Tortie Shorties on Mystery Monday: Antiques & Collectibles Edition

Welcome to this week's edition of Tortie Shorties on Mystery Monday!

We hope you enjoy our choices.

A Killer Keepsake (Antiques & Collectibles Mysteries Book 6) by Ellery Adams & Parker Riggs

From the publisher: When star reporter Molly Appleby exchanged vows with her new husband, she also made a promise to give up sleuthing. But given her knack for stumbling onto murders, and murderers, she’s realizing she never should have made a promise she couldn’t keep.

Molly’s just finished an article on the Forget Me Not Doll Club for Collector’s Weekly, but before the magazine even hits the newsstands, one of the club members is found murdered, and a stolen antique doll—purportedly haunted—is found in the victim’s house. When police discover that few of the peculiar club members will mourn the deceased, and that most of them had more motives than alibis, they once again enlist Molly’s help to solve this very odd case.

But piecing together a deadly puzzle is never easy, and when another member of the club is attacked, Molly begins to wonder if the eccentric group of doll lovers might have deeper and darker connections than she ever imagined. And as she begins to piece together the unusual background of the eerie doll and uncovers a history of troubled lives, she realizes there are more victims than the obvious ones in this case—and that some people will do anything to protect their darkest secrets.

Tortie Shorties Review: This is a series I've adored through the years and was thrilled to see it brought back to life with new titles. A Killer Keepsake just might be my favorite yet as Collector's Weekly reporter Molly Appleby is working with members of the Forget Me Not Doll Club for an article and discovers much disagreement among the members. Member Miranda Perry seems to be generating the most ill will as she's determined to get her hands on a purportedly haunted 80-year old doll with the hopes of putting a curse on her ex. It doesn't take long before Miranda is found dead in her bed, the doll in her possession, and suspicion falls on various doll club members.

Now that Molly is married the setting of this series has moved from North Carolina to my hometown of Burlington, Vermont, and it was so much fun to see locations, roads and towns I'm familiar with mentioned throughout the book. Alongside the modern day mystery readers are treated to Emma the doll's backstory which takes us to Berlin, Germany in 1937 in the days leading up to the Hindenburg disaster. These passages are especially riveting and contribute to the aura of suspense surrounding the doll. My only wish is that the book had been longer! I just couldn't get enough of Molly's adventures and the historical backdrop of the doll's origins. I can't wait for the next chapter in Molly's life.

Murderous Mayhem at Honeychurch Hall: A Honeychurch Hall Mystery by Hannah Dennison

From the publisher: When the only copy of Ravished, Iris Stanford's new manuscript, never arrives at her London publisher's office, her daughter Kat investigates the tiny local village post office, where it appears the package never left the building. Iris is on tenterhooks--not only is her novel gone with the wind, but she's deathly afraid that Muriel Jarvis, the postmistress and notorious busybody, will expose her secret identity as the bestselling romance writer Krystalle Storm. Meanwhile, Muriel has her own problems with the sudden death of her husband Fred, which has left her heavily in debt. In the spine-tingling climax, both past and present collide as Kat fights for her life and those she holds most dear, dancing once again with the dark forces lurking behind the grandeur of Honeychurch Hall.

Tortie Shorties Review: A quick primer for those who are new to this series: Kat is an antiques expert and former host of the Fakes and Treasures TV show, her mom Iris is the author of a series of popular romances who writes under the pseudonym Krystalle Storm. Together they live in various outbuildings at Honeychurch Hall, an English manor in Devon. In Murderous Mayhem at Honeychurch Hall, mayhem is the keyword as Iris's secret is threatened to be exposed when her manuscript goes missing and it appears that it never left the hands of local postmistress and gossipmonger Muriel Jarvis. While trying to deal with the missing manuscript mother and daughter must also deal with the goings on at Honeychurch Hall related to the reenactment of English Civil War skirmishes, a woman's long buried skeleton found with a family dagger through her (who now makes visits in her ghostly form), and the theft of various items around town. Amazingly enough, with so much going on everything ends up being tied together at the end. Mystery loving Anglophiles will delight in this fun romp in the British countryside!

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