BETTER HOMES & CORPSES
A HAMPTONS DEATH BY DESIGN MYSTERY
by Kathleen Bridge
It's the sleepy Hamptons' off-season and there's a killer on the loose. After Meg Barrett finds her fiance canoodling with his ex-wife, she quits her job at a top home and garden magazine, flees Manhattan, and settles in Montauk. One year later, Meg’s interior design business, Cottages by the Shore, is finally in the black. Meg spends her days scouring estate and garage sales for fixer-uppers, and her nights reading melancholy prose etched in the sand by a stranger. Meg’s therapeutic routine veers off course when she arrives at the East Hampton estate of her former college roommate, Jillian Spenser, and finds Jillian’s mother, nicknamed the First Lady of the Hamptons because of her high society pedigree and legendary antique and art collection, murdered. When Meg’s friend is hired to inventory the Spenser estate by the family’s insurance company, she asks Meg to help. Meg accepts, knowing the extra cash will help towards the purchase of a ramshackle cottage she’s dying to renovate. Perhaps due to her own hearing loss, Meg has a penchant for rescuing broken things: furniture, bric-a-brac, and lost souls, souls like Jillian Spenser, which causes her to dive headfirst into a series of mysteries involving missing furniture, cutthroat antique dealers, and sexy murder suspects. The sexiest of all is Cole Spenser, the dead woman’s son. Before Meg can uncover the identity of her poetry-in-the-sand poltergeist, and explore her true feelings for Cole, she must first survive being hunted by a cold-blooded killer.
Better Homes & Corpses includes antique & collectible tips, along with how-to design and refurbishing instructions. Kathleen is a member of Sisters In Crime and teaches a creative writing class at the William Cullen Bryant Library in Roslyn, NY. She is also an antiques and collectibles dealer and the author of two published books: a historical antique reference guide, Lithographed Paper Toys, Books, and Games (Schiffer Publishing, 2000), and a humorous book, Revenge of the Sports Widows--How To Cope With a Sports Fanatic (SPI Books, 1992). Kathleen is currently working on her next Hamptons Death by Design Mystery.
| |||||||||
