this, a frightening woman called Muriel Delgado, is after Vera’s money, books and life. Forbidden access to Van Alst House, Jordan is helpless. Although, she does still have those lockpicks she got for her Sweet Sixteen and a resourceful nature. And lots of imaginary advice from the great Archie Goodwin, of the Nero Wolfe mysteries ( a series we loved revisiting) So maybe, just maybe Jordan can save Vera and the day.  Hint: We worked hard to make that happen.

You see, like our readers, we care about the characters and we care about the mystery and we have plotted and written for a year to create the latest installment in Jordan Kelly Bingham’s adventures.  So you can imagine, after all that, when the new book is released, it’s a reason to celebrate.  We’ll be doing that with a Book Launch Party on September 24th.  We’ve invited our friends, family, readers, librarians and booksellers.  Many of our friends are authors and they’ll be there too, as we are for their launch parties. By the way, if you live near Manotick, Ontario, you’re invited too!

We love the opportunity to celebrate not only our book, but books in general.  We are incredibly lucky in our society to have so much access to books.   In many parts of the world there are no libraries, no bookstores, no ready supply of reading material at all.  Isn’t that sad?

That’s why we value our opportunities: blogs such as this raise awareness, reviewers give us suggestions of what to buy or borrow, book lovers chat about what they’re discovered and what they’ve enjoyed. Thank you, Shelley, for being part of that great group of supporters of mystery readers and writers and for everything you do.

One of the things we like best about writing the book collector mysteries is that each book deals with a collection of books from the Golden Age of Detection: Christie, Sayers, and Rex Stout so far. In order to incorporate details from those works into our contemporary book-related mysteries, we’ve had to reread these great series.  So that means more books to celebrate. We are currently working on the fourth book collector mystery, The Marsh Madness, and rereading the many great mysteries from Ngaio Marsh’s long career. She wrote 32 books, many no longer available. Nancy, a wonderful book friend, made us a gift of twenty-nine of them. Here they are with Peachy the Pug (aka Walter in the books) Once again, we’re lucky to be surrounded by books, book people, and reading friends. Dogs too.

We think this makes ours the best job in the world.

What about you? Do you love books?  What about book events?  And let us know if you have a favorite author from the Golden Age of Detection.  And now if you’ll excuse us, we have a pile of books to read!

The Wolfe Widow: third in Victoria Abbott's book collector mystery series, coming September 2, 2014 
Don't miss The Christie Curse and The Sayers Swindle. Now available! Victoria Abbott is Mary Jane Maffini & Victoria Maffini
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