Watch Out for the Extra Body in This Short Story Collection
This the season for spooky, and the Destination Murders short stories anthology series is up for the task. The fifth entry in the series is Murder in the Graveyard, and cozy mystery fans will enjoy these stories.
If you’ve missed these short story collections, they find a revolving group of authors contributing stories around the given theme. Most of the time, the authors highlight their series sleuths, although sometimes, we get a stand-alone story. I’ve never had an issue jumping in and meeting the characters I didn’t know in these stories, so there’s no need to worry about that. And, while the authors might change some, there are plenty of returning authors.
So, just who stops by in this entry? I’m glad you asked! In these pages, here’s what you’ll find:
“Murder at the Midnight Madness Book Sale” by Meri Allen finds Riley Rhodes, the main character of her Ice Cream Shop Mysteries, helping at a fundraiser. But when two mysterious people use the off-limits door that leads into the graveyard, Riley investigates to find one of them dead.
“The Devil’s Chair” by Leslie Budewitz takes her Spice Shop Mysteries characters into a Seattle graveyard where a reunion with a high school friend takes an unexpected turn.
“The Goode, the Dead, and the Hungry” by Karen Cantwell takes Barbara Marr and her two besties to a haunted bed and breakfast that is surprisingly low on food. And staff.
“I Thought You Were the Dead Man” by Misha Crews introduces us to a man who doesn’t know who he is. He just knows his head hurts after he wakes up in a graveyard.
“Grave Millie Does a Bunker” by Eleanor Cawood Jones follows Karin Garcia as she tries to solve a hundred-year-old mystery in an old graveyard in a small town.
“A Killer Party by Tina Kashian flashes us back to when her Kebab Kitchen sleuth, Lucy Berberian, was in high school. Lucy is trying to win the “Senior Assassin” that her classmates are playing, but to track down her target, she’ll have to join a party in the local graveyard.
“Grave Expectations” by Daphne Silver take Juniper Blume back to a graveyard where she once found a body. This time, she’s volunteering to help catalogue the many graves in it. She won’t find another dead body there, right?
“Battle of the Grapevine Creek Graveyard” by Rosalie Spielman finds Tessa Treslow and her aunt caught up in a local feud when trying to put up flags to honor veterans in the local cemetery.
“Rest in Peas” by Cathy Wiley pits food festival judge Jackie Norwood against her greatest nemesis – peas. But that soon becomes the least of Jackie’s problems when she learns there’s an escaped convict in the area.
While a lot of these stories take place around Halloween, there is some variety of seasons represented in these stories.
A couple of these stories do lean a little into the spooky or supernatural. While normally, I try to avoid that, in this case, I didn’t mind in the slightest. They fit those stories perfectly. Even the stories with those elements never betray their cozy roots, so cozy fans will be pleased.
Each story took me roughly half an hour to read, so there is plenty of bang for your buck. And each story is just long enough to give you a good taste of the characters and storytelling prowess of the authors. I know I got caught up in each story and couldn’t wait to see if my guesses on what was happening were right.
I genuinely enjoyed each story in this collection, often smiling and sometimes laughing as I read.
Reading this also reminded me that I really need to read some of the novels these authors have written. I’ve bought them, so I have no excuse other than too many books to read and not enough time.
A couple of these authors also include a recipe at the end of their story for enjoyment later.
This collection is perfect for reading this month. But if you can’t quite fit it into your October reading plans, you’ll enjoy Murder in the Graveyard no matter when you pick it up.
NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.
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