My name is Cordelia Graves, and I’m dead.

There are plenty of better ways to introduce myself, I suppose. I could say “Hello, my name is Cordelia Graves and I’m a lifelong Bostonian.” Or “My name is Cordelia Graves, and I’m a Scorpio.” If I was being really honest, I might even say “Hi, I’m Cordelia and I’m an alcoholic.” But ever since my death, no one really cares where I’m from, what sign I was born under, or what my vices used to be. Which is a shame, really, because I’m so much more than just a ghost.

A typical day for me bleeds into every other day, to be honest. I don’t need to sleep, so I don’t wake up in the morning, pour a cup of coffee, and start a new day.

Oh, man, how I miss coffee.

I can still smell coffee, but I can’t taste it. Now it goes right through me. Literally. Most things do, these days. As a ghost, I can pass through solid objects as easily as I used to breathe, and solid objects pass right through me. Sometimes it tingles a little when that happens, especially if it’s electrical. It’s very shocking, no pun intended, to both me and the electronics. You should see what I can do to a microwave.

My days, weeks, even months were starting to meld together with nothing new ever happening. Observing, but never interacting with people gets old after a while. I was going out of my metaphorical head from boredom when the afterlife got even worse, if that’s possible. Ruby Young, the absolutely most annoying woman—barely older than a teenager, really—moved into my apartment. And then my across-the-hall neighbor Jake had to go and get himself killed.

I always liked Jake. He was the kind of guy that was always down for a beer and a pizza. The idea that someone had murdered him? And in front of my building? It didn’t sit well with me—especially when the cops dismissed his death as a wrong-time, wrong-place mugging gone bad. I’m determined to find out who killed him, if not to get justice for my neighbor, then to protect my block, my other neighbors, and yes, even my annoying new roommate.

It’s time to take matters into my own hands, but unfortunately, this ghost doesn’t have hands anymore. If I’m going to solve Jake’s murder and get his killer off the street, I’m going to need to enlist Ruby’s help, which is going to take some doing, considering she doesn’t yet know that her brand new, fully furnished apartment is haunted, by me.

So, that’s my agenda for today. Figure out a way to make contact with Ruby. Convince her to help me hunt down Jake’s murderer. Find the scumbag who killed my neighbor and bring him to justice. And maybe, if I’m very, very lucky, figure out a way to get a taste of Ruby’s coffee.

Wish me luck!

A New Lease On Death, A Supernatural Mystery Book 1
Genre: Cozy Paranormal Mystery
Release: October 2024
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

Death is only the beginning in Olivia Blacke’s A New Lease on Death, a darkly funny supernatural mystery that introduces an unlikely crime-solving duo.

Ruby Young’s new Boston apartment comes with all the usual perks. Windows facing the brick wall of the next-door building. Heat that barely works. A malfunctioning buzzer. Noisy neighbors. A dead body on the sidewalk outside. And of course, a ghost.

Since Cordelia Graves died in her apartment a few months ago, she’s kept up her residency, despite being bored out of her (non-tangible) skull and frustrated by her new roommate. When her across-the-hall neighbor, Jake Macintyre, is shot and killed in an apparent mugging gone wrong outside their building, Cordelia is convinced there’s more to it and is determined to bring his killer to justice.

Unfortunately, Cordelia, being dead herself, can’t solve the mystery alone. She has to enlist the help of the obnoxiously perky, living tenant of her apartment. Ruby is twenty, annoying, and has never met a houseplant she couldn’t kill. But she also can do everything Cordelia can’t, from interviewing suspects to researching Jake on the library computers that go up in a puff of smoke if Cordelia gets too close. As the roommates form an unlikely friendship and get closer to the truth about Jake’s death, they also start to uncover other dangerous secrets.

About the author
Olivia Blacke (she/her) had her first ghost encounter when she was only five years old, but her first involvement with an active crime scene wasn’t until much later, when she accidentally stepped into a chalk outline on a Manhattan sidewalk. Armed with a Criminology and Criminal Justice degree, she finally found a way to channel her love of the supernatural and passion for writing into darkly humorous supernatural mysteries. She is also the author of the cozy Record Shop Mysteries and Brooklyn Murder Mysteries. She still wants to be a unicorn when she grows up.