Hello, everyone! My name is Emma Starrs.

My sister Lucy, aunt Nora, and I run Starlit Bookshop on the main street of Silvercrest, Colorado, which is a picturesque town full of artistic types—painters, writers, sculptors, musicians, and more. Starlit Books is a welcoming space, with two floors of books and plentiful armchairs in lovely jewel tones just waiting for customers to sink into.

Perhaps not a surprise for dedicated booksellers, we are all quite bookish. Lucy is obsessed with romance novels. Nora is a college professor and mystery author. I also love mysteries and hope to follow in my aunt’s footsteps.

A river runs behind our store—as well as behind the quirky Victorian full of nooks and crannies in which we all live. The rushing water is very calming, which I need right now. See, the store hasn’t been doing too well. When I was away at graduate school, things have slowly gone downhill for a variety of reasons. We’re trying to figure out ways to save it.

In order to bring in some extra money, I’ve agreed to plan some special events. Literary events, in particular.

The first will be a murder mystery party, held at the home of Tabitha Louise Saxton Lyme Harmon Gladstone Baxter, who is my least favorite high school classmate. Mean Girl doesn’t even begin to cover it.

So our luck may be changing. . .depending on how you look at it.

What could possibly go wrong?

How to Book a Murder, A Starlit Bookshop Mystery #1
Genre: Cozy
Release: December 2021
Purchase Link

Perfect for fans of Jenn McKinlay and Kate Carlisle, in award-winning author Cynthia Kuhn’s series debut, small-town bookseller and literary event planner Emma Starrs is out to close the book on a killer intent on crashing the party.

To help save her family’s floundering Colorado bookstore, Starlit Bookshop, newly minted Ph.D. Emma Starrs agrees to plan a mystery-themed dinner party for her wealthy, well-connected high school classmate Tabitha Baxter. It’s a delightful evening of cocktails and conjecture until Tabitha’s husband, Tip—hosting the affair in the guise of Edgar Allan Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin—winds up murdered.

In a heartbeat, Emma and her aunt Nora, a famous mystery writer, become suspects. Emma is sure the party’s over for Starlit events, until celebrated author Calliope Nightfall, whose gothic sensibilities are intrigued by the circumstances, implores the bookseller to create a Poe-themed launch event for her latest tome. Throwing a bash to die for while searching for additional clues is already enough to drive Emma stark raven mad, but another shocking crime soon reveals that Silvercrest has not yet reached the final chapter of the puzzling case.

Someone in this charming artistic community has murder on the mind, and if Emma cannot outwit the killer, she and her beloved aunt will land behind bars, to walk free nevermore.

About the author
Cynthia Kuhn writes the Starlit Bookshop Mysteries and the Agatha-Award-winning Lila Maclean Academic Mysteries. Her work has also appeared in Mystery Most Diabolical, Mystery Most Edible, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Copper Nickel, Prick of the Spindle, Mama PhD, and other publications. She is past president of Sisters in Crime-Colorado and currently serves on the national board. Originally from upstate New York, she lives in Denver with her family.

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