Ned McNeil usually didn’t mind living alone in the Victorian house she had inherited from her uncle. Alone, that is, except for a small gray cat called Penny. But, there was no denying that the old home place in which she lived, the place called Granger Mansion, held some secrets of its own. After all, […]

Answers
·Birds sang in the thickets and a soft breeze brought the mysterious, elusive fragrance of the river. The sun felt warm on my shoulders. This lovely day stood out in sharp contrast to the day two weeks earlier when Mom and I started out in a thunderstorm to Fayetteville and wound up running for our […]
Clocks, Staircases, and Curious Letters
·As a youngster, I learned many things from Nancy Drew that were not written on the pages of her books. I learned that Nancy was the kind of girl I would like to be. Nancy was a magnet who attracted mysteries. To anyone else, clocks were clocks, staircases were just what they seemed; but, not […]

Big Time Disappointment
·Oh, frustration! As when a book stops and you don’t like the ending, I watched episode twenty-seven of searching for the Dutchman’s gold and couldn’t believe it. No, no, no. Surely, that wasn’t all. The last episode was the best of all. The five intrepid hunters approached the mountain from a river. Beautiful scenery. Wild, […]

The Lure of the Lost Dutchman
Last night, I watched several YouTube episodes of a group of five men in Arizona who were searching for the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition Mountains. Mesmerized, I sat and watched until nearly midnight, when I tore myself away in favor of going to sleep. I’m sure you’ve read and heard about the gold […]
That First Impression
·We’ve all heard, “First impressions are lasting impressions.” A writer works hard to create a good first impression when you, the reader, crack open her book. Below are beginning sentences from each of my cozies, which, hopefully, create a good first impression. Moonlight Can Be Murder: My car’s headlights cut a yellow swath through the […]