By Landon Phillips, from the Food Lovers' Village Mysteries 
by Leslie Budewitz

The library in Jewel Bay is the bestest place in a town full of bestest places. Maybe I love my mom’s shop more because it’s my mom’s, and my Auntie Erin’s shop because it’s hers and she gives me truffles from the rejects box, the ones where the chocolate is messed up or you don’t know until you take a bite whether it’s going to be raspberry inside – yum – or green tea – not as yuck as it sounds.

When I was little, my favorite book was The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Then I read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. It’s so funny, I fell on the floor laughing. But those books are for little kids, and I’m not little anymore. I’m six. So that’s when I met Hank the Cow Dog. He’s cool – he goes on adventures, and he taught me how to help my Auntie Erin. She’s an infesta — no, an inVEStigator. She helps people when stuff goes wrong in town. My mom wishes she wouldn’t, though I don’t know why – she always tells me it’s good to help people.

Also at the library, we make stuff. I like making robots and balloon animals. And sometimes, people who know stuff come tell us about it, like when we read about raptors, the big birds, and the guy who helps them get better brought a huge eagle with a busted wing and a little bitty pygmy owl in for us to see. The eagle flapped her good wing, and it was kinda scary. But cool, too. I might help birds when I get bigger.

I especially love the library at Christmas, and when it snows. Right now, my favorite book is The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I like his name, Ezra Jack. When the first snow falls, Peter – the boy in the book – isn’t really sure he likes it, but then he discovers how magical it is. I have always liked snow. It’s fun to play in and roll up in animal shapes. I’m going to ask my dad and Adam, my almost-uncle, if we can make a snow eagle for the contest they have at the library.

If you’d like to win an audio book of DEATH AL DENTE, the first Food Lovers’ Village Mystery – murder not quite well done – please leave comment below, with your email address, telling me about the library you’ll donate the book to. US and Canadian libraries only, please – Landon’s only got so much change in his pocket! Winner will be chosen Wed, May 2, 2018. 



From the cover of AS THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE CRUMBLES, Food Lovers' Village Mystery #5 (Midnight Ink, June 2018, available for pre-order now):  

In Jewel Bay---Montana's Christmas Village---all is merry and bright. At Murphy’s Mercantile, AKA the Merc, manager Erin Murphy is ringing in the holiday season with food, drink, and a new friend: Merrily Thornton. A local girl gone wrong, Merrily’s turned her life around. But her parents have publicly shunned her, and they nurse a bitterness that chills Erin.


When Merrily goes missing and her boss discovers he’s been robbed, fingers point to Merrily—until she’s found dead, a string of lights around her neck. The clues and danger snowball from there. Can Erin nab the killer—and keep herself in one piece—in time for a special Christmas Eve?

Leslie Budewitz is the author of the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries and the Spice Shop Mysteries—and the first author to win Agatha Awards for both fiction and nonfiction. A past president of Sisters in Crime, she lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a musician and doctor of natural medicine, and their cat, an avid bird-watcher.

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