Nightshade

You may be already familiar with the long-running China Bayles mystery series, created by the very clever Susan Wittig Albert. Susan will be guest-blogging here on April 1. No fooling! Her topic will be the herbs in books 7 - 9 (Chile Death, Mistletoe Man, Lavender Lies). I can't wait!

If you don't know Susan, where have you been? And why haven't you been clicking on my blog links? Susan blogs at Lifescapes, where you'll often peek at the beautiful Texas Hill country, gain a bit of insight into her writing process, and turn green with envy over the awesome knitting. (And the reading notes at the end of her posts are one of my favorite parts.)

Other Susan-related sites you might want to check out:
PecanSpringsJournal
Story Circle Book Reviews
Mystery Partners
Susan's Garden album
Sign up for All About Thyme newsletter, "a weekly celebration of herbs, spices, and the changing seasons".

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P.S. I'm lucky enough to be previewing Nightshade, the 16th (!) book in the series, which will be published on April 1. I haven't gotten very far yet, but had to share this sentence:

I intended to destroy the letters, thinking what a pleasure it would be to toss them, one by one, into the fire, to watch his passion turn into dirty smoke and fly up the chimney.

Wow. I love that sentence! (I replaced the identity with "his" so I wouldn't be spoiling anything if you haven't read the series yet.)

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The series -- one of three Susan writes, I might add -- is well described in her Wikipedia page:
"All ... of the China Bayles novels include the names of herbs, and the subsequent mysteries invariably include detailed, meticulously reported herbal themes that invoke the title. ... Albert has described her books as "cozy mysteries," because they do not describe much violence or gratuitous behavior."

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I have to admit, I never thought I'd have a guest blogger who has her own Wikipedia page!

Here's the entire Blog Tour calendar. It starts March 24. There are a lot of other blogs there I'm planning to check out. And here is her schedule of appearances and signings.

Just be sure to come back here on April 1, and enter to win a copy of Nightshade!