Dead People In Love

After six weeks special leave of absence from work, Kate Philips’ neat, orderly life is suddenly blown to smithereens. They say everything comes in threes and for Kate nursing her beloved Godmother through her last days was only the beginning. Returning home she finds not only has she been made redundant but her sports journalist husband has been getting his quarter pounders and dessert from a blonde bimbo with five stars from McDonalds. Resorting to cake and chocolate, the baking and eating of being her two cures for all, life takes another jolt with an unexpected inheritance.

Kate settles into her new life as owner of Crumbs tearooms in the pretty Yorkshire market town of Wetherby. Hard work, reaching 30 and divorce don’t faze her but her deceased Godmother Rose does. Inheriting and running the tearooms is one thing. Rose’s sudden ghostly twitterings in Kate’s ear and psychic interference leading to Kate’s involvement in murder and mayhem is quite another.

Winnie went to the funeral home to pay her last respects to her dead bingo friend Cora.
There lay Cora in her casket, and there sat Cora on a chair next to  her casket.

Come and meet Winnie Krapski who hugged a cherry tree during a lightning storm. The bolt slammed her, splitting the tree in half. The near-death experience bestowed her with a gift–one she’d rather not have.

Drafted into the C.O.D. Club (Call on the Dead) by Fat Phil Phillips, her mission is to grant the newly deceased’s ghost one last reasonable request. Can Winnie honor her oath?

Well, she tries. But, not before she stumbles into situations that almost get her killed. She’s one spunky broad. Follow her adventures in the COD Club series.

Notice:  This mystery contains no vampires, werewolves, zombies, or space aliens. It was not tested on laboratory animals. It makes no claims to political correctness. Characters may not be fully clothed at all times.
Divorced from a philandering con man and downsized from her job as a talk radio show producer, Barbara Reed is desperate for money. She's got a mortgage, a college loan, an aging car, and a ten-pound dog named Cheese Puff.

With her unemployment checks running out, she signs on as a high school substitute teacher and learns what stress is all about. When she finds history teacher Henry Stoddard strangled with his own outdated tie, her stress level soars into the red zone. Then she's assigned to cover his classes.

Stoddard was a bully and a blackmailer. The list of suspects is a long one, and police put Barb at the top. When she discovers a second body, the noose of circumstantial evidence tightens.

With help from the showgirl widow of a reputed mobster, a trash-scavenging derelict, and members of the Cheese Puff Care and Comfort Committee, Barb struggles to keep a grip on her job, her sanity, and her freedom.