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Hi reader,
Monday is Jessie Clark, and Jessie had a busy Friday: two new books at once, from the two very different streets she writes. One is a cold, clever murder. One is a warm little town with a witch in it. Pick your temperature.
The cold one: The Honest Man
The most respected prosecutor in the city is found dead in his locked study, gun in hand, a confession glowing on his screen, the night before he was going to unseal the biggest corruption indictment the city had ever seen. Everyone needs it to be a suicide. The brass wants it closed by morning. Detective Cass Vale knows it is murder before the coroner does, because she has stood in that study before, and her flawless memory is showing her the one detail that is wrong. Pulling that thread unspools a decade-old killing, an innocent man buried in a cell, and a machine of money and power that has spent years clearing inconvenient people off the most valuable dirt in the city. And when the people erasing the truth realize the one witness they cannot shred or seal or buy is the inside of Cass's head, they do not come for the evidence. They come for her memory.
"The dead man's study was the most honest room in the city, and it was lying to her."
A fair-play thriller for anyone who loves a heroine who wins with her mind. If you have never read a Vale and Ward book, this one opens a fresh case, so it is a clean place to start.
The cozy one: Something Wicked This Way Brews
Harriet Godwin runs the best herbal tea shop in Crestwick and has exactly one rule about magic: keep it quiet. Magic is nobody's business, least of all the town's. That rule lasts right up until she finds beloved old Professor Bright dead on the bench outside her shop. To everyone else it looks like a sad, ordinary heart attack. To Harriet, the faint scorched signature on his collar says something far worse: he was killed by released magic, which means someone in this quiet little town shares her secret and has no idea what they have just done. Now she is the prime suspect, the only person who understands how the professor really died, and the detective who keeps turning up at her counter notices entirely too much. Her cat, Fig, was already waiting on the doorstep the morning she found the body. He always knows first.
"A dead man on her bench. A killer who does not know what they have done. And the only witch in town who can tell the difference."
The first book in The Crestwick Chronicles: a dry-witted hedge witch, a small town full of old secrets, a slow-burn romance with a detective who sees too much, and one very opinionated cat. Clean, no explicit heat, and very bingeable.
Both are waiting here: https://www.jlcollinspublishing.com/books
Subscriber first look: reply with the word KETTLE and I will send you the opening pages of Something Wicked This Way Brews before they go anywhere else.
New to Jessie's cozy side? Winifred Baxter has three books of seaside "omens" that turn out to be murders, and now Harriet Godwin is starting a whole new series inland. Two cozy corners, one dry wit.
Want to read Jessie early? Her ARC team gets advance copies free, for an honest review. Email [email protected].
📌 Two-second favor: this week's Something Wicked pin is up on Pinterest. Tap Save so more cozy readers find it: [PIN URL — paste the live pin link when building in Beehiv] (pinterest.com/jlcollinspublishing)
Reply and settle something for me: when you meet a fictional cat who clearly knows more than the humans, do you trust him immediately, or is that exactly when you start to worry?
Happy reading,
Jessie Clark
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