A lot has changed in my life since I bought the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Two years ago? No, close to three. Doesn’t matter—it was clearly the best decision I ever made, though I’m not sure anyone else thought so. Happily, they kept their mouths shut, which if you know my friends and family, surprises you as much as it does me.

Now, I can’t imagine working anywhere else. Arf, the Airedale terrier who came to live with me a while back, and I live close by, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else either. When I bought the loft, in a brick warehouse built during the height of Seattle’s cannery days, around 1915, an elevated freeway called the Viaduct ran outside its 12 foot high windows. (Why a warehouse had windows at all, let along 12 footers, who knows, but I’m grateful.) The Viaduct could not possibly have been uglier or noisier—the only reason I could afford the place.

Then the city tore it down, and my views soared. (Property taxes, too, but we won’t talk about those.) In the morning, the light dances on the waves of Elliott Bay, and I love watching the ferries, barges, and other ships and boats crisscross the water. Far to the west, the Olympic mountains tower above the horizon.

And in the evening, when the sun sets, the sky fills with more pinks, oranges, and purples than you ever knew existed. The lights pop up at Alki and West Seattle, and the city sparkles.

One of the biggest changes—and by far the best—is Nate Seward, aka “the fisherman.” Even Tag, my ex-husband, says there’s no doubt that Nate is “the one.” He’s steady as they come, and never leaves any doubt about his feelings for me.

But he is a fisherman. And fisherman—well, they fish. For Nate, that means roughly six months a year in the North Pacific, off Alaska, running a boat and a crew with his brother. When he’s home, he fishes a smaller boat in Puget Sound. Fishing is dangerous, the seas rough, the waters cold. He tells me not to worry, but I do. Of course I do.

Last summer, I needed help identifying a murder weapon and Nate introduced me to his ex sister-in-law, Roxanne, who works at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. “Assistant curator of small, weird things,” she calls herself. So when I went to the Lunar New Year food walk and parade in the Chinatown-International District, and she came running out of a long-closed residential hotel claiming she’d found a body, what could I do but follow her back inside?

And there I discovered that as intriguing as the old hotel was, it held secrets I never could have imagined.

Following that trail taught me a few things about my city and my friends, about my guy, and more importantly, about myself. I consider myself level-headed and a good judge of character. But it turns out I have not been completely cured of my youthful habits of running in circles and jumping to conclusions. Fitting for the Year of the Rabbit, perhaps, and good exercise, maybe, but it does create a few problems.

And in the end? Let’s just say that fortune favors those who follow their hearts.

Between A Wok And A Dead, A Spice Shop Mystery Book #7
Genre: Cozy
Release: July 2023
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

It’s the Lunar New Year, and fortunes are about to change.

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. So what could be more fun than a food walk in the city’s Chinatown–International District, celebrating the Year of the Rabbit?

But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man’s body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out. Who was he? What was he doing in the dust-encrusted herbal pharmacy in the hotel’s basement? Why was the pharmacy closed up—and why are the owners so reluctant to talk?

With each new discovery, Pepper finds herself asking new questions and facing more brick walls.

Then questions arise about Roxanne and her relationship to Pepper’s boyfriend Nate, away fishing in Alaska. Between her worries and her struggle to hire staff at the Spice Shop, Pepper has her hands and her heart full. Still, she can’t resist the lure of the Gold Rush and its tangled history of secrets and lies stretching back nearly a century.

But the killer is on her tail, driven by hidden demons and desires. As Pepper begins to expose the long-concealed truth, a bigger question emerges: Can she uncover the secrets of the Gold Rush Hotel without being pushed from the wok into the fire?

About the author
Leslie Budewitz writes the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market and the Food Lovers’ Village mysteries, set in a fictional version of Bigfork, Montana, where she lives. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody suspense set in Montana and the Northwest. She fell in love with Pike Place Market as a college freshman and made it her mission to eat her way through it; fortunately, it’s always changing, so she’ll never be done. I am also on Facebook as Leslie Budewitz Author, and on Instagram as @LeslieBudewitz. 

All comments are welcomed.