A Bean to Die For by Tara Lush @dollycas #guestpost #blogtour

A Bean to Die For (A Coffee Lover’s Mystery)
by Tara Lush

About A Bean to Die For

A Bean to Die For (A Coffee Lover’s Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
4th in Series
Setting – Florida
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crooked Lane Books (January 9, 2024)
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 163910545X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1639105458
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0C1YBSBXZ

Perfect for fans of Cleo Coyle and Lucy Burdette, reporter-turned-barista Lana Lewis is back on the case when a body is dug up in the community garden.

Lana Lewis is brewing up new concoctions at Perkatory, a popular café in Devil’s Beach, when she decides she wants to try her hand at growing her own coffee. She secures a gardening plot in the community garden, thanks to her father and the garden’s owner, Darla. Darla’s list of rules is long, but that doesn’t stop someone from leaving Jack Daggett’s body amongst the gardening plots.

Jack, an environmental activist, had been banned from the garden previously, because of his many fights with Darla about organic produce. Lana promises her boyfriend, police chief Noah, that she’s going to stay out of this case, having been too involved in previous cases. But when she learns that Jack died from an accidental overdose, and Darla is the top suspect because of her shady past, Lana can’t help but poke around in an attempt to clear Darla’s name.

As Lana dives deeper into the case, she learns that Jack had more enemies than she realized. When Darla turns up dead, Lana has to turn up the heat on her investigation. With Lana on the case, it won’t be long before someone spills the beans to crack this case wide open. But will she able to find the killer before they strike again?

About Tara Lush

Tara Lush is a Florida-based author and journalist. She’s an RWA Rita finalist, an Amtrak writing fellow, and the winner of the George C. Polk Award for environmental journalism.

She was a reporter with The Associated Press in Florida, covering crime, alligators, natural disasters, and politics. She also writes contemporary romance set in tropical locations under the name Tamara Lush.

Tara is a fan of vintage pulp fiction book covers, Sinatra-era jazz, 1980s fashion, tropical chill, kombucha, gin, tonic, seashells, iPhones, Art Deco, telenovelas, street art, coconut anything, strong coffee and newspapers. She lives on the Gulf Coast with her husband and two dogs.

Her debut mystery series is published by Crooked Lane Books.

Author Links

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/tamlush
WEBSITE: https://taralush.com
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/the.book.lush/
GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/20274256.Tara_Lush

Purchase Links – Amazon – Barnes & Noble – Kobo – Bookshop.org

Guest Post

I have a coffee plant growing in my backyard.

That’s right. An actual coffee plant.

Someone gave it to me and my husband when we bought our house a dozen years ago. It was a little, six-inch slip of a plant. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what to do with it, or whether it would survive.

Since we live in Florida, I figured I could plant it in the ground and it would either thrive or die. That’s what most plants do here — if they thrive, they become part of the jungle-like landscape that’s almost impossible to keep at bay. If they don’t thrive, well, that’s the breaks.

Florida’s a somewhat harsh landscape, given the heat, bugs, humidity, rain, hurricanes and sandy soil.

I didn’t have high hopes for the little coffee plant when I stashed it in a pile of dirt near the garage door. But something magical happened over the next few years: it grew.

And grew. And grew.

Now it’s a ten-foot high bush that threatens the entrance to our garage. Every so often, my husband will trim it back, but it always returns to its shaggy self. It’s a gorgeous bush, with shiny verdant, veiny leaves that are evergreen. There are few pests or diseases that will kill it, making the plant the best ever for people like me.

An added bonus: it attracts pollinators, including certain types of swallowtale butterflies.

In the spring and summer it will bloom delicate white flowers, and then the magic happens.

The plant produces fruit, little red berries that look just like coffee. This wild coffee plant — Psychotria nervosa, a dramatic name if I ever heard one — is in the same family as the coffee we all know and love. But it’s not the same species, and the berries don’t produce caffeine. For a while I pondered whether the berries were poisonous, then when I heard it was a wild coffee plant, I wondered if I could brew my own coffee.

I was a little sad to discover this from the Florida Wildflower Foundation:

“The seeds can be roasted and used as a caffeine-free coffee substitute, but do so with caution as some sources suggest the brew may induce a headache.”

I was staring at this bush one day when I got an idea for a book. My Coffee Lover’s Mystery series is set in a café on a Florida island. What if my heroine — a barista who co-owns Perkatory, the popular café — tried to grow her own coffee?

Could it be done? Can people grow actual coffee with the life-affirming caffeine in the Sunshine State?

I went down a rabbit hole on the internet, and here’s what I found: yes, it’s possible.

“Although coffee is typically grown in tropical regions with high elevation, it can also be grown in the southernmost parts of Florida,” writes the University of Florida. “The small, attractive trees feature tiny fragrant flowers, shiny green foliage, and of course, the red fruits from which we process coffee beans. Coffee is also an emerging commercial crop in Florida, although it is still considered to be experimental.”

Perfect! That’s how I came to set A BEAN TO DIE FOR in a community garden. Lana wants to try her hand at growing an artisan crop, so she can roast it herself and sell the beans at the café. Like many coffee purists, she’s always seeking the novel bean, the interesting cup of coffee, the uniquely tasty brew.

Her father, a wacky hippie, also has a garden plot where he grows mint for his new business idea of coffee-mint flavored popsicles. He vows to help Lana get her garden going.

But Lana is thwarted when she goes to check out her garden plot — a local environmental activist is dead under his tomato bushes! This puts a temporary damper on Lana’s coffee growing plans, because one of the prime suspects is a customer, and asks Lana to put her investigative skills to work.

Then a second murder happens, and Lana figures out that she’s in hot water. Caffeine alone won’t solve this problem…

The intersection of a passionate pursuit, unexpected adversity, and a twist of mystery is where A BEAN TO DIE FOR truly begins. Lana’s journey from bean to brew is laced with suspense, unexpected turns, and, perhaps, a few caffeinated clues.

TOUR PARTICIPANTS

January 9 – Mystery, Thrillers, and Suspense – AUTHOR GUEST POST

January 9 – Elizabeth McKenna – Author – SPOTLIGHT

January 10 – fundinmental – SPOTLIGHT

January 10 – @readingwithmrsleaf – REVIEW

January 11 – Angel’s Book Nook – SPOTLIGHT

January 11 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT

January 12 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – REVIEW

January 12 – Hearts & Scribbles – SPOTLIGHT

January 13 – Reading Is My SuperPower – REVIEW

January 13 – Baroness Book Trove – SPOTLIGHT

January 14 – Cozy Up With Kathy – CHARACTER GUEST POST