Okay, I’m not really a goddess, and my name isn’t Anon. My real name is Athena Demetra Spencer, and I’m named after Athena, goddess of wisdom and war. In addition to working at Spencer’s, the family’s garden center, I write an anonymous blog that’s widely followed about my life as one daughter in a crazy Greek family. What’s funny is that the blog deals a lot with my mother and sisters, and even though they, too, are fans, so far no one has figured it out. And that’s good, because I’d be highly unpopular if they did.

My life has changed a lot in the past year. For a decade I was stuck in a dead-end marriage with a heel who left me high and dry. I finally caved in and moved back to my small, coastal hometown of Sequoia, right on Lake Michigan, to live with my parents until I could save enough money to support my ten-year-old son and myself. I thought it would be a disaster but instead it’s turned out to be a boon for Nicholas, or Niko, as he now calls himself. He has embraced the Greek culture in a big way, even taking Greek lessons, a surprise for me since I’d forsaken all things Greek to move to Chicago ten years earlier.

Anyway, what’s a day like in my life? I rise early with my son, get him ready for school, then it’s off to my grandparents’ diner for a hearty breakfast before putting Niko on the school bus. Then I walk the four blocks up Greene Street to Spencer’s Garden Center, where I do the accounting work for my dad, John Spencer, who’s not Greek. (I’m the only one of us four girls who looks like my fair-haired father. The others take after my mom, with her curly dark hair, olive complexion, and fuller-figured body.) My sisters Selene and Maia are also named after goddesses. My youngest sister Delphi is named after the famed oracle of the same name, something she takes seriously, believing that she, too, has the gift of foresight. It makes for some “interesting” situations with our customers when she does her coffee ground readings.

But I digress. After finishing up the daily accounting chores, I go onto the sales floor and help customers. Lately, my dad has been letting me try my hand at landscape design, something I have a natural talent for. What I really love doing, however, is helping people solve problems, and until Case Donnelly came into my life, my only way of helping was through landscaping. Now that he’s come to Sequoia, however, my life has gone in a new direction. I’m on a quest for justice, and if that means investigating murders when the police have dropped the ball and accused the innocent, then I go after it in a big way. Truthfully, I’d much rather be doing that than drying accounting work.

Case and I met under very odd circumstances, and the only thing I can tell you about that is to read about it in “Statue of Limitations.” I think you’ll be quite entertained.

I hope you enjoy “Statue of Limitations,” the first book in the Goddess of Greene Street mysteries. You’ll understand why I’m called that after you read the book.

And now I’ll sign off the way I always end my blog, with the Greek goodbye: Adios Sas.

****Athena

Statue of Limitations is the first book in the NEW “Goddess of Greene Street” cozy mystery series, released January 28, 2020.

In this delightful new series by the New York Times bestselling author of the Flower Shop Mysteries, Athena Spencer comes back home to work with her crazy big Greek family at their garden center. But she never expected a return to her roots would mean protecting her family from murder . . .

After her divorce, Athena has returned to coastal Michigan to work in her family’s garden center and raise her son, while also caring for a mischievous wild raccoon and fending off her family’s annoying talent for nagging. Working alone at the garden center one night, Athena is startled by a handsome stranger who claims to be the rightful owner of a valuable statue her grandfather purchased at a recent estate sale.

But she has even bigger problems on her plate. The powerful Talbot family from whom her papous bought the statue is threatening to raze the shops on Greene Street’s “Little Greece” to make way for a condo. The recent death of the family’s patriarch already seemed suspicious, but now it’s clear that a murderer is in their midst. Athena will have to live up to her warrior goddess namesake to protect her family from a killer and save their community from ruin . . .

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About the author
Kate Collins is the New York Times bestselling mystery author of The Flower Shop Mystery series, now on the Hallmark Mystery Movie channel. Although English and Irish herself, Kate had the good fortune of marrying into a big, zany Greek-American family where she learned all about Greek life, most of which revolves around food and laughter. She uses those experiences to enrich her new Goddess of Greene St. Mysteries, so be prepared for anything, from laughter to nail-biting suspense. Opa!

To learn more about Kate, visit her website at katecollinsbooks.com.

All comments are welcomed.