Guest Blogger - Carmen Radtke

A warm welcome to a new guest to close out the year. Carmen Radtke with her brand new book which releases tomorrow! Murder by the Letter You can of course, preorder it today HERE

Here is the blurb! Haunted by the past... London, 1932. Frances is enjoying her married life with Jack and their extended stay in the city. But her tranquil days take a dark turn when she and her mother-in-law uncover a blackmail scheme targeting a vulnerable war widow at the Athena Club for ladies. Determined to protect the widow’s reputation, Frances and Jack delve into the shadows to unmask the blackmailer. Yet, as the plot spirals into murder, the stakes soar. Amid a web of secrets, they must race to expose a cold-blooded killer—before the past exacts its final toll. A classic Golden Age mystery brimming with intrigue, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Doesn't that sound fun? I asked Carmen to tell me a bit more about the inspiration behind the book! Have you ever not quite belonged to the club? Or wondered what this even meant? My first encounter with the concept and my enduring love for the 1920s and 1930s came thanks to Dorothy L. Sayers’ Bellona Club, where Lord Peter Wimsey is a member, plus P.G. Wodehouse’s Drones Club, spiritual home to Bertram Wooster, and the Junior Ganymede Club, where his inimitable Gentleman’s Gentlemen Jeeves reveals all in the club books. So, what better setting for a London mystery set in 1932 than a women’s club? They’d been around since the late 19th century (after a short-lived experiment in the 1770s and 1780s). Some were for professional women only, others for the upper classes, still others aimed to further the advancement of working-class girls. My fictional Athena Club is a mix – here we find former war nurses, suffragists and suffragettes mingling. The early 1930s still retain some of the glamour of the Roaring Twenties, but the depression is also much more palpable everywhere. My sleuths bridge the gap between classes, worlds (they’re Australian after all, even if Jack was born in London), and they count both aristocrats and war veterans scraping by among their friends. They may not quite belong to the club, but then that’s the secret of their sleuthing success. This sounds fab. I asked Carmen about her writing background. Carmen Radtke has spent most of her life with ink on her fingers and a dangerously high pile of books and newspapers by her side. She has worked as a newspaper reporter on two continents and always dreamt of becoming a novelist. When she found herself crouched under her dining table, typing away on a novel between two earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, she realised she was hooked for life. The shaken but stirring novel made it to the longlist of the Mslexia competition, and her next book and first mystery, The Case Of The Missing Bride, was a finalist in the Malice Domestic competition in a year without a winner. Since then she has penned several more cozy mysteries, including the Jack and Frances series set in the 1930s. Carmen now lives in Italy with her human and her four-legged family.

Cover Reveal for The Secret Detective Agency

It's here at last! I am so excited that the first book in the new series is now available for preorder! It releases on March 27th 2025 and is set in 1941. If you loved Moonlighting, Tommy and Tuppence, Nora and Nick this is the book for you!

You can preorder your copy HERE

Celebrating Book 20 for Verity Bright!

A warm welcome back to my friends, Verity Bright who are a little ahead of me in the number of books in their series. A Midwinter Murder is the latest release and is book 20!!! Yay!!!

I asked how they felt to be at book 20 and they said: When I started the Lady Eleanor Swift mystery series I never imagined I would now be publishing book twenty! The books currently have 100,000+ four and five star reviews on Amazon which gives me so much joy to know people are getting pleasure from the series. I’m so grateful to the readers who have stuck with Eleanor through all her investigations and personal ups and downs (especially her romantic ones!) I hope you enjoy book twenty, A Midwinter Murder, as much as I enjoyed writing it. Here's the blurb!!! Homemade baubles, reindeer-shaped cookies and snowy walks across the rolling moors… but Lady Swift’s festive plans are ruined when a body turns up! Winter 1924. When Lady Eleanor Swift unexpectedly finds herself a guest of the reclusive Duke of Auldwyke, she’s determined to enjoy Christmas with all the trimmings at his sprawling manor house. And that includes kisses under the mistletoe and cozying up by the fire with her fiancé, dashing detective Hugh Seldon. Instead, the season of goodwill turns frosty as she finds the Duke’s studious secretary, Mr Porritt, dead in the storeroom. Clasped in his chilly hand is a golden pendant in the shape of a rose. The Duke denies ever having seen the necklace before. But Eleanor can see the lies in his eyes… Did it belong to his mysteriously absent wife? Hugh and Eleanor must ditch relaxing with hot cocoa in favour of interviewing the Duke’s holiday guests. Every suspect has a secret they’d kill to keep: the socialite with the false name, the Sir with a questionable inheritance and the husband hiding a crack in his marriage. As the blizzard outside rages, Auldwyke Hall becomes cut off. Trapped by the snow, Eleanor and Hugh must skate around the increasingly secretive Duke to unwrap the identity of the killer. But does the answer to the secretary’s murder lie with a ghost of Christmas past? And when an attempt is made on the Duke’s life too, they realise the killer is closer than they think… You can get your copy HERE