The authors write within the perspective of their series’ main characters, providing side trips to different venues, historical background details, and the continuation of backstory. Leslie Meier’s main character is Lucy Stone, part-time reporter in Tinker’s Cove, Maine; Lee Hollis’s is Hayley Powell, restaurant owner in Bar Harbor, Maine; Peggy Ehrhart’s is Pamela Paterson, textile expert, and Bettina Fraser, small-town newspaper columnist, both of Arborville (we assume Maine).
Prior to 2018, the anthologies featured authors Joanne Fluke, Leslie Meier, and Laura Levine. Reading the anthologies always gets me into the spirit of the holiday celebrated within. Some of the older ones are now on Kindle Unlimited. E. B. Davis
EASTER EGG MURDER by LESLIE MEIER
In Provence to visit her daughter, part-time reporter Lucy Stone is soaking up the atmosphere, even if it includes one Carole Capobianco, the empty-nester she encountered on the flight over. Not exactly two peas in a pod, they’re both amused by the tale of a neighbor’s chickens refusing to lay eggs. The decoy eggs he’s set out to encourage the egg-centric hens are not only gorgeously Faberge-style, they’re being stolen! That’s confusing enough, but what’s happened to the cook is deadly serious.
DEATH BY ANOTHER EASTER EGG by LEE HOLLIS
When an ambitious young reporter dies mid-meal at Hayley Powell’s Bar Harbor restaurant, Hayley is horrified. Determined to save her eatery’s reputation, Hayley scrambles to crack the case wide open like an egg, discovering that the victim was about to break a juicy story—one that a number of people (er, suspects) did not order off the menu. Which makes finding the killer more than devilishly hard . . .
AN EGGY WAY TO DIE by PEGGY EHRHART
Cleaning up after the Easter egg hunt in the Arborville park, friends Pamela and Bettina are startled to find something else hidden—the dead body of a local cookbook author, surrounded by broken shells and slippery yolks. The pair are far from hard-boiled detectives, but as they search for clues, they find that the whole case smells distinctly like rotten eggs . . .
