April 1, 2025
A California shopkeeper faces challenges practical, mystical, and criminal. Shayleigh Myers' world hasn't changed much over the past year. She still works hard to make Crystals & CuriosiTEAS the premier destination for herbal remedies in Bray Harbor despite stiff competition from Madam Malvina, the owner of Celestial Treasures and Teas. She still pines for raffish Liam Madigan, who rewards her affection by asking her advice about his amorous inclinations toward every other young woman in town. She still has daily conversations with her late mother, Irish clairvoyant Bridget Early. She still gets warnings from the blue amulet Bridget gave her, which she wears hidden under her shirt. And she still can't help getting tangled up in every suspicious death that comes by. The latest victim is Cora Sutton, the wife of Bray Harbor's mayor. Shay feels some responsibility for Cora's fate because shortly before her death, Cora asked for a tea-leaf reading. Shay whitewashed some of the cards' more dire predictions. Then, shortly after the reading ended, Shay had a vision of Cora lying in the middle of a fairy ring--which is exactly where her corpse would be found. Shay looks to her friends and neighbors and into the world beyond in search of clues that might lead to Cora's killer, but she finds little help until a chance remark points her in the right direction. The supernatural spin distinguishes this series from other shopkeeper cozies, and it's otherwise a faithful prototype of the genre. Readers' fondness for this series will depend almost entirely on their affinity for the otherworldly.
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