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Zusatztext Praise for Victoria Hamilton’s Vintage Kitchen Mysteries “[A] delightful find.”—Sheila Connolly! New York Times bestselling author “Smartly written and successfully plotted.”— Library Journal Informationen zum Autor As Victoria Hamilton , Donna Lea Simpson is the national bestselling author of the Vintage Kitchen Mysteries and the Merry Muffin Mysteries. She is also a collector of vintage cookware and recipes. Klappentext Muffin maker Merry Wynter hopes to find a buyer for the castle she's recently inherited. But when she throws a party to draw interest! she finds someone who's bought the farm instead... Merry's career as a New York City stylist has crumbled! but her passion for muffins has helped her rise upstate in Autumn Vale. Everyone in town loves the tasty treats. Still! she would like to return to her glamorous life. Besides! the upkeep of Wynter Castle is expensive! and Merry's cup isn't exactly overflowing. So in order to bring some prospective buyers into the mix! Merry whisks together a spooky soiree and decorates the castle with dashes of fabric and a sprinkling of spider webs. Friends new and old are invited! and everyone has a blast. But as the revelers empty out! Merry notices one partygoer who isn't leaving—or breathing. Now Merry must hurry to unmask a killer before her perfect plans turn into a recipe for disaster... ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Chapter One RIDLEY RIDGE. HOW had I lived a whole month and a half at Wynter Castle, my inherited digs near Autumn Vale in upstate New York, without visiting Ridley Ridge, the next closest town? Just lucky, I guess. And I, Merry Wynter, an almost-forty not-so-merry widow and apparent inheritor of a nineteenth-century mill baron’s castlelike home, would not be visiting the town again unless I had to. I looked up and down the windswept road—gray, drab buildings, litter on the streets, one person peeping out at me from between horizontal blinds—and shivered. The winds of October in upstate New York were upon us, and I was in Ridley Ridge because I had it on good authority that they had—wait for it—a party store in town. A party store. In the drabbest, saddest town I had ever seen. Who in their right mind would open a party store in Ridley Ridge? Did they also own a bikini shop in Anchorage? A liquor store in Salt Lake City? Standing in a puddle of gum on the dirty sidewalk, I blew a puff of air through my pursed lips, wondering which way to go. I had not been able to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence of this party store. But Pish Lincoln, my New York friend who was living at the castle for the time being, had insisted that, if I wanted to sell Wynter Castle, I needed to introduce it to potential buyers, also known as his complete little black book of influential city dwellers. We had a game plan. Halloween was coming up, so I would host a costume party; it would be a fun gala with lots of wine and music and many of his friends, acquaintances, and former business associates from that mythical land, my former home, New York City. Since Pish was a financial advisor—the successful kind, not one of the ones who had crashed and burned in the last decade—he knew people with a lot of money. I hoped that one of his clients would be interested in turning an authentic American castle into an inn, an event venue, or a retreat. We weren’t counting on just Pish’s friends, though. As a former stylist to the occasional star and many more models, I too knew a fair number of folks, some wealthy and others loaded with connections. I desperately needed to sell Wynter Castle if I was to return to the city with money in my pocket. The only problem with that bright and bubbly scenario was that I had already made friends in Autumn Vale. Jack McGill, the real estate agent who had been trying to sell the castle ...
