Birder, She Wrote

March 1, 2023

Drafted by the mayor to run interference when rich newcomers complain about living next to working farms, Meg Langslow also finds herself drafted by her grandmother to help her and a Baptist church deacon find a Black cemetery. Instead, they stumble upon a fresh corpse. With a 40,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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June 1, 2023
Buzzer, She Wrote would be an even better title for Meg Langslow's latest dalliance with murder if it didn't depart from the avian puns that adorned her first 32 adventures. Caerphilly, Virginia, is a pretty close-knit community, and once everyone realizes that nobody's seen wildlife photographer Edgar Bortnick for a couple of days, his neighbors start to worry. Meg's father, Dr. James Langslow, is especially concerned because Edgar, a veteran beekeeper, has mentored his own attempts at apiculture. When neighboring farmer Isaac Washington takes Meg; her grandmother; reporter Britni Colleton; deputy Horace Hollingsworth; and some cadaver dogs on a search for the Washington family's lost graveyard, they find a brand-new corpse. But the victim, shot in the forehead, isn't Edgar Bortnick; it's Walter Inman, a retired D.C. businessman widely known as Wally the Weird because of his rabid NIMBY stances, which included rants against Edgar's bees. Reassuring as it is when Edgar turns up alive, merely incapacitated by a rockslide, it's disturbing to find evidence that someone's exterminated most of the bees he loved. On the homefront, Meg wonders why the annoying Britni is so keen to interview her grandmother for a magazine profile, since Cordelia doesn't remotely fit the pattern of the other NIMBY women Britni's interviewed for Sweet Tea and Sassafras.The pattern that ultimately emerges will include blackmail, family skeletons, and, of course, plenty of lowdown about the birds and the bees. More crime and detection than usual in this amusing series, even if the criminal's guilt is rarely in doubt.

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July 1, 2023
As the assistant in charge of special projects to the mayor of Caerphilly, Virginia, Meg Langslow is sent to placate the NIMBYs, new residents who constantly complain about the nearby pig farm and beehives. When the interfering NIMBY Walter Inman is found dead in the woods, there is no shortage of suspects. In addition to the murderer, Meg must deal with a blackmailer, sabotaged beehives, and a missing beekeeper. Complicating matters further, Meg's grandmother Cordelia is being profiled by a reporter from Sweet Tea and Sassafras, and Meg can't figure out why. With help from family and friends and a group of trained cadaver and search-and-rescue Pomeranians, Meg must find the killer. Fans will relish this addition to the long-running cozy series with its humor, charming small-town setting, and natural-history frame, populated by Meg's well-drawn community of quirky, but helpful, family and friends..

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