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Getting together for the holidays with old friends can be fun…and stressful especially if there is a murder involved. Yes! It’s a Christmas mystery! I love these yuletide stories! It’s kind of like the Hallmark Channel went a little dark.    We have a special visitor today, a character from Silent Night, Deadly Night who is beginning to regret getting together with her old college friends. Don’t forget to scroll down and enter Vicki’s giveaway!

About the Book

Silent Night, Deadly Night
4th in Series
Berkley (August 27, 2019)

Residents of Rudolph keep the spirit of Christmas alive year-round—but their joy is threatened when a group of grinches visits the town, in the charming fourth installment of the Year-Round Christmas series.

It’s the week before Thanksgiving, and Merry Wilkinson, owner of Mrs. Claus’s Treasures, is preparing for a weekend reunion of her mother’s college friends. But when the group of women comes into Merry’s shop, Merry is met with frosty attitudes and cold hearts.

The women argue amongst themselves constantly, and the bickering only intensifies after one of the friends is poisoned. With her father’s role as Santa in danger due to his proximity to the crime, Merry will need to use all of her investigative gifts to wrap this mystery up and save Santa and her favorite holiday.

You can find Silent Night, Deadly Night at these online retailers:  Amazon – B&N – Kobo – Google Play – IndieBound

About the Author

Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than thirty books: clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing four cozy mystery series: the Tea By The Sea mysteries, the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series, the Year Round Christmas mysteries and, as Eva Gates, the Lighthouse Library series.

You can find Vicki Here!

Website – www.vickidelany.com

Facebook – www.facebook.com/evagatesauthor;

Twitter: @vickidelany and@evagatesauthor

Instagram: vickidelany

A Visit with Aline from Silent Night, Deadly Night

It’s Thanksgiving in America’s Christmas Town

By Aline Steiner Wilkinson from the Year Round Christmas Mysteries by Vicki Delany

I’m beginning to regret inviting my five friends from college for a reunion at my home in Rudolph New York

They are not, to put it mildly, getting on very well.

Plus it’s the weekend before Thanksgiving, and I know how important Thanksgiving is to my eldest daughter, Merry.

Merry owns a charming little gift and holiday decor shop called Mrs. Claus’s Treasures on Jingle Bell Lane in Rudolph. Christmas, for Merry, is all about work. The lead-up to the holiday season, the busy holiday shopping hours themselves, and then the equally busy post-Christmas sale season. She sees Thanksgiving as her final chance to take a deep breath and relax before plunging into the frenzy of the season. So I try to do the full, traditional thanksgiving meal. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans and Brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce. Two types of pie for dessert. Of course, I don’t do ANY of that cooking by myself. Noel, my husband, does most of it, and I shop at Victoria’s Bake Shoppe for the desserts, bread rolls, and condiments. I never quite got into the domestication thing, not with my career as a soloist at the Metropolitan Opera and on stages around the world.

Back to the matter at hand. My college reunion.

We haven’t all been together since we graduated (or left in some cases) college more than forty years ago. I’ve visited Constance in California, Ruth in Rochester, had lunch with Barbara and Genevieve in New York City when I’ve been performing there. I haven’t seen Karla in all those years, but she’s the one who works hard to keep us all in touch. Karla’s the glue, so to speak, that holds our group together with news of babies and grandchildren, moves, marriages and divorces, career changes.

All those years ago, we were all planning a career in the performing arts. Only Genevieve and I stuck with it. Genevieve had a role in a few low-budget movies, achieved some small and fleeting success in a soap opera in the 1990s. I was fortunate enough to be able to pursue the career I loved before retiring the height of my career and settling down in Rudolph, New York, to teach voice.

Now, they’re here. All of them. Visiting me in Rudolph while Noel’s away on his annual fishing trip to Florida. The timing isn’t good – the weekend before Thanksgiving, but that was the only time our schedules matched. Somehow, without quite knowing what I was doing, I invited them here.

The whole miserable bunch. I guess I’d forgotten that they never really got on. Personality clashes, petty jealousies, income disparities. And a lot of resentment that appears to not only have not been forgotten over the years but to grow, ready to be unleased the moment they set eyes on each other.

Tonight we’re having pot luck. Everyone is making their speciality. Hoping my guests won’t bicker too much with strangers in our midst, I invited (more like ordered) Merry and Vicky Casey to come to dinner.

Sigh. Oh, well, only a weekend to get through. And then they’ll be gone their separate ways, Noel will be home, and we can have the traditional big Thanksgiving dinner Merry loves so much.

First, this blasted pot luck to get through.

Find out if the pot luck dinner is a success in SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT the fourth Year Round Christmas mystery by Vicki Delany, coming August 27 from Berkley.

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