The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Cozy Mystery (and Other Favorite) Books, Movies, and TV

Mystery Books that Take Place in Kansas

21191966[1]Here are some fun Kansas facts:

The state capital is Topeka.
The largest city is Wichita.
State motto is “Ad astra per aspera” (To the stars through difficulties.)
State nickname is Sunflower State.
State flower is the Sunflower .
State bird is the Western Meadowlark .
State animal is the buffalo.
Kansas got its name for the Konza (aka Kaw or Kansa) Native Americans who lived there.

Mystery authors who are found on the Cozy Mystery Site and who feature Kansas locations in their books:

Sally Goldenbaum: Queen Bees Quilt Mystery Series (wrote first 3 in series)

Marnette Falley: Queen Bees Quilt Mystery Series (continued series at book 4)

Nancy Mehl: Ivy Towers Mystery Series (Mehl is on the Heartsong Presents Mysteries page)

Nancy J. Parra (aka Nancy Coco): Baker’s Treat Mystery Series

Charlene Weir: Police Chief Susan Wren Mystery Series

Please feel free to contact me if you see an author from the Cozy Mystery Site who belongs on this list, or if you have any comments.

♦To access more Cozy Mysteries by Theme click on this link.♦

Top Chef Television Show – Personal Guilty Pleasure

chefSo, I’ve got something of a confession to make…  For a few years now Top Chef has been a TV show I watch with my family.

I admit that I’m not all that proud of watching this show. It certainly isn’t something I expected to like at first – I’d go so far as to call it something of a guilty pleasure.

We first started watching Top Chef a little bit after my daughter went away to college for the first time.  Her roommate watched the series, and they watched a season together before my daughter recommended it to the rest of us.  We were a bit skeptical at first (so-called “reality television” has something of a negative connotation in our household) but the rest of the family agreed to watch through a full season before making a decision.

Somewhat to my surprise, I ended up enjoying it.  As I have mentioned many times before, I’m not really into cooking, but watching obviously passionate people talk about the subject that they know so much about is a really interesting experience, even if you don’t know that “julienning” is just a fancy terms for cutting something into strips.  We’ve started watching a number of other cooking shows as well since then, but Top Chef still remains our favorite to watch, and then pick apart. (Let’s face it, isn’t picking them apart one of the things people like about reality television shows?)

Honestly, I didn’t really think that I’d be into shows like Top Chef, but now they’re a big part of what we watch.  It’s especially nice that I can watch them with the entire family, or at least we can all discuss them afterwards.  We all have slightly different interests in terms of television, but cooking competition shows have turned out to be one thing that we can all enjoy to varying degrees.

If you haven’t tried this particular show yet, I would recommend that you watch a season in its correct chronological order. It may just surprise you. You might actually look forward to watching it, or at least to “discussing it” with your friends and/or family.

PS >>> We watch the shows as they air on the Bravo channel, so we hear a lot of bleeps. I don’t know if they bleep out all the objectionable words when you watch the shows on DVDs.

Cozy Mystery Books Recommendations – January 2013

Here it is: 2013, a brand new year!

Please tell us about a few of your very favorite Cozy Mystery reads of January 2013. This should be authors who you think the rest of us absolutely have “got to know” about, so that we can also enjoy their Cozy Mystery books. Please include WHY you enjoyed these authors.

*****

I’m going to start by recommending Margaret Grace. She writes the Miniature Mystery Series, of which I am a fan. I have to admit that I am not all caught up with the series. There are six mystery books in the series, and I am currently reading the fourth. I consider Grace’s Miniature Mystery Series a truly Cozy series. Grace has a vocabulary that is rich enough for her to be able to convey, let’s say anger, without having to rely on graphic language. Her characters are more like people to me, people who I would enjoy hanging out with.

Gerry (Geraldine) Porter is the main sleuth. She is a retired English teacher, who primarily does her sleuthing when her granddaughter (Maddie) is visiting. They have a terrific relationship, which seems very real to me.

I find the writing to flow very easily. Grace has a lot of secondary reoccurring characters, who she weaves into each book’s plot. Grace also gives us red herrings which make sense, and are not just plopped into the story line.

Margaret Grace is also known as Camille Minichino and Ada Madison. I have read (and enjoyed) all eight of Minichino’s Periodic Table Mystery Series. As a matter of fact, since I enjoyed this series so much, I thought I probably wouldn’t enjoy Grace’s Miniature Mystery Series. I find that I usually only like one series an author writes, but this time I was wrong. In fact, since I enjoy Grace’s and Minichino’s Cozy Mystery series so much, I’m planning on trying Madison’s Sophie Knowles Mystery Series.

I will add the recommended authors to this entry as they come in. (Please do not tell us about the authors you did not like.) Thank you!

What Cozy Mystery book (or author) have you read during January 2013, and why did you enjoy it (or him/her)?

Here are the current authors who some of you have read this past month, and wanted to tell the rest of us about:

Barbara Annino: Stacy Justice Mystery Series

Donald Bain (w/ “Jessica Fletcher”): Murder, She Wrote Mystery Series

Maggie Barbieri: Murder 101 Mystery Series

Lorna Barrett (aka Lorraine Bartlett & L. L. Bartlett): Booktown Mystery Series

Ella Barrick (aka Lila Dare & Laura DiSilverio): Ballroom Dance Mystery Series

Jessica Beck: Classic Diner Mystery Series

Janet Bolin: Threadville Mystery Series

Ali Brandon (aka Diane A.S. Stuckart): Black Cat Bookshop Mystery Series

Duffy Brown: Consignment Shop Mystery Series

Karen Cantwell: Barbara Marr Mystery Series

Elizabeth Lynn Casey (aka Laura Bradford): Southern Sewing Circle Mystery Series

Bailey Cates (aka Cricket McRae): Magical Bakery Mystery Series

Erika Chase: Ashton Corners Book Mystery Series

Laura Childs: Tea Shop Mystery Series

Patricia Cornwell: Kay Scarpetta Mystery Series (not cozy)

Cleo Coyle (aka Alice Kimberly): Coffee House Mystery Series

Elizabeth Spann Craig (aka Riley Adams & Elizabeth Craig): Myrtle Clover Mystery Series

Philip R. Craig: Martha’s Vineyard Mystery Series

Kyra Davis: Sophie Katz Mystery Series

Monica Ferris: Needlecraft Mystery Series

Shelley Freydont: Celebration Bay Mystery Series

Erle Stanley Gardner: Perry Mason Mystery Series

Margaret Grace (aka Camille Minichino & Ada Madison): Miniature Mystery Series

M.K. Graff: The Blue Virgin

Sue Grafton: Kinsey Millhone Mystery Series

Elly Griffiths: Ruth Galloway Mystery Series

John Grisham: The Appeal

Julie Hyzy: White House Chef Mystery Series

John Dunning: Cliff Janeway Mystery Series

Sophie Kelly: Magical Cats Mystery Series

Alice Kimberly (aka Cleo Coyle): Haunted Bookshop Mystery Series

Mary Lou Kirwin: Librarian Mystery Series

Jill Marie Landis: Tikki Goddess Mystery Series

Victoria Laurie: Psychic Eye Mystery Series

Amanda Lee (aka Gayle Trent): Embroidery Mystery Series

M. Louisa Locke: Victorian Mystery Series

Charlotte MacLeod (aka Alisa Craig): Peter & Helen Shandy Mystery Series

Molly MacRae: Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery Series

G. M. Malliet: Max Tudor Mystery Series

Lorena McCourtney: Ivy Malone Mystery Series

Jenn McKinlay (aka Lucy Lawrence & Josie Belle): Library Lover’s Mystery Series

Wendy Roberts: Latte, Espresso, Cappuccino & Murder Mystery Series

Dorothy L. Sayers: Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery Series

Rochelle Staab: Mind for Murder Mystery Series

Teresa Trent: Pecan Bayou Mystery Series

Elaine Viets: Mystery Shopper Mystery Series

♦To access more Cozy Mystery Books Recommendations, click on this link♦

Thank You, All

Thank you all for your well-wishes. It looks like several of us are either going through this awful stretch, have gone through it, or will be going through it soon. Right now (unfortunately) my mother is still in the “everything is under control, I know what I am doing” stage. Along with this goes the parent-child relationship. How could my sister or I know what might possibly be best for her? We are her children, and she is the parent.

We are in Amarillo, Texas for the night. This is a very flat-land, tumble weed-full type of drive. There are several patches on this journey where you do not get cell phone reception. It’s strange that this no-cell-phone thing really bothers me. It’s so easy to forget that about ten/fifteen years ago, EVERYWHERE was a no-cell-phone area for us. Funny how spoiled we get. New technology just becomes  everyday fare so quickly.

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