Yoohoo. Hello, there. Anyone listening? My name is Granny Gert. Such a fun name, don’t you think? I’ve always thought so. If you’re wondering who I am, I won’t keep you waiting. I am Sunshine Meadows’s grandmother. Sunny is such a cute name, too. My daughter Vivian and her husband Donald weren’t too happy when Sunny changed her name from Sylvia to Sunshine, but I thought it sounded right as rain. If only they would stop interfering and let Sunny spread her wings. She’s a grown woman, after all, and much more like me than my own daughter, which Vivian has never quite gotten over.

Anyhow, back to me. I used to live in New York City, but when my house needed repairs, I moved upstate to the darling little town of Divinity with my one and only grandchild. Sunny is such a sweetheart. She has a gift, you know. She’s psychic, and a good one, mind you. She runs her own fortune-telling business out of her house, and she is a consultant to the police on the side, much to the dislike of that handsome Detective Stone, but I can see the sparkle in his eye when he looks at her. Sometimes she mixes things up a bit until she works it all out. That leaves little time to keep up with a place as big as her ancient Victorian house named Vicky. That’s where I come in.

It feels so wonderful to be needed again. I was a bit lonely back in the city, but here I feel alive. My Frank would have been so proud. I still have the orange pumpkin cookie jar he gave me and my old flour sack aprons I made myself. There’s a cookie for everything, you know, and I happen to make the best. When I’m not baking, I follow a schedule that keeps everyone on track. On Mondays I clean. Tuesday is laundry day. Wednesday I do my ironing. On Thursday I bake for the weekend entertaining. And on Friday I make a trip to the salon. That young man Raoulle does such a wonderful job of washing and setting my pristine white hair. It turned snow white when I was sixteen after having Scarlet Fever. Captain Grady Walker says it goes perfectly with my snappy brown eyes. Such a charming fellow.

Sunny even taught me how to drive and I bought my very first car with some of the money my dear Frank left me. A big white Cadillac. I paid cash for it, too. Surprised the starch right out of that there car salesman when I had that much money on me. I knew better than to tell him I keep it in shoeboxes and freezer bags stashed in all sorts of places no one would think to look. You never can be too careful you know. I even made a new friend. Sunny’s lovely cat Morty. He’s taken a shine to me and doesn’t even mind when I make him these adorable bowties out of Vicky’s old curtains. I admit my sewing skills aren’t nearly as good as my baking, but other than that, everything in my world is pretty much perfect these days.

That is until she came along. My arch nemesis Fiona Atwater had the gall to show up in my new town. Says she didn’t know I was here. That she and her sewing group wanted to kick off their summer by visiting Divinity’s Summer Solstice Carnival. Well, she’s not fooling me. She’s always tried to outdo me in everything ever since I won the heart of my Frank. And now she’s trying to steal Captain Walker right out from under me. Ha! She doesn’t know how stubborn I can be, but she’ll soon find out since we’re both entered in the bakeoff. My cookies are killer, and this is one competition I don’t plan to lose. But what happens next could make us both lose a whole lot more than we ever bargained for.

TROUBLE IN THE TAROT (book 3 of the Fortune Teller Mysteries – March 5, 2013)

For psychic Sunshine Meadows, sometimes fortunes can be deceiving…

Lately Sunny has been experiencing a period of big opportunity: her business in Divinity, New York, is thriving, and Detective Mitch Stone has finally agreed to take Sunny on a date. But thanks to her clairvoyant abilities, Sunny knows better than anyone that life deals out bad cards along with the good.

When Sunny agrees to read tarot cards at the annual summer Solstice Carnival, she meets her Granny Gert’s “arch nemesis” Fiona Atwater, and is overcome by a vision of Fiona in a violent argument. Sunny knows trouble is brewing when Granny and Fiona start having squabbles all over town. But the fighting comes to a head when a local baker gets run over by a big white Cadillac—and Granny and Fiona are found at the crime scene.

Sunny knows she should step aside and let Mitch handle the investigating, but she’s not about to ignore her visions and leave her granny’s life in fate’s hands…

The first two books in the series are Tempest in the Tea Leaves and Corpse in the Crystal Ball.

Thanks to the publisher, I have one (1) copy of TROUBLE IN THE TAROT to give away. Contest open to US residents only and ends March 14. Leave a comment to be included in the giveaway. The book will be shipped directly from the publisher.

Meet the author
Kari Lee Townsend lives in central New York with her understanding husband, her three busy boys, and her oh-so-dramatic daughter 🙂 She is the National Bestselling Author, Agatha & RT Reviewer’s Choice Award nominee for her Fortune Teller Mystery series. Kari also writes romance under the name Kari Lee Harmon. Small towns, mystical elements, quirky characters and a few chuckles along the way are what her books are all about. To find out more about Kari and all of her books, check out her websites at: www.karileetownsend.com and www.karileeharmon.com

Books are available at retail and online booksellers.