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Poison Apple Crisp

Page 22

by Addison Moore


  “Nell?” I shout as I run out a few steps, but it’s too late. She’s gone.

  The sky flickers with light just before another growl of thunder lashes out, and I can feel it echoing right down my bones.

  Everett comes over and wraps his arms around me tightly, his heart pounding like a jackhammer.

  “You heard her, Lemon. This next case is far too dangerous for you.”

  Noah jogs over with our drinks in hand, and Everett quickly fills him in on what’s just happened.

  “Don’t worry, Lot. I’ll handle this one,” Noah is quick to assure me.

  A howl goes off deep in the orchard, and I look in that direction to see a glimmer of dark stars swirling in the night as a chill rides through me.

  Something wicked is coming to Honey Hollow, and Nell is imploring me to stay away. Someone is going to die, and Nell has forbidden me to involve myself in the case.

  But I’m certain I can no more stay away than I can stop breathing.

  Something wicked this way comes, and I’ll be ready for it.

  *Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed Lottie’s latests adventure. You will not want to miss the next book in the series! Click here—> Spooky Spice Cake Curse (Murder in the Mix 26) and get reading! Things get scary, things change, and things are never the same. Warning, lots of fun up ahead!

  My name is Lottie Lemon, and I see dead people. Okay, so I rarely see dead people, mostly I see furry creatures of the dearly departed variety who have come back from the other side to warn me of their previous owner’s impending doom.

  It’s October in Honey Hollow. Halloween is at hand and there’s a horror around every corner. And then there’s that curse—and that body…

  What do a haunted house, a headless horseman, and a chainsaw have in common? They all culminate in the very worst way on the most haunted night of the year. Nell has warned me emphatically to steer clear of this homicide investigation, but never has there been such a case, such a fright, such a nightmare to come to our cozy little town. No, this killer has to be stopped in their tracks—that is, if their tracks are human at all.

  PICK IT UP TODAY! You will not want to miss this book , Spooky Spice Cake Curse (Murder in the Mix 26). I promise! Be sure to grab it NOW!

  Recipe

  From the kitchen of the Cutie Pie Bakery and Cakery

  Lottie’s Apple Crisps

  Hello, friends! It’s autumn, and there’s nothing I love more than baking this time of year. The apples are abundant and fresh, and I enjoy utilizing them in as many recipes as I can. These apple crisps are my go-to recipe when I have one too many apples lying around. They’re easy to make, and they go quickly. Evie loves to have a bowlful right out of the oven, topped with vanilla ice cream. That’s my personal way to enjoy these as well. Happy baking!

  Ingredients

  10 cups of chopped apples (about fifteen to twenty apples)

  ½ cup of water

  ¾ cup white sugar

  1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

  1 ½ teaspoons of cinnamon

  1 cup rolled oats

  ½ cup melted butter

  1 cup packed brown sugar

  1 cup of all-purpose flour

  ¼ teaspoon baking soda

  ¼ teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon vanilla

  Directions

  Preheat oven to 350°. Butter the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking pan.

  In a large mixing bowl, combine apples, 1 teaspoon flour, white sugar, cinnamon, and water. Place in greased baking pan.

  In the same mixing bowl, combine rolled oats, brown sugar, 1 cup of flour, baking soda, baking powder, vanilla, and melted butter. Place crumble over the apple mixture.

  Bake for 45 minutes.

  Enjoy! Best served hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!

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  Cozy Mysteries

  Meow for Murder

  An Awful Cat-titude

  A Dreadful Meow-ment

  A Claw-some Affair

  A Haunted Hallow-whiskers

  A Candy Cane Cat-astrophe

  A Purr-fect Storm

  Country Cottage Mysteries

  Kittyzen’s Arrest

  Dog Days of Murder

  Santa Claws Calamity

  Bow Wow Big House

  Murder Bites

  Felines and Fatalities

  A Killer Tail

  Cat Scratch Cleaver

  Just Buried

  Butchered After Bark

  A Frightening Fangs-giving

  A Christmas to Dismember

  Sealed with a Hiss

  Country Cottage Boxed Set 1

  Country Cottage Boxed Set 2

  Murder in the Mix Mysteries

  Cutie Pies and Deadly Lies

  Bobbing for Bodies

  Pumpkin Spice Sacrifice

  Gingerbread & Deadly Dread

  Seven-Layer Slayer

  Red Velvet Vengeance

  Bloodbaths and Banana Cake

  New York Cheesecake Chaos

  Lethal Lemon Bars

  Macaron Massacre

  Wedding Cake Carnage

  Donut Disaster

  Toxic Apple Turnovers

  Killer Cupcakes

  Pumpkin Pie Parting

  Yule Log Eulogy

  Pancake Panic

  Sugar Cookie Slaughter

  Devil’s Food Cake Doom

  Snickerdoodle Secrets

  Strawberry Shortcake Sins

  Cake Pop Casualties

  Flag Cake Felonies

  Peach Cobbler Confessions

  Poison Apple Crisp

  Spooky Spice Cake Curse

  Pecan Pie Predicament

  Eggnog Trifle Trouble

  Waffles at the Wake

  Christmas Fudge Fatality

  Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 1-3)

  Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 4-6)

  Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 7-9)

  Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 10-12)

  Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 13-15)

  Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 16-18)

  Murder in the Mix Boxed Set (Books 19-21)

  Mystery

  Little Girl Lost

  Never Say Sorry

  The First Wife’s Secret

  Romance

  Just Add Mistletoe

  3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)

  Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)

  Sugar Kisses (3:AM Kisses 3)

  Whiskey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 4)

  Rock Candy Kisses (3:AM Kisses 5)

  Velvet Kisses (3:AM Kisses 6)

  Wild Kisses (3:AM Kisses 7)

  Country Kisses (3:AM Kisses 8)

  Forbidden Kisses (3:AM Kisses 9)

  Dirty Kisses (3:AM Kisses 10)

  Stolen Kisses (3:AM Kisses 11)

  Lucky Kisses (3:AM Kisses 12)

  Tender Kisses (3:AM Kisses 13)

  Revenge Kisses (3:AM Kisses 14)

  Red Hot Kisses (3:AM Kisses 15)

  Reckless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 16)

  Hot Honey Kisses (3:AM Kisses 17)

  Shameless Kisses (3:AM Kisses 18)

  The Social Experiment (The Social Experiment 1)

  Bitter Exes (The Social Experiment 2)

  Chemical Attraction (The Social Experiment 3)

  Low Down & Dirty (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook1)

  Dirty Disaster (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 2)

  Dirty Deeds (3:AM Kisses, Hollow Brook 3)
r />   Naughty By Nature

  Heartless (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 1)

  Wicked Heart (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 2)

  Stone Cold Heart (Breakers Canyon Billionaires 3)

  Beautiful Oblivion (Lake Loveless 1)

  Beautiful Illusions (Lake Loveless 2)

  Beautiful Elixir (Lake Loveless 3)

  Beautiful Deception (Lake Loveless 4)

  The Solitude of Passion

  Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)

  Someone Like You (Someone to Love 2)

  Someone For Me (Someone to Love 3)

  Young Adult Romance

  Melt With You (A Totally ’80s Romance 1)

  Tainted Love (A Totally ’80s Romance 2)

  Hold Me Now (A Totally ’80s Romance 3)

  Paranormal Romance

  (Celestra Book World in Order)

  Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)

  Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)

  Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)

  Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)

  Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)

  Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)

  Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)

  Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 8)

  Elysian (Celestra Series Book 9)

  Perfect Love (A Celestra Novella)

  Ephemeral (Ephemeral Academy 1)

  Evanescent (Ephemeral Academy 2)

  Entropy (Ephemeral Academy 3)

  Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)

  Season of the Witch (A Celestra Companion)

  Celestra Forever After (Celestra Forever After 1)

  The Dragon and the Rose (Celestra Forever After 2)

  The Serpentine Butterfly (Celestra Forever After 3)

  Crown of Ashes (Celestra Forever After 4)

  Throne of Fire (Celestra Forever After 5)

  All Hail the King (Celestra Forever After 6)

  Roar of the Lion (Celestra Forever After 7) Soon

  Acknowledgments

  Big thanks to YOU the reader! I hope you had a wonderful time. I can’t thank you enough for spending time in Honey Hollow with me. I hope you enjoyed this bumpy ride with Lottie and all of her Honey Hollow peeps as much as I did. The MURDER IN THE MIX mysteries are super special to me, and I hope they are to you as well. If you’d like to be in the know on upcoming releases, please be sure to follow me at Bookbub and Amazon. Simply click the links on the next page. I am SUPER excited to share the next book with you! So much happens and so much changes. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking this wild roller coaster ride with me. I really do love you!

  A very big thank you to Kaila Eileen Turingan-Ramos, and Jodie Tarleton for being awesome.

  A special thank you to my sweet betas, Lisa Markson, Ashley Marie Daniels, and Margaret Lapointe for looking after the book with their amazing beautiful eyes. And a shout out to Lou Harper for designing the world’s most beautiful cover.

  A mighty BIG thank you to Paige Maroney Smith for being so amazing.

  And last, but never least, thank you to Him who sits on the throne. Worthy is the Lamb! Glory and honor and power are yours. I owe you everything.

  New Series Preview!

  ***Love Janet Evanovich? You’ll have a blast with Meow for Murder. Enjoy the sneak peek!

  Pick it up NOW! —> An Awful Cat-titude

  A highly inaccurate psychic. A grumpy writer. And a corpse. Welcome to Starry Falls. Running from the mob can be murder.

  Confession. I’m no psychic. But I can sort of see the future—albeit not accurately. And you better believe, I’ve never let that little detail stop me from prognosticating my way into a pickle. So when I ticked off the mob, the feds, and my wily ex, I decided to take my Uncle Vinny’s advice and start over with a new name and new hair color while relying on my old shtick—getting my psychic wires crossed and putting myself in danger.

  Chapter 1

  “I don’t want to die!” The words rip from my throat as if they were being pulled out with barbed wire.

  My name is Stella Santini. I’ve got long black hair, light brown eyes, stand at an average height of five-foot-five, and I can see the future.

  Okay, fine.

  Confession: I’m no psychic. Nor have I ever come close to predicting what the future might hold—not with any accuracy anyway.

  You see, ever since I was a little girl, I had what my Nana Rose liked to call the shakes. Technically, it’s more of a shiver, and when you get down to it, there’s a warm, fuzzy feeling involved that makes me want to forget about the world around me for a moment and retreat to the dark recesses of my mind where a thought plays out like a movie and I see things.

  And trust me when I say, I have been wrong about interpreting the things I see on more than one occasion.

  Take now for instance. This morning when a scene from the West End Woods flashed through my mind and I saw myself running for my life—I thought maybe I might be running from a serial killer looking for his next victim on this odd jaunt through the woods or running from a bear looking for his first meal post-hibernation, thus the solemn decision I came to during my second cup of coffee to stay the heck away from the West End Woods for the duration of my supernatural life.

  But in a twist that only fate could provide, here I am, a mere hour later, panting, ducking evergreen trees and their prickly branches that threaten to poke my eyes out as if my life were on the line, and, oddly enough, I think it is.

  “Don’t kill me!” I howl once again, ducking and jiving my way through the forest as my Uncle Vinnie chases me through the woods with a bona fide weapon in his hand.

  “I’m not gonna kill you for God’s sake!” he riots right back.

  “Then why are you holding a gun?”

  Let’s backtrack for a minute. After I enjoyed my third cup of coffee this morning, Uncle Vinnie called and said I had fifteen minutes to get dressed because we had things to discuss and he was picking me up pronto.

  He sounded serious, morbid even. And I know him well enough to realize he meant business. I had an inkling about the subject he was going to prick. I happen to be what the mob likes to call a dead girl walking. Less than twenty-four hours ago, in what I and any sane person would call a very unfortunate chain of events, I managed to tick off the mob, the federal government, and break up with my idiot boyfriend of two years, Johnny Rizzo, all within a fifteen-minute span. And judging by this mad dash through the West End Woods, you could toss my Uncle Vinnie on that ticked-off list, too.

  My foot catches on a buckling root system and I trip, slowing myself down enough for me to know I’ve just widened that bullseye on my back.

  “Don’t shoot!” I cry out, jogging to a finish as I spin around.

  Uncle Vinnie stops within feet of me, panting, the veins on his neck throbbing like a couple of angry garden snakes about to wiggle their way into his brain.

  Uncle Vinnie is tall, with black hair, dark eyes, and bushy eyebrows that hover over his face, giving him that perpetually angry look he’s got going for him in life. But, by and large, he’s a good guy who stepped up to the plate once my father was put away five years ago on RICO charges. He treated my brother, sister, and me as if we were his own children while my mother got a quickie divorce and began to chase men far younger straight into her bedroom.

  “Please,” I beg. “Put down the gun.”

  “What?” He squints over at me. “What the heck are you talking about? This ain’t no gun.” He shoves something toward me and I turn my head in horror.

  It’s not unusual for a man of my uncle’s standing within the organization to take care of his own once word gets out that their proverbial number is up. And by take care of, I mean bump off the planet in a far more humane method than the fate that awaits them otherwise. And that’s exactly why I suspect my Uncle Vinnie has dragged me out to this isolated strip of nature just outside of Hastings, New Jersey, the town in which I was born and raised.

  He’s brought me he
re to die. My loving uncle is about to impart what the family refers to as a mercy execution.

  “It’s not a gun?” I stagger for a moment. “You mean you’re going to stab me to death? My God, how could you? Is that any way to treat a girl you said you regarded as a daughter when your own brother went to prison?”

  He blinks back, stunned. “Stella, look in my hand,” he growls as he rattles the instrument of death my way once again. “It’s a box of hair dye.”

  “Oh God, you’re going to poison me?” I bury my face in my hands a moment. “Do you even realize how painful that will be? How much worse do you really think it will be for me at the hand of the Morettis?”

  Ten years ago, after my father single-handedly unraveled the entire Fazio family in a mere weekend, the Morettis took over all of New Jersey with an iron fist, and one of their underlings happened to be my ex, Johnny Rizzo.

  Johnny is the one that dragged me into that whole let’s screw the Morettis scheme while they screw the government. It involved a car wash, a donut shop, a chop shop, dirty money, and a monster profit that’s kept me in Louis Vuitton bags for the past six months, but the inner workings of Johnny’s idiotic scheme are far too complicated to dig into at the moment, nor do I care to relive them.

 

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