Review: Lift and Let Die

Lady Beatrice should be finalising her wedding vows — not investigating murder.

With just weeks to go before she marries Richard Fitzwilliam, Bea is helping put the finishing touches to Three Lakes, a rehabilitation centre for veterans, when a senior staff member dies in a late-night lift malfunction.

At first, it looks like a tragic accident. Until the toxicology results suggest otherwise.

With the centre’s opening looming and scandal threatening to overshadow both Three Lakes and her wedding, Bea can’t help getting involved. While Rich helps with the official investigation, Bea and the others have a few theories of their own. And while Perry obsesses over lift mechanics and Simon insists he’s staying out of it (he isn’t), Daisy uncovers a clue everyone else missed.

As they dig deeper, they discover buried secrets, old resentments, and a grievance someone may have carried for years.

Some loyalties last a lifetime. So do some grudges.

A warm, cozy mystery with loyal friends, buried secrets, a determined little dog, and exactly the sort of trouble Bea should be avoiding before her wedding.

Review

Lift and Let Die by Helen Golden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lady Beatrice is much too busy to investigate a murder. Her wedding is pending and she is still working out the details on the veterans home. Then a late night lift "accident" changes all her plans.

As always, Lady Beatrice, pup Daisy and the rest of the characters provide the heart to this fun whodunnit. There are plenty of suspects to keep you guessing. The clues are well-placed, but not so obvious that you lose the fun of the unveiling.

The story takes a while to get going due to a wide host of characters and plenty of backstory, but once it finds its pace, it doesn't stop. The ending is satisfying and you get some romance along the way!

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Purchase Links

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GMXZ4VHK/

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GMXZ4VHK/

About Helen Golden

Hello. I’m Helen Golden. I write British contemporary cozy whodunnits with a hint of humour. I live in small village in Lincolnshire in the UK with my husband, my step-daughter, her two cats, our two dogs, sometimes my step-son, and our tortoise.

I used to work in senior management, but after my recent job came to a natural end I had the opportunity to follow my dreams and start writing. It's very early in my life as an author, but so far I'm loving it.

It’s crazy busy at our house, so when I’m writing I retreat to our caravan (an impulsive lockdown purchase) which is mostly parked on our drive. When I really need total peace and quiet, I take it to a lovely site about 15 minutes away and hide there until my family runs out of food or clean clothes.

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Review: Bob and Shirley's Guide to Murder

 

Bob and Shirley run a lovely country pub. They also solve murders ...

A warmly funny, gloriously British cozy crime and murder mystery series that can be read as standalones or part of a series. Set in a village where the pub is the heart of country life and served with warmth, wit and a very good Sunday roast.

“Murder? In our quiet, little English village?

Great Oakley is a place of hanging baskets, tearooms and riverside walks. We’ve won ‘Britain’s safest village’ 10 years running. I keep three pound coins, a box of toffees and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on my dashboard at all times, and I’ve never needed to lock my car.

Certainly, Bevvy Hogg was disliked. She ran the local Waist Watchers group, yet came to our pub for fish and chips, treacle tart and a bottle of Chardonnay every Friday. But I don’t think she was murdered …”

When Bevvy Hogg is found dead in the Goose and Gander pub garden, with an empty treacle tart plate beside her and several dress sizes slimmer than anyone remembers, Great Oakley’s winning streak as Britain’s safest village comes to an abrupt end.

Review

Bob and Shirley's Guide to Murder by Suzy K. Quinn
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was delightful and funny! I could read this every day and I would watch the HECK out of it as a series. Bob and Shirley are on the hunt to save their dessert and town reputation by solving the first murder in too many years to matter. They are persistent little sleuths with so little on the line that of course they can't leave well enough alone. This a laugh-out-loud who-dunnit that can easily be read in a few hours. The characters are delightful. Your sadness at finishing this book will only be alleviated by realizing it's a series so you won't have to leave Great Oakley forever. There will almost certainly be more frivolous mysteries for Bob and Shirley to muck through.

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Purchase Links

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bob-Shirleys-Guide-Murder-Laugh-Out-Loud-ebook/dp/B0H832QG7Q/

https://www.amazon.com/Bob-Shirleys-Guide-Murder-Laugh-Out-Loud-ebook/dp/B0H832QG7Q/

Author Bio –

Suzy K Quinn (hello – it’s me!) is writing this bio in the third person. Which feels duplicitous and also a little egotistical. But here goes ...

Suzy K Quinn writes book club books and murder mystery series, and has sold over 1 million copies worldwide. She's a bestselling author in the US, UK and Germany and will soon, very possibly, have written more books than she's read.

Suzy lives in Wivenhoe, Essex, with her husband and two daughters. She is a twin, an incompetent parent of two and now fully decaffeinated. Her twin sister, Cate Quinn, is also a bestseller author. When Suzy isn't writing in cafes, she is walking around woods dictating like a lunatic.

Suzy loves her readers and is ALWAYS happy to chat on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/suzykquinn You can also get a free book at her website:

http://www.suzykquinn.com

Social Media Links –

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Giveaway to Win an e-copy of  Bob and Shirley's Killer Cuppa Puzzle (Open INT)

One of Great Oakley’s five open gardens served poisoned tea. Can you work out which one before Bob does?

‘Like Murdle and a cozy mystery rolled into one.’

Murder mystery logic puzzle stories for fans of The Killer Isn’t Alice, Murdle and Can You Solve the Murder?

These are ‘Puzzlories’. Read them like stories, solve them like puzzles. Each one takes about an hour to read and solve.

It’s Open Gardens weekend in Great Oakley. Five gardeners have opened their gardens to the public, and each is offering a unique drink, cake, flower and interesting garden feature to their fellow villagers.

Unfortunately, one garden owner poured poisoned tea. Probably not on purpose. But you never know. There are more murders in Britain’s safest village than you might imagine.

Village pub landlady Shirley Duffy visited all five open gardens before returning to the Goose and Gander for a much-needed beer and a sit down. One of those five gardens was the scene of the crime.

The trouble is, Shirley’s memory is known to be … selective. She can remember every cake she’s eaten since 1987, but not necessarily when and where she ate it. And she can’t remember which garden served tea on Saturday afternoon.

Shirley’s husband, Bob, is frustrated that Shirley can’t remember one garden from another. But he finds many things about his wife frustrating, and loves her anyway.

As Bob presses Shirley for details, the clues pile up. Your job is to note them down and work out who served the tea before Bob does.

Twenty clues, one in every short chapter. Fill in your detective’s grid, cross off your suspects and name the poisoner.

Grab your notebook, put the kettle on (carefully) and see if you can beat Bob to the answer.

*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome.  Please enter using the Gleam box below.  The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over.  Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data.  I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

  Win an e-copy of  Bob and Shirley's Killer Cuppa Puzzle (Open INT)

https://gleam.io/sR8sl/win-an-e-copy-of-bob-and-shirleys-killer-cuppa-puzzle-open-int

 

Review: The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder (Book 1)

 

London 1881. Can two crooked women stop a murder?

Extravagant medium Mrs Ashton and her lover, blunt working-class Mrs Bradshaw, run a spiritualist scam. Mrs Ashton secretly reads minds.

Believing that Mrs Ashton is genuine, grieving Lady Violet craves the truth behind her mother’s untimely death. But Lady Violet’s powerful husband Sir Charles hates spiritualists. Has he killed before?

Uncovering this MP’s wicked crimes will put all three women in terrible danger…

To solve a shocking murder, look both sides of the grave.

“I loved this book! Victorian murder mystery meets "ghost" story, with delicious sprinklings of compassion and mischief…”

Caroline Day, author of Sunday Times Bestseller Hope Nicely's Lessons for Life

Review

The Crooked Medium's Guide to Murder: A Spooky Victorian Mystery by Stephen Cox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Victorian era is so well-suited to a cozy mystery. The time period that gave us Sherlock Holmes and fingerprinting just feels like the right place for a small group to uncover a crime. This book features a charming set of would-be spiritualists who con the cons they pursue. Mrs. Ashton and Mrs. Bradshaw make for quite the pair as they work to bring justice.

Steven Cox has a formal yet approachable prose that matches the era without being so stilted that it's unrelatable for modern audiences. His sense of humor buzzes in at regular intervals to keep the story from becoming too heavy. The plot is well-crafted and easy-to-follow without becoming convoluted.

Overall, a fun story with enough twists to ramp up the fun and characters you will care about.

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Purchase Links

https://stephencox.co.uk/books/upcoming/

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crooked-Mediums-Guide-Murder-Victorian-ebook/dp/B0FLK68742/

https://www.amazon.com/Crooked-Mediums-Guide-Murder-Victorian-ebook/dp/B0FLK68742/

Exciting News: Book 2 in the Crooked Medium series is now available for pre-order!! - https://stephencox.co.uk/buy-terror/

Author Bio – My grandmother told me I read too much.  I remember walking in the garden when I was small, telling myself stories. It was over thirty years of wanting to be a novelist before I tried… and succeeded.

The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder arose because I wanted to write about Britishness and specifically about Englishness; about our complex relationship with the past; I wanted leads who were morally grayer but still capable of kindness. It was time for a novel with queer leads. And in quite desperate times, I needed to write something with some uplift. It’s the first book intended to start a series.

My first books, Our Child of the Stars and Our Child of Two Worlds are set in the 1960s USA. It’s about Gene and Molly, a childless couple, and Cory, the little boy from the stars that they adopt, under such challenging circumstances. The books got lovely reviews and are available on both sides of the Atlantic. 

I spent nearly all my childhood in Bristol, and I’m now an adoptive Londoner.   I live with my partner, and it’s the best thing our two adult children come back from time to time. Our garden rages wild.

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Review: The Little Porto Book Club

 

In a city full of stories, can she write her own…

Introvert and self-described whodunnit enthusiast Viviane has never much believed in living life outside of the pages of a book. But when her interfering mother insists that Viviane needs some friends who aren’t fictional, she decides to head into the beautiful bustling streets of Porto in search of her community.

What better place to start than by reading her favourite mystery in the corner of a little-known café? But when one, then two, and then outrageously six other people decide to join her silent book club Viviane realises that she is firmly out of her depth. There’s Thomas, a middle-aged man hiding his love for romance novels, Lucinda, a chic sixty-something with a penchant for Christie, and then there’s Tiago, the man of every romance novelist’s dreams.

But when one of these newfound friends disappears from the book club without a word, will the community come together to find their fellow lost soul, and will Viviane find love along the way…?

Purchase Links

https://amzn.eu/d/0an1mkon

https://a.co/d/09BBX9Ol

https://amzn.asia/d/0gWivcP7

https://a.co/d/06QBhgxV

Review

 

Author Bio – Rebecca Raisin is an internationally bestselling and RNA awards winning romance writer from Perth, Australia. Her books are set in stunning locations around the world providing a touch of escapism for her readers and those who like to partake in a spot of armchair travel from the comfort of their own home. Rebecca writes quirky heroines who haven't figured it all out yet but are perfectly relatable, flaws and all. You'll find themes such as friendship, love, new beginnings, food, wine and travel. She's known for writing books for book lovers.

Social Media Links –

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Review: A Cornish Escape

 

When a catastrophe threatens Ellie's business there's a puzzling mystery to solve, and Gertie steps in to follow the clues. Love and romance are the very last things on Gertie's mind right now. But while she's risking her safety helping to hunt down the culprits, could she also be in danger of losing her heart?

Review

Rosie Green writes such delightful stories.  This cozy romance checks all her elements - a cheerful love story, a happy little seaside town, and a little bit of mystery. The mystery drives the plot, but it isn't a strong whodunit and you won't need a notebook to track any details. Like the other books in Little Duck Pond Cafe series, this story is light and uplifting. It will renew your faith in love and community. 

Gertie and Jonah have been featured in other Little Duck Pond Cafe books. The series may feel overwhelming at 46 books. Each is an easy comfort read, perfect for camping trips or lazy Sundays on the porch. I haven't read every book in the series and I don't feel lost wherever I jump in. So don't feel like you have to read 45 books before this one - or dive in and have a book-happy summer.

Purchase Links

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FRM5QNMQ

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FRM5QNMQ

 

Author Bio – Rosie Green is the author of the popular Little Duck Pond Café series, set in the fictional village of Sunnybrook. Watch out for lots more café drama and romance in 2026, including ‘The Secrets of Midsummer Cottage’, which will be published in July.

Follow Rosie on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Rosie_Green88

https://www.instagram.com/rosiegreen_author/