Holiday candle courtesy of http://www.torange.us (Creative Commons license 4.0)
Wherever and whatever you celebrate, here’s wishing you a season of joy–and good reading, too! I’ll be back in mid-January with more great reads, plus updates about the next book in my Waterside Kennels mystery series.
~Susan
Looking for a terrific, laugh-out loud mystery featuring a one-of-a-kind dog as narrator? I enthusiastically recommend the Doodlebugged mystery series written by the award-winning author Susan J. Kroupa. Doodle’s antics are the perfect choice for dog lovers on your holiday shopping list.
With four books now in the series, this is the perfect time to catch up with Doodle. Each book can be enjoyed as a stand-alone, but why stop at just one? Grab a copy of each and share the joy of Doodle this holiday season! All four in the series are budget-priced PLUS Bad-Mouthed (#4) will be on sale for just 99¢ as part of a one-day-only special on Saturday, December 12th. Grab it while you can!
To learn how the Doodlebugged series came to be, read my earlier post titled Nosing Out a Series. Here’s a snippet of the fun you can expect with Doodle’s latest adventure:
Who knew chasing a rat in the middle of a Christmas pageant could cause so much trouble? Certainly not Doodle, the obedience-impaired labradoodle who works for the “boss,” Josh Hunter of Hunter Bed Bug Detection, nor Molly, the boss’s ten-year-old daughter. But then Doodle is the first to admit he doesn’t quite get Christmas.
Doodle’s antics during the pageant draw the attention of a popular video-blogger, who asks to do a feature on his sniffer-dog skills. But when the blog airs, pretty much the opposite of what Molly and the boss expected, the boss’s phone rings off the hook with distraught customers who think Doodle’s bed bug “finds” can’t be trusted. Molly, searching for a way to set things right, befriends the blogger’s son, a boy alienated from his mother who wants only to go live with his father. Throw in a handful of threatening letters, some lost dogs, and a devastating fire, and Molly and Doodle have their hands full—well, in Doodle’s case, his paws—finding out just who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. A charming cozy for all seasons and for dog lovers of all ages.
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Susan J. Kroupa is a dog lover currently owned by a 70 pound labradoodle whose superpower is bringing home dead possums and raccoons and who happens to be the inspiration for her Doodlebugged books. She’s also an award-winning author whose fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, and in a variety of professional anthologies, including Bruce Coville’s Shapeshifters. Her non-fiction publications include features about environmental issues and Hopi Indian culture for The Arizona Republic, High Country News, and American Forests. You can find her books on her website as well as her Amazon sales page.
“Winter Holiday” (Creative Commons License)
When you see a reader walking out of a bookstore holding a signed copy of your book as if it was a wondrous gift…
In moments like these, it is the reader who gives a gift to the author.
To readers everywhere: thank you!
I’m always happy to promote regional authors, and even happier when there are dogs involved! Richard Houston is an Amazon Top 100 author living in the Ozarks (the Missouri Ozarks, that is) and writing mystery fiction set in the Ozarks and in Colorado. Best selling author Dianne Harman says A View to Die For is “simply one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.”
This box set is on pre-order special for just $4.99 right now,with an automatic download on December 6th. (The price goes up to just $6.99 on the 6th.) And–just in case you prefer buying one book at a time–each of the titles below are hyperlinks which will take you straight to the Amazon sales page. Happy reading!
Jake Martin is not your ordinary sleuth. He’s an ordinary guy with an extraordinary dog. He’s trying to make the best of a divorce and mid-life crisis when he gets a call at two o’clock Sunday morning from his mother. His sister has been arrested for the murder of her fourth husband, and his father is near death. Thus begins an adventure that takes Jake and his golden retriever from their Colorado retreat to a backwater town in the Missouri Ozarks where they search for cold-blooded killers, a cache of gold coins buried by Jesse James, and the love of a beautiful nurse.
This time the story takes place in the foothills of Denver. Jake is accused of manslaughter and he has to prove the accident was really murder. Along the way he encounters a poaching ring and falls in love with a beautiful game warden.
Amazon reviewer M. Brown has this to say: “A great read [with] mystery, action and humor. The characters were well developed and realistic, having both positive and negative traits. And Fred steals the show, he is an awesome dog. The mystery continues throughout the entire book and is not easily solved. There are twists and turns that keep you guessing.”
There is a treasure high in the Colorado Rockies waiting for someone to find it. Jake Martin couldn’t care less. Since the death of his wife, all Jake wants is to be left alone in his mountain cabin where he and his dog, Fred, can get on with life.
But when it becomes known that the location of the treasure is encrypted in a message left by a 19th century miner, people begin to die, and Jake’s good friend and neighbor becomes the number one suspect. Can the amateur sleuths decode the message and stop the murderer, or have Jake and Fred finally met their match?
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I’ll be back next week with still more dog-themed mysteries. Before that, I’m heading out to my local independent bookstore Nightbird Books to celebrate Local Author Day and visit with readers and writers from 10:30 a.m. through 1 p.m. on Saturday, December 5th. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll drop by and say hello!