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about UNCOMMON GROUNDS...
Anthony Award and Macavity Award nominee for Best First Mystery
The first printing of UNCOMMON GROUNDS sold out the day the book was released and less than two months later we were already into the third printing! UNCOMMON GROUNDS is also available in a large-print edition and has now been released in trade paperback.
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To order for booksignings, please call: 1-800-877-4253 x 1255
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UNCOMMON GROUNDS
Five Star Mysteries
Hardcover $25.95
ISBN: 1-59414-195-9
Trade Paperback $13.95
ISBN 1-4104-0126-3
read an excerpt
reading group questions
Patricia Harper, the quintessential Brookhills Barbie, is dead, no doubt about it. Dead in a pool of milk in front of the espresso machine. And it's no accident.
In a town where you "dress," not just for success, but for a trip to the hardware store, who had hot-wired the espresso machine to froth one of the town's leading latte-loving citizens with 220 volts in her own gourmet coffee shop the day of its grand opening?
Maggy Thorsen, displaced PR executive turned desperate coffee maven, sets out to discover who killed one of her partners before their new business can go, quite literally, down the drain. As if that weren't challenge enough, she has to do it while keeping the town's tennis moms and senior citizens from ripping each other to shreds, and her third partner -- the one who's still alive -- both upright and out of jail.
Along the way, Maggy manages to incur the wrath of Brookhills' self-important new sheriff, Jake Pavlik, who apparently doesn't recognize the redeeming social value of a really good cup of coffee. She also stumbles over small town politics and unbridled ambition -- not to mention rampant infidelity -- on her way to a truth she's suddenly not all that sure she wants to know.
The opening day of a new coffeeshop is the setting for death by espresso in this bright debut.
The victim is Patricia Harper, lying in a puddle of milk after her electrocution by the brand-new espresso machine. All you need to know about Brookhills, Wisconsin (pop. 6,000), is that business at Uncommon Grounds isn't off a bit, and all you need to know about Patricia's partner, former p.r. exec Maggy Thorsen, is that Maggy, still smarting from a nasty divorce, is pleased about the crowds because she needs the money. There's much more to learn about Patricia, though, and county sheriff Jake Pavlik, newly arrived from the Chicago PD, is determined to poke into every corner of her life. Maybe the cad who tampered with the espresso maker was the coffeeshop's third partner, copywriter Caron Egan, seen secretly leaving the premises the previous afternoon; or Patricia's ex-lover, building inspector Roger Karsten; or realtor Sarah Kingston, the campaign manager who masterminded her one-vote loss to incumbent barber Rudy Fischer as town chairman. Maggy, in search of a Dr. Watson, isn't much of a detective, but she does just fine playing Watson to an unexpected Holmes. The killer is another pleasant surprise.
Maggy's amusingly matter-of-fact delivery helps lift her above the legion of plucky small-town divorcées who start business ventures, find corpses, take a jaundiced second look at their neighbors, and seek true love in the arms of the law.
from Kirkus Reviews
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