Beach Reads Roundup

Dark and Stormy Book Club

What to read at the beach, vacation or just your backyard hammock.
Much Ado about Nauticaling (Whit and Whiskers Mystery #1) Published July 27th 2021 by Kensington Publishing Corporation
by Gabby Allan
Whitney Dagner is your tour guide to a Pacific paradise that's to die for--only to find it's a place people are also willing to kill for--in Gabby Allan's Much Ado About Nauticaling, first in the "Whit and Whiskers Mystery" series.
After far too many years in the Los Angeles corporate world, Whitney Dagner has come home to Santa Catalina Island off the California coast to help her brother Nick run Nautically Yours, the family tourism business. Between gift shop shifts selling all manner of T-shirts and tchotchkes and keeping her feline Whiskers in fine fettle, she pilots the Sea Bounder, a glass bottom boat showing tourists the underwater sights of aquatic plants, marine life--and a murder victim?
The self-proclaimed Master of the Island, Jules Tisdale was a wealthy man with business interests throughout Catalina who was about to be honored as Person of the Year before someone strangled him with his own tie and tossed his body into the water. That someone appears to be Nick, who had a raw deal from Jules and no alibi the night of his murder. To clear her brother's name, Whit will have to investigate Jules' shady associates and not exactly grief-stricken family members--with the unwelcome help of Felix Ramirez, police diver and Whit's ex-boyfriend who's looking to rekindle their relationship.
Knot Ready for Murder (A Quilting Mystery #9) Published July 27th 2021 by Kensington Publishing Corporation
by Mary Marks
Before quilter Martha Rose can tie the knot to Crusher, she has to track down his missing first wife...
One loose thread threatens to unravel Martha's wedding plans: the groom-to-be married a pregnant teen to save her from scandal thirty years ago--and the marriage was never annulled. Now Crusher's wife Hadas is coming to LA, along with his sister Fanya. But soon after she arrives, their houseguest goes missing, with her room ransacked and a chloroform-soaked cloth left behind. Could her apparent abduction be connected to her brother's unsolved death from a hit-and-run six months ago? Martha and her quilting cohorts must find the pattern to solve the twin mysteries and determine if Crusher is still married--or now a widower...
Summer Club Published August 14th 2020 by Outskirts Press
by Katherine Dean Mazerov
Normally, politics and parent drama, drunken soirees and sex-capades reign at Lydia Phillips's swim and -tennis club. Now, a strange car following the club manager, a break-in at Lydia's home, and a shocking discovery on the club grounds have this stay-at-home mom dusting off her newspaper-reporting skills to unravel the mystery.
Then, a body surfaces in the river, and Lydia's life gets a whole lot more complicated--and dangerous.
In one moment, readers of Summer Club will be laughing at the colorful characters' outrageous antics. The next moment, they will be riveted as the story reveals a troubling, complex scheme involving fraud and murder.
Perfect for parents balancing career and family, Summer Club casts a beam of dark humor across the hidden reality that makes "domestic" life--raising children and volunteering for community and school groups--sometimes more harrowing than the most cutthroat of corporate jobs.