COZY WEDNESDAY - With Author Kylie Logan(Giveaway too!!)

Welcome to Cozy Wednesday.  I was blown away when I received the guest post from today's guest.  The author information is curiously missing from today's featured book so I knew it was probably an author I knew using a pseudonym.  The question was who was it? You will find out below! 

Button Holed (Button Box Mystery) is the first installment of a brand new series and I loved it!!! My full review will follow Kylie's Guest Post.  Please help me give a warm welcome to Kylie Logan!

Welcome Kylie!! 

Thank you so much for the invitation to blog on your site.

Not everyone is lucky enough to not only have more than one personality, but to be able to celebrate it. As Casey Daniels, I write the Pepper Martin mystery series about a cemetery worker who investigates for the ghosts in her cemetery. The seventh book in that series, "A Hard Day’s Fright" came out in April and book #8, "Wild, Wild Death," will hit shelves on January 3.

But I’ve got a new alter-ego, and she’s just recently made her first official appearance.

She’s Kylie Logan, author of the Button Box mystery series. Book #1, "Button Holed," hit store and virtual shelves early this month.

Cover Illustration
by Jennifer Taylor
Cover Design
by Annette Fiore Defex

It’s been an interesting road to publication for Kylie and it all started, quite simply, because I like buttons. As Josie Giancola, the heroine of the new series comments, buttons are little bits of history, and tiny works of art. They say something about a person’s style, and that person’s social class. Many antique buttons display incredible workmanship, dazzling jewels and even say something about a wearer’s love life; back in the nineteenth century, it was fashionable for a young lady to have a photograph of her beau put on her coat buttons!

Still, I never thought about actually writing a mystery series about buttons until a couple years ago when I visited Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’d just finished lunch at a charming coffee shop and I was alone on the front porch, sipping coffee and knitting, when a couple sat down at the table next to me. There are a couple operative words in that last sentence, namely, alone and next to. You see, they decided to pick that very moment to break up.

I listened to it for ten minutes or so and honestly, I expected them to apologize. After all, there was no doubt I could hear everything they were saying. They didn’t. Instead, they went on and on and I’d had enough. I gathered up my knitting and went next door to an antique shop.

What I didn’t know until I opened the door was that it was an antique shop that specialized in buttons.

Thousands and thousands of buttons.

I was in heaven, and the nice lady who owned the place was only too happy to tell me stories and answer my questions.

It was that encounter that gave me the idea for the Button Box mysteries. Josie owns an antique button shop, too, though hers is in a Chicago brownstone. It’s there that she meets a famous actress who’s come to Josie for the buttons she’ll put on her wedding gown when she marries a European prince. And it’s that actress who is murdered in the shop. When Josie’s cleaning up, she finds an unusual button–one she knows didn’t come from her collection.

As for those multiple personalities of mine . . . readers who enjoy the Pepper Martin mysteries can expect much the same light and airy reading experience and the same sort of humor and intricate plotting. However, there are no paranormal elements in Kylie’s books as there are in Casey’s.

Because Kylie is a new person, she has her own, new blog. You can find her at:

http://kylielogan.blogspot.com

Email her at:

mailto:  kylielogan@rocketmail.com

or friend her on Facebook.

~Kylie

Thank you so much for being here today.  You are always welcome to come back no matter what alias you are using.  Kylie also shared with me that she also writes as Miranda Bliss, author of the Cooking Class Mysteries, another of my favorites.  She has other nom de plumes as well but I won't give out all her secrets here today. J

Button Holed (Button Box Mystery) 

A Berkley Prime Crime Mystery

The Berkley Publishing Group

Published by The Penguin Group

A Brand New Series

Josie Giancola is known as a button expert for all kinds of buttons and has even worked in Hollywood.  Today she is opening  her new button shop, The Button Box, set up in a Chicago brownstone. She also has an appointment with a well known Hollywood starlet who wants to find the perfect buttons for her perfect wedding dress.  Josie arrives extra early on her opening day to make sure everything is ready for her appointment only to find that her store has been broken into and ransacked.  There are buttons everywhere.  Buttons she had spent many days sorting and categorizing and displaying with flawless precision.

Things don't get any better when the next day the starlet is found dead right in the middle of The Button Box.  The homicide detective seems to be looking for clues in all the wrong places and the murderer has now set his sights on Josie.   She has no choice but to follow the clues she has and get this murderer all buttoned up before she finds herself "Button Holed"!

My Thoughts

This story could not have been more perfect.  Wonderful characters, a delightful complex plot, and thoroughly engaging humor.

I fell for Josie on the very first page. I come from a family of seamstresses and they all had button bowls and boxes. As a child I spent hours sorting, stacking and separating my favorites.  I have my own button box around here somewhere from my sewing days and I know there are some buttons in there from my ancestors as well. Button Holed (Button Box Mystery) and The Button Box brought back some wonderful memories. Thankfully none of my memories include a dead starlet.

There is also a very interesting thread throughout the story about some very special buttons that I really enjoyed.  

I was truly entertained from the first page to the last!  I am patiently waiting for Kill Button, the next book in The Button Box Mystery Series coming soon, but never soon enough!!

Your Escape With A Good Book Travel Agent

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Berkley Prime Crime. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. Receiving a complimentary copy in no way reflected my review of this book. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” 

NOW ARE YOU READY FOR A GIVEAWAY!!
Thanks to Berkley Prime Crime 
I have 2 copies to share!!

U.S. and Canadian Residents Only

Followers will receive

2 Bonus Entries

Leave a comment for Kylie and

receive 5 Bonus Entries

Publicize this giveaway and

receive 5 More Bonus Entries

Contest will end October12 at 11:59 p.m. CST

Good Luck!!