What’s my typical day like? If you’d asked me that question a couple of weeks ago, my answer would have been just what you’d expect from a proud Italian-American matriarch who is also Acorn Hollow’s best gardener and the thirteen-time winner of St. Vincent’s pasta-making competition.
An hour in my garden, ruminating on the sometimes unfortunate parallels between the denizens of my vegetable plot and my home. [I rather resemble my butternut squash: beige-skinned, a little lumpy, and with a fleshy round bottom. My soon-to-be—hopefully, never-to-be—daughter-in-law Susan resembles a green onion: straight up and down, no curves, a cool green vegetarian with the gall to insert herself where she doesn’t belong (my clump of girasoli in the case of my actual green onion, my family in Susan’s case).]
A leisurely breakfast of coffee and fresh-baked muffins with my gruff but affectionate husband, Sal. Then a nice long walk with Luciano and Cesare, my Bernese mountain dogs who carry little flasks of limoncello around their necks and respond to my commands in Italian with alacrity. On many a day, we detour from our normal route to leave little care packages for down-on-their-luck neighbors (with the utmost secrecy of course, made possible by my network of informants).
Next up? Volunteering, singing in the funeral choir, writing articles for St. Vincent’s Italian-language newsletter (very popular with blue-haired ladies of a certain age), whipping up a batch of cannoli. (That sweet cheesy filling is like truth serum, which comes in handy when you have tight-lipped grown children too proud to ask for your much-needed wisdom.)
But all of that changed a few weeks ago when I got a job as a reporter for the Morris County Gazette! Now I’m a serious, hard-bitten journalist (don’t you just love the sound of that? I do!) tackling human interest stories about Acorn Hollow’s most fascinating citizens.
And we have no shortage of those!
Exhibit A: Elizabeth Van Der Hooven, the high school biology teacher eternally depressed because she was passed over for the teacher slot on the Challenger. (Yes, the one that blew up. There really is something to the phrase “mad scientist.” Of course, if she had blown up on the shuttle, I could have avoided years of being on the receiving end of her curled-lip, angry stare and her rant about how my son Vinnie “was failing to live up to his potential.” It was a thrill to stride into her classroom as a journalist—someone she should kowtow to if she didn’t want to risk bad press!—rather than the World’s Worst Mom.)
Exhibit B: Her sidekick, the soft-spoken Julia Simms, who—unbeknownst to everyone, at least until my story broke—has cultivated the town’s (dare I say the world’s?) deadliest garden. It contains only poisonous plants, as well as the severed finger of her unfortunate ex-boyfriend (a little kitchen mishap, she claims).
But now I’m chasing an even bigger story. Jay Stiglitz, the town’s beloved football coach, has been murdered—in the hospital, no less! Most likely poisoned by a deadly cocktail from Miss Simms’s garden. And the mysterious symptoms that led to his hospitalization were suspicious to say the least. . .Could there be two murderers afoot?
I’m working my sources, of course—my old flame, hapless police chief Geno D’Agostino; Sal’s shady cousin, Calvino, who has links to the criminal underworld through his Atlantic City vitamin “emporium,” and Hannah, the high school’s purple-haired receptionist who wasn’t even born when the Challenger exploded.
But something tells me that my best sources could be the ones closest to me—and they’re not talking. So in between trips to the confessional (with a job like this one come new occupational—and moral—hazards) and marathon sessions in the kitchen (after all, I have a pasta-making title to defend!), I’m staking out my family. And the revelations—good and bad—are coming at me fast and furious.
But will I be in time to solve the murder—and save my family?
Giveaway: Five readers (U.S. entries only, please) selected at random will receive a signed, print copy of The Secret Poison Garden. Leave a comment below for your chance to win. The giveaway ends July 7, 2018. Good luck everyone!
You can read more about Rita in The Secret Poison Garden, the first book in the NEW “Rita Calabrese” culinary mystery series.
Rita Calabrese is the guardian angel of Acorn Hollow—and of her lovable but exasperating “famiglia.” She’s always fortifying her down-on-their-luck neighbors with secret deliveries of home-grown vegetables and ravioli alla zucca, sneaking cannoli into her gruff husband’s lunch, and meddling in (or, as she would say, “improving”) the lives of her three grown children.
But now, on the eve of her sixty-sixth birthday, Rita’s looking for a meaningful second act—and finds as a reporter for the local paper. Her profiles of Acorn Hollow’s eccentric citizens, including the soft-spoken biology teacher with a secret poison garden, soon make her the toast of the town. But when the beloved football coach is murdered and Rita’s investigation uncovers not only a messy love triangle, but also rumors of her ne’er-do-well son Vinnie’s involvement, she finds her newfound journalistic zeal on a collision course with her fierce maternal instinct.
Set in New York’s bucolic Hudson Valley and sprinkled with Italian phrases and customs, The Secret Poison Garden includes eight mouth-watering, garden-to-table Italian-American recipes.
Purchase Link
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Meet the author
Maureen Klovers is the creator of the Jeanne Pelletier belly dance mystery series and the author of the memoir “In the Shadow of the Volcano: One Ex-Intelligence Official’s Journey through the Slums, Prisons, and Leper Colonies to the Heart of Latin America.” The mother of a (human) toddler and an energetic black Lab, she has hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, been escorted through a Bolivian prison by a German narco-trafficker, and fished for piranhas in Venezuela. A confirmed Italophile, she has studied Italian in Rome and enjoys making pasta and Italian desserts.
All comments are welcomed.
I adore the cover of this one! New to me author and series. Would love to win a copy!! Thanks for the chance to win
I’m so glad you like the cover, Kay! The designer and I must have gone though a half dozen iterations!
I’m only IBM (Italian by Marriage) but I love to cook and eat Italian food!
I’m not even Italian by marriage but I still love to speak Italian and cook and eat Italian food!
This looks like a lot of fun.
Thank you!
Sounds like the start of a new fun series. I love “seasoned” ‘tecs.
Me too! That was my inspiration for writing the series. I was in a writing group with women 50+ who were all writing about 30-ish sleuths, and I thought, I want to write about a woman who’s got some life experience under her belt!
This sounds really great! Looking forward to read…however I get! Though it would be nice to win…thanks for the chance!
Once again, Dru Ann, you have provided a new author to me. I would love to be chosen as one of five to read Maureen Klover’s book. Thanks for the opportunity.
Beautiful dog on the cover! This has all the makings needed for a wonderful book to enjoy while others garden! (Hopefully non-poisonous veggies to share.) Rita sounds like someone I want to know better. Looking forward to reading this one! Thanks, also, for the chance to win a copy. You are very generous! 👩🚀 😉
Yes, there are no poisonous plants in the recipes! (Although, technically, tomato leaves are slightly poisonous, but of course the recipe calls for the tomatoes themselves!)
Sounds like a winner.
She sounds like a marvelous character to get to know.
This looks really good. I love the cover.
Sounds like another winning series & characters to read. Thanks for the giveaway.
Added to my list – thanks for the chance to win a copy!
Wow! This is a series that was not on my radar. Thanks SO much for the introduction to a new author and series. Congratulations to Maureen Klovers on an appealing character.
Great cover! I really liked the description and excerpt from the book and I would love to read it. Sounds like a great read.
I love mysteries! Thanks for offering the chance to win this book!
Yay! A new to me author and series!!! Thanks so much!
I want to know more about those family revelations.
This sounds like such a lively read! Love culinary copies.
This is a new author to me and I’d gladly read her book if I receive it. Interesting sounding story and I like that it involves older folks.
Thank you for the chance.
Cynthia
Thank you for giving me another author and series to add to my Goodreads Want to Read list. Since I love to cook, and read, this sounds like another new favorite author.
Thanks also for a chance to win the book.
Glad to hear it! Somehow family drama always works its way into my mysteries!
**** WINNERS ****
The Secret Poison Garden are Bonnie K, Triss Stein, Gram, Sharon Marchisello, Karen Terry
Congratulations!