I don’t’ like mornings. Not early morning. Not middle morning. Maybe because my Schnauzer, Feda (who is a Feminist dog and doesn’t like the mailman) starts barking as soon as she hears him pushing letters through the mailbox. So that puts me on US Post Office time to begin with and I should get to work on the next book I’m doing for Christopher Morley, my editor. I write about famous writers, like Emily Dickinson.—well, sort of. Or I write about something from Literature, like my book on Alice in Wonderland or like my new book—coming out this September where I took themes from Jane Austin and used those. You know: mothers hunting rich men for their daughters and men out to seduce their daughters or about evil people you’d never suspect of murder.

Middle morning. Now I have my quilt over my head and I’m really ignoring Feda who has to go outside to pee and won’t let me forget it. So I get up and let her out, then wait—if it’s a nice day she takes forever. Summers, like now, are bad.

I should be awake by this time. It’s ten o’clock. But I’m not. If I try to go back to bed the garbage men come and empty my cans with a huge whine and a clank and then metal on metal as the lids go back on. Feda is barking her head off and anyway my neighbor, Dora Weston or even her daughter, Jenny Weston, will be over soon and we will sit and drink coffee and talk about the latest very strange murder that’s happened up here.

This is how my days usually start. Then I have to get to work—though I’m still putting it off, and I think about Dora and Emily, how they love each other, and then I think of my life with my mom. We lived in Detroit. For most of her last years—I was only a kid then—she was sick and I had to take care of her because she couldn’t get out of bed.

That’s not a reason not to love your mother and the times I thought I didn’t love her I felt terrible afterward, so I’ve grown up (well, not too grown up, I’m a dwarf and stand about three feet nine) understanding how people can be ashamed of something but still not be bad people.

And don’t worry about me being short. I see a lot of things people don’t want me to see—especially when they’re guilty of something like a murder and I watch how their bodies tighten up, or how their hands grab each other and their fingernails dig in, or how their neck sinks into their shoulders for protection, or how they’ve forgotten they have dark mud or maybe blood, on their shoes, which I can see close up.

When you live kind of on the outer side of life, you get to learn faster and know faster and see things people don’t think you can see. I’m used to it now. I’ve caught more than a couple of murderers my way.

So—it’s lunch time. I’m meeting Tony Ralenti, Jenny’s fiancé, at Myrtle’s Restaurant, because he wants to ask me something. I think it’s about being the Maid of Honor at their wedding.

That’s what I’m hoping for.

Or he’s helping our police chief with a murder right here in Bear Falls and he needs me to figure some things out for him. That’s good, too. I don’t like letting anybody down, you know.

Still, that Maid of Honor thing . . . I’m still hoping.

Giveaway: Leave a comment below for your chance to win a print copy of In Want of a Knife. U.S. entries only, please. The giveaway ends September 12, 2018. Good luck everyone!

You can read more about Zoe in In Want of a Knife, the third book in the “Little Library” mystery series, coming September 11, 2018.

When they investigate a string of disappearances of young girls, will Jenny Weston and Zoe Zola be dispatched with extreme pride and prejudice?

Amateur sleuth and little librarian Jenny Wilson is set on edge when the police discover a young girl’s body, dressed in an old-fashioned white lace dress, just outside Bear Falls. And when another local girl from town disappears soon after, Jenny and her next-door neighbor, author and little person Zoe Zola, know they have to help the beleaguered police chief.

But first, Jenny and Zoe have new neighbors to meet: A trio of wealthy newcomers from Chicago has just moved into a huge mansion on Lake Michigan. Nathan and Delia Wickley are genial siblings, and Fitzwilliam Dillon, the mansion’s owner, is a Little Person like Zoe. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a rich gentleman seeking to ingratiate himself to his new neighbors will spread a bit of largesse around, and Fitzwilliam is no exception: He has offered two million dollars to Bear Falls. But the townspeople are far from agreed on what to do with the money―and the deliberations are far from peaceful.

But it’ll all come to naught if the missing girl isn’t found, and the culprit identified. And when she ventures alone to a mysterious structure in the woods, Zoe may not live to resolve her romantic dilemmas. Though neither Jenny nor Zoe is particularly placid or even-tempered, love and danger beckon them in Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli’s third endearing Little Library Mystery, In Want of a Knife.

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About the author
Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli is a mystery novelist, now on her third series. In Want Of A Knife, 3rd in the Little Library series, is in bookstores now. A Most Curious Murder, first in this series, was twice number one on Amazon in the last year. (Goodreads review: “Inspired by Alice in Wonderland, Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli’s quaint and compelling series debut: A Most Curious Murder, will delight mystery readers new and old”). Publisher’s Weekly said of: She Stopped for Death, 2nd in the series: “A riveting climax will have readers on the edge of their seats.” Kirkus Reviews said of In Want of a Knife: “Buzzelli’s well-developed characters are the stars of the show in a complex tale that tips more than a hat to Pride and Prejudice.”

She lives in the Northern Michigan woods, near Traverse City, where the natural world around her gives her more stories than she could ever write.

All comments are welcomed.