Trick or Deceit

The author of Independence Slay invites readers back to Celebration Bay for Halloween festivities with more tricks than treats

This October in Celebration Bay, you can't swing a black cat without hitting a haunted house. There are three finalists in the contest for the town's official Haunted House, and ten thousand dollars will go to the winner, with the rest of the contributions and proceeds funding a new community center. Event coordinator Liv Montgomery has invited her friend Jonathan Preston, the debonair CEO of a philanthropic organization, hoping he will award a grant to the center.

But after the Museum of Yankee Horrors wins first place, the transformed Victorian boarding house is vandalized ... and among scattered mannequins of Hester Prynne, Lizzie Borden, and the Headless Horseman, a real dead body is foundone of the contest judges. Now in addition to playing host to Jon, Liv has to play detective and coordinate the clues to unmask a self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner.

Shelley Freydont is the author of the Celebration Bay mysteries, includingFoul Play at the Fair, Silent Knife, Independence Slay and the novella Trawling for Trouble, as well as the Katie McDonald Sudoku mysteries and the Lindy Haggerty Mysteries, and her historical novelA Gilded Grave is the first in a new Newport Gilded Age Mystery series. Under the name Shelley Noble, she is the author of Beach Colors andStargazey Point. Her books have been translated into seven languages.