by Morgana Best
I looked at Mr. Buttons and he arched his eyebrows. He stood up, and poured both of us a glass of wine. Cressida was already into her second glass, by the look of her.
“I thought you only drank tea,” I said to Mr. Buttons.
“Medicinal purposes,” he said, taking a long drink from his glass.
“Things sure did start getting interesting after you moved into town, Sibyl,” Cressida said, her speech slurred.
I held up my hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I had nothing to do with any of it.”
“Trouble might just follow you around.” Cressida raised one of her penciled-in eyebrows.
I chuckled. “I guess it might. Anyway, where are the boarders?”
“They all moved out,” Cressida said. “We have an empty house here now.”
I sipped my wine and looked at Cressida and Mr. Buttons. What an odd set of friends I had. A good-looking cop, an eccentric woman with make-up that always appeared to be applied with a trowel, and an Englishman with a penchant for tea and cucumber sandwiches. And then I had a lovely dog and a trash-talking cockatoo. Was this really my life? It was, of course, and I wasn’t sure I would have it any other way. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t change a thing. Life isn’t always how one imagines it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t the best it could be.
In the last few months since moving to Little Tatterford, in hopes of moving on after divorcing a cheating and homicidal husband, I had seen more dead bodies than I had ever planned on seeing. The strange thing was that, somehow, I was happy. So what if my life wasn’t normal, and my friends weren’t normal? Some things were worth a little bit of weird.
“Are you okay, Sibyl?” Mr. Buttons asked, reaching over to pat my hand.
I smiled and nodded. “I’m just fine,” I said.
Connect with Morgana
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Next book in this series
Book THREE, the next book in the Australian Amateur Sleuth series.
Dye Hard.
Obnoxious ghost hunters descend on Cressida Upthorpe’s boarding house, convinced it must a source of paranormal activity given that three murders have occurred there in a short space of time.
After one of the ghost hunters is murdered with poisoned hair dye, Sibyl does her best to keep well away from the investigation, that is, until Cressida almost falls victim. With the bumbling detectives back in town and on the scene, Sibyl races to solve the murder before the body count rises.
Other Books by Morgana
Miss Spelled (The Kitchen Witch Book 1)
Amelia Spelled has had a bad week. Her boyfriend dumps her when she inadvertently gives him food poisoning; her workplace, a telecommunications center, fires all their staff as they are outsourcing offshore, and she is evicted due to smoke damage resulting from her failed attempts at baking. Amelia thinks her luck has changed when she inherits her aunt’s store and beautiful Victorian house.
Yet has Amelia jumped out of the frying pan into the fire? The store is a cake store, and her aunt was a witch. To add to the mix, the house has secrets all of its own.
When a man is murdered in the cake store, will Amelia be able to cook up a way to solve the crime? Will her spells prove as bad as her baking?
A Ghost of a Chance (Witch Woods Funeral Home Book 1)
Nobody knows that Laurel Bay can see and talk to ghosts. When she inherits a funeral home, she is forced to return from the city to the small town of Witch Woods to breathe life into the business. It is a grave responsibility, but Laurel is determined that this will be no dead-end job.
There she has to contend with her manipulative and overly religious mother, more than one ghost, and a secretive but handsome accountant.
When the murder of a local woman in the funeral home strangles the finances, can Laurel solve the murder?
Or will this be the death of her business?
Christmas Spirit (The Middle-aged Ghost Whisperer Book 1)
Prudence Wallflower tours the country, making live appearances. She connects people with loved ones who have passed on. However, her reputation as a psychic medium is failing, and even Prudence has begun to doubt herself. She has never seen a ghost, but receives impressions from the dead. This all changes when the ghost of a detective appears to her and demands her help to solve a murder. Prudence finds herself out of her depth, and to make matters worse, she is more attracted to this ghost than any man she has ever met.
And coming soon! Sweet Revenge (The Cocoa Narel Chocolate Shop Mysteries Book 1)
Narel Myers was given the ironic name Cocoa Narel by the cruel popular girls at high school, as she was far from elegant and was obsessed with chocolate. The truth of the matter was that her love of eating chocolate had caused her to become excessively overweight. Some years later, a car wreck leads to her undergoing extensive plastic surgery on her face and body. Now that she is medically unable to gain weight, she decides to indulge her love for chocolate by opening a designer chocolate shop.
When people who bullied her at high school are murdered one by one, she becomes the prime suspect. Will she be able to prove her innocence when the police think she’s out for revenge? Will Carl, her best friend, stop flirting with the police long enough to help her find the real killer?
Bonus: Chocolate recipes at back of book!
About the Author
#1 Best-selling Cozy Mystery author, Morgana Best, lives in a small, historic, former gold mining town in the middle of nowhere in Australia. She is owned by one highly demanding, rescued cat who is half Chinchilla, and two less demanding dogs, a chocolate Labrador and a rescued Dingo, as well as two rescued Dorper sheep, the ram, Herbert, and his wether friend, Bertie.
Morgana is a former college professor who now writes full time.
In her spare time, Morgana loves to read cozy mysteries, repurpose furniture, and renovate her old house.
A Note from the Author
Thank you for reading this book. I hope you enjoyed it.
All my books are edited by two separate editing firms, but no one is infallible. If you happen to find a typo, please email me at morganabest (at) ausi (dot) com. Thank you!