By Mac Almedia
From Maddie Day's Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries

2017? How'd that happen? Usually winter's a slow time here in Westham on Cape Cod. Most of the tourists have been gone for months, and I spend a lot of my time in Mac's Bikes tuning up the rentals when I'm not reading a cozy mystery a week for our book group, the Cozy Capers. Last year seems to have sped by way too fast, though.

But maybe I should introduce myself. I'm Mackenzie Almeida, better known as Mac. I'm once again living in one of the most gorgeous spots on God’s green earth, right where I grew up. I have a thriving business I own outright, a bicycle rental and repair shop, Mac's Bikes. It's successful in part because of the bike trails that run up and down the Cape from Provincetown to Woods Hole which supply our hundreds of thousands of visitors with a place to exercise and enjoy the sea air away from traffic. My tiny house is right behind my shop, and just off the Shining Sea Bikeway.

A hunky baker named Tim is in love with me, and my whole family lives nearby: my dad, Joseph, who ministers to the Unitarian Universalists. His mom, my Abo Ruth. My slightly nutty astrologer mom, Astra (yeah, I know - she changed it from Edna. Wouldn't you?) My half brother Hayden and his darling daughter, my little niece Cokey, who he's raising by himself in the lighthouse where he's caretaker. And I have bunches of good friends who are some of the shopkeepers and town regulars, as well as members of the book group. We really do read a cozy every week, and cook up food mentioned in the story, too.

So I thought I was living my dream here. Until I tripped over a dead body on the bikeway, a body with a big honking fish-gutting knife in his chest. And the state police officer, a gentle half-Wampanoag man named Lincoln Mills, seems to think it looks a lot like my brother's knife. My friend Gin Malloy, who owns Salty Taffy's, says we just fell into our own cozy mystery. Yikes!

Stay tuned for more news. My author says Murder on Cape Cod will be out toward the end of this year.

Readers: Are you in a book group? What's your favorite vacation beach? Any questions about the new series?

National bestselling author Edith Maxwell writes the Quaker Midwife Mysteries and the Local Foods Mysteries, the Country Store Mysteries and the Cozy Capers Mysteries (as Maddie Day), and award-winning, Agatha-nominated short crime fiction.

Maxwell is President of Sisters in Crime New England. She lives north of Boston with her beau and three cats, and blogs here, with the other Wicked Cozy Authors, and with the Midnight Ink Writers. You can find her on Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, and at her web site, edithmaxwell.com.