Grounds for Murder by Lena Gregory @LenaGregory03 @dollycas

Grounds for Murder (Coffee & Cream Cafe Mysteries)
by Lena Gregory

About Grounds for Murder

Grounds for Murder (Coffee & Cream Cafe Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting – Watchogue, Long Island, New York
Gemma Halliday Publishing (November 21, 2023)
Number of Pages 226
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CCLT922F

From author Lena Gregory comes a tasty new mystery with a killer twist…

Danika Delaney is thrilled to have taken over her uncle Jimmie’s old fashioned malt shop on eastern Long Island and is working hard to make it her own. In an effort to increase business, Danika invites a mystery writer to the Coffee & Cream Café for a discussion and book signing. Things seem to be going well, until a guest shows up and confronts the author, accusing him of plagiarizing his work. Embarrassed by the incident, Danika goes to the inn where the writer is staying the following morning, hoping to apologize and offer him another chance to return. What she finds instead is his dead body—beside a cup of poisoned coffee! Now it’s up to Danika to find out who wanted to silence the author… before the killer decides to write Danika a not-so-happy ending!

Character Guest Post

A Day in the Life of Danika Delaney

I don’t know what I ever did to Karma, but that witch sure has it in for me. I was a fairly content twenty-five-year-old, working toward my dream of a career in advertising, sort of, with a steady boyfriend I was expecting to propose in the near future, and a sublet apartment in New York City that might have been small, but at least I didn’t have to wait in line for the bathroom. And then, Karma, in the guise of my meddling family, stepped in and ripped the rug right out from under me.

Not that it was unusual for businesses to pass down from one generation to the next, especially in families on Eastern Long Island where it was the norm, but they usually went to the descendants with the most education, the most ambition, and the most (or at least some) interest. But, nope. Not in my family.

In the Delaney clan, the family business, at least the most unsuccessful one, went to the black sheep of the family. Namely, me. With a degree in marketing, I hadn’t yet found much use for—unless you counted enticing customers into braving the lunch special at the small dive in New York City where I was a waitress—I was still clinging to hope. Until Marie decided to return from Europe and wanted to live in her apartment, Carl dumped me, and my family decided I’d be the best choice to take over Jimmie’s, my eccentric uncle’s mom-and-pop ice cream shop.

Which might not have been so bad if Jimmie’s was located in, say, South Hampton or Montauk, where a cute little old-fashioned malt shop might be considered quaint or even trendy. No, Jimmie’s sat on Main Street in Watchogue, a two-mile-long town on the south shore of Eastern Long Island where nothing of note had happened since Thomas Jefferson once spent a night at the local inn some two-hundred plus years ago.

So, now, here I am, trying to turn a failing business that had become more of a hobby for Uncle Jimmie into a successful café I will be content to run for possibly the rest of my life. But do things go easy? Nope. Of course not, because karma hates me.

So, on the night of my grand reopening, with all of my hopes and dreams on the line, the author I invited to do a signing knocks all of the preparations I’ve done, is accused of plagiarism, and gets into a disagreement with a super-stalker fan. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the next day he turns up dead. And you know what? I might have even been content to leave the investigating to the police, except whoever killed him then sets their sights on me. Now, I need to figure something out fast, or I’ll be losing more than just my reputation.

About Lena Gregory

Lena grew up in a small town on the south shore of eastern Long Island, but she recently traded in cold, damp, gray winters for the warmth and sunshine of central Florida, where she now lives with her husband, three kids, son-in-law, and four dogs. Her hobbies include spending time with family, reading, and walking. Her love for writing developed when her youngest son was born and didn’t sleep through the night. She works full time as a writer and a freelance editor and is a member of Sisters in Crime.

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