I am so excited that tomorrow is the first day of the Amelia Eden Holt School of Acting. I’ve cued up a few scenes on the big screen for the teenaged girls in my class to watch from when I had a recurring role playing a Collinwood maid in TV’s old soap opera Dark Shadows, along with some footage of a few speaking parts I had in episodes of I Dream of Jeannie and Gilligan’s Island. I’m sure the young women taking the course will benefit from all the acting suggestions I have to share with them from when I lived as a television actress in beautiful downtown Burbank during the 1960s and early 70s, not to mention the many years I’ve starred on stage at the Melbourne Beach Theatre.

I can’t believe that it has been fifty years since my father passed away and I took over running our family’s almost hundred-year-old Indialantic by the Sea Hotel and Emporium located on a barrier island in Florida. If not for my great-niece Lizzy,

I would have never had the time to open my acting school. Now that Lizzy’s novel, An American in Cornwall is due to hit the bookstores, she has promised to keep an eye on the group of archeologists staying at the hotel. The team has come to dig up further proof on the jungle-like property next door that Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon had first landed in Melbourne Beach, not St. Augustine as many thought for decades.

Who knows, maybe the team will discover the fountain of youth? Not that I need it. Because even though I’m eighty, I don’t feel a day over sixty. I’ve been told on numerous occasions that I resemble Endora, actress Agnes Moorhead’s character from TV’s Bewitched. I did have a role on the sitcom, but at the time I was only in my late teens. I think that the only resemblance I could see was that Agnes and I shared the same fiery red hair color and some would say feisty spirit.

But I digress. Back to my acting school. I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little apprehensive with starting a new venture after the disaster that happened a few months ago when I tried to turn the Indialantic by the Sea Hotel into a destination wedding venue and someone in the wedding party got murdered. Okay, if I’m being honest, I’ve noticed some discord between the team of archeologists, including a few loud shouting matches that I’d worried might come to blows. But I’m sure Lizzy and her boyfriend, who is also a private investigator, can handle things like they have in the past. Now I better get moving and print out the syllabus for the week. I can’t wait, things should be easy, breezy. Right?

Buried by the Sea, A By the Sea Mystery #5
Genre: Cozy
Release: April 2021
Purchase Link

At her family’s hotel on a Florida barrier island, sleuthing novelist Liz Holt is shocked by a hidden treasure—and a buried body . . .

A team of archaeologists is staying at Indialantic by the Sea to study the days of the Spanish explorers, and they’ve stumbled upon a stunning and valuable find at the dig site, but before they can unearth it one of the archeologists finds himself buried in the sand and pierced with diving spear tipped with poison.

The local sheriff’s department accuses the owner of the neighboring property, Liz’s elderly reclusive friend and naturalist, Birdman, of the crime. Liz is sure—well, pretty sure—he is innocent and sets her sights on the remaining four archeologists.

With the help of her PI boyfriend and an octogenarian hotel resident, and two mischievous pet parrots, Liz must dig into the mystery of who buried the scientist and absconded with the artifacts he’d promised would put him in Florida history books—before she becomes history herself . . .

Recipes included!

About the Author
National Bestselling author Kathleen Bridge is the author of the By the Sea Mystery Series and the Hamptons Home and Garden Mysteries. Kathleen is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime and blissfully lives on on Florida’s central east coast. Connect with Kathleen at kathleenbridge.com, on Instagram: @authorkathleenbridge and on Facebook: authorkathleenbridge.

All comments are welcomed.