Cozy Cat Press Announces New Author and Series

AURORA, Ill. - Sept. 8, 2015 - PRLog -- Independent publisher of “cozy” (or gentle) mysteries, Cozy Cat Press, today announced the publication of its latest book––Susan Spencer-Smith’s Corpse in the Cookery. The book represents the debut of the author and her “Glory Girls” series. The Glory Girls are a select group of church ladies who use their many talents to help their church and, at times, to solve crimes. Headed by the indomitable Edith Fay Smith, the Girls work together seamlessly, unlike the local constabulary.

In their first outing in Corpse in the Cookery, “dragon lady,” Gudrun Wince, lies dead at Glory Hallelujah Church, stabbed while concocting “Mammy’s Marvelous Biscuit Casserole” as her entry in the Glory Girls’ prestigious cooking contest. Sheriff Dooley Skiles, used to nabbing speeders and moonshiners, gears up his official deputies and his unofficial backroom boys to track down the killer. Unfortunately, the most likely suspects quickly hightail it out of town while the real culprit eludes the sheriff until Edith Fay and her Glory Girls step in to help. Their search changes life forever in the tiny village of Biddlebourne, West Virginia.

Appalachian author Susan Spencer-Smith draws on her experience as a pastor and journalist to write both fiction and nonfiction. She wrote and edited at the Weirton Daily Times and the Wheeling News-Register in her native West Virginia and at daily newspapers in Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Dayton. She answered God’s call to pulpit ministry at age 40, earned a master of divinity degree at the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, and served 16 years as a United Methodist pastor. Today, she lives and writes in Weirton, West Virginia, with help from her husband, Grant Beamer, and Thud the Cat.

Her new mystery comes to life in Biddlebourne, the literary double of Middlebourne, West Virginia. As Spencer-Smith says, “Middlebourne is pure Hoopie." What’s Hoopie? "Hoopie," she says, "is a special place along the Upper Ohio River Valley claimed by feisty Scots-Irish settlers. And it’s a special people marked by hard work, firm opinions and staunch loyalties.”

The author, who was born in Sistersville, West Virginia, and whose forebears lived and worked in Middlebourne and surrounding Tyler County, invites readers to pull up a chair to a corner of Appalachia where corn grows tall in the bottoms, muskies run thick in the creek, and locals do things their own way.

Corpse in the Cookery is available from Amazon in both print and ebook formats.  For more information about Cozy Cat Press mysteries, visit their website at:  www.cozycatpress.com.