Winter Cozies by Alondra Deltoro
TIS THE SEASON FOR WINTER THEMED COZIES! Here are a few titles available now that take place during this time of year:
Whispers in Winter: A Bess Bullock Retirement Home Mystery by Allen B. Boyer
Others may typically view winter as the season for union and joy….but for Bess Bullock- winter is the season for secrets. Especially since living at the Honey Hills Retirement Center. For starters, there is the secret of “The Cross Stitch Six”. They are a group of very knowledgeable sewers who swear to keep a secret revolving around one of their deceased members. Then there is Donna Gilmore, who confesses to Bess her long-held belief that she is being stalked by someone from the center. Even Bess’s very own friend, Alma Crisp, isn’t immune from a secret that is so all-consuming that it unintentionally puts her moral reputation in danger. But….the most disturbing secret of all that Bess unveils has to do with the previous owners of her home. She discovers that neighbors speculate that a murder happened in h house shortly before she moved in! This new-found knowledge makes her question everything that she has once loved about her seemingly “perfect home”. Bess's background in police detective work helps her with her efforts to investigate and try to bring a sense of calm back to her winters at Honey Hills Retirement Center.
EFFECTS OF KEEPING SECRETS
These articles discuss the negative effects keeping secrets has on the body. Turns out keeping a secret can wreak some serious havoc on you not only psychologically but physically as well. Considering that all of those surrounding Bess are keeping some very loaded secrets amongst themselves, I decided to look into whether or not keeping such heavy secrets to oneself has a negative effect on the body.
Why the Secrets You Keep Are Hurting You
How Keeping Secrets Can Impact Your Mental Health
DIGGING UP YOUR HOME’S DARK PAST
Poor Bess wasn’t going to get out unscathed this winter- turns out there were secrets flying around concerning her very own home having to do with somebody potentially having been murdered there right before she moved in! It’s a shame she had to find out so well after she moved in and have called it her happy home for so many years. It got me thinking about whether or not there is a website or anything available so that one can find out whether or not anybody has died in a house you're looking into or maybe already even live in. Turns out...there is! The website is called diedinhouse.com and allows you to research any house address in the United States and discover if anybody has died in it. This blog post right here tells you more about the site and its history:
This Website Can Tell You If Someone Died In Your House
Who Iced the Snowman?: A Cisco Maloney Mystery by D. Ray Pauwells
Things aren’t looking the greatest for Cisco Maloney, an ex-cop turned private investigator. It’s Christmas Eve, business is slow, the bills are piling up, he’s got an unhappy client nagging him along with a wrathful landlady...can he ever catch a break? Well, hope takes shape in a rather grim way when word gets around that the millionaire children's entertainer, Plotzky the Snowman, was found melted under suspicious circumstances. How is this good for Mr.Maloney you may ask? Well, it’s because there is a $1,000 reward that's going to be given to whoever solves the mystery of Who Iced The Snowman! Cisco jumps at the opportunity alongside his sidekick Carmine in which they travel to Wurstburg, USA- a place teeming with vengeful gangs of second class snowmen who are out to avenge the death of their beloved fallen brother along with shadowy figures like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, who run the city's rackets. Here at Wurstburg, everyone's got a motive, so everyone's a suspect! It’s going to be no easy task to figure out who committed the crime so….will Cisco and Carmine be able to figure out who did it?
HISTORY OF THE SNOWMAN
Ever wondered where Snowmen got their start? When and where, and maybe even who started making them? Here are a few articles that cover the brief history of Snowmen:
The Snowman’s Oddly Political History
Winter’s Effigies: The Deviant History of the Snowman
The Fascinating History of the Snowman
8 Jolly Happy Facts About Frosty the Snowman
Granny Snows a Sneak: A Fuchsia, Minnesota Mystery by Julie Seedorf
One day while retired sleuth Granny was out on her snowmobile, she ran over a dead body! After this freak incident, a series of strange events that involved mislabeled corpses, empty graves, and lots of stolen money followed shortly after. Granny was determined to figure out who was at the bottom of this years-old crime but she just didn’t have the time to investigate it. I mean, she is set to marry the love of her life, Franklin Gatsby, in a post-Christmas ceremony (which is just around the corner!). So she turned to the help of her friends and neighbors. Add in the Christmas holiday excitement and the arrival of Granny’s family, and chaos ensues. Granny, however, is fortunate enough to be able to always count on her many furry friends to provide her with moral support...but it’s quite possible that Granny––that is, Hermiony Vidalia Criony Fiddlestadt––has a secret or two of her own, which may very well be revealed as GRANNY SNOWS A SNEAK.
POWER IN NUMBERS
Similar to this case, in which Granny teamed up with her neighbors and friends to solve a crime, a crime committed in Longview, Texas that was labeled a cold case ended up being solved by the help of the internet! This article goes in-depth into how a group of amateur sleuths paired alongside kind volunteers knowledgeable in genealogy helped solve the case of a young woman found 3 years ago.