 November is all about historical cozy mysteries and you can download all of the following books and previews for free on Prolifick Reads. This is a great way to try out books by other authors to see if they are your cup of tea. If you are an author, why not add your book to one of the future collections. There are even more historical mystery themed books over in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer private group on Facebook. The Case of the Black Tulips by Paula Harmon & Liz Hedgecock
A Timeless Celebration by Dianne Ascroft
Dead Tide by Leighann Dobbs
A House Of Mirrors by Liz Hedgecock
Murder on the SS Rosa by Lee Strauss
The Secret Notebook of Sherlock Holmes by Liz Hedgecock
If you still need some inspiration, check out the historical cozy mystery books board on Pinterest.
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Bubble bubble toil and trouble, I spy some books to make you a fuddle!!! Plenty of free books to download for your Kindle this Hallow's Eve (don't have a Kindle, here's how to get the free app for your phone, laptop, or computer). Plenty of tricks and treats in store for your reading pleasure. FYI. All books are free to download at time of writing but the promotions may end at any time, so grab them whilst you can. If you want the heads up on more cozy mystery book freebies, come and join us in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook or sign up to my mailing list. Be sure to check out these books to download for free on Amazon too.
With just a couple of days to go before NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins, you might be feeling super confident, terrified, overwhelmed, or a combination of all three. I know I was when I took part for the first time, writing my first novel back (Lake Love Found) in November last year. Well I thought that today I would share with you some writing books specifically focused on the cozy mystery genre. Sadly, I haven't read these myself, but believe me I will be checking them out now that I know they exist. The only one I do have, and which I found incredibly helpful is K.I.Maloney's (blue cover). I've yet to use it as a notebook, but I like to have it by my side for those moments of planning and plotting where I begin to freak out or find that my story is becoming too complex for my brain to follow. My comfort blanket if you will. So without further ado, here are some books to help you with your writing. As always, I'd love to know your thoughts on them if you've used them, so please do leave a comment below, and if there are other books that you love, drop a link and mini review to help others along. There are even more books on writing mystery and cozy mystery on my Pinterest board here. Good luck with the writing. Don't forget you can also join me as a writing buddy on NaNoWriMo (details here).
There are lots of wonderful Christmas cozy mystery books coming out between now and Christmas 2018, most of which are available to pre-order if they aren't published already. Here is just a selection to add to your Christmas wish list. But don't worry, there will be plenty of free books to read for Christmas too, and you'll be able to get them from here in December. In the meantime, check out some of these Christmas covers on Pinterest.
If you want the heads up on more cozy mystery book freebies, come and join us in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook or sign up to my mailing list.
You can't have a Halloween without a few skeletons can you now? Here is a little selection of cozy mystery books with a skeleton theme to get those book collections growing! As if you didn't have enough books waiting to be read already!! If you still need some more inspiration, check out more skeleton cozies on my Pinterest board here. If you want the heads up on more cozy mystery book freebies, come and join us in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook or sign up to my mailing list. Be sure to check out these books to download for free on Amazon too.
With Halloween upon us, it seems only right to share with you a few Halloween themed cozy mystery books for the weekend, though you can of course read them all year round if you prefer. Need something to start you off for free, check out our November collection here and some culinary freebies here. If you still need some inspiration, check out the Haunted House and Halloween Cozy Mystery Books boards over on Pinterest. If you want the heads up on more cozy mystery book freebies, come and join us in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook or sign up to my mailing list. Be sure to check out these books to download for free on Amazon too.
We're almost coming to the end of our culinary cozy mystery month, but you still have time to download plenty of free culinary themed books if you haven't done so already. Today I thought I would share a collection of cheese themed cozies, especially since I'm a huge lover of cheese - cambozola, manchego, and cheddar being my favourites. If you need even more inspiration, then I put together a Pinterest board here. Need some wine to go with your cheese, check out this collection of wine themed cozies!! If you want the heads up on more cozy mystery book freebies, come and join us in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook.
Next month is all about celebrating historical cozy mystery books, so if you are an author you are welcome to submit your book for inclusion on the blog here, and as a free book or preview on Prolifick Works here.
If you need a little bit of inspiration on the kinds of books that might be included, check out my historical cozy mystery books board on Pinterest, and my antiques themed cozy mystery board. If you are one of my mailing list subscribers and have a free gift code from me, then you might be on the lookout for a cozy mystery book to download. To help you out, I've put together a few suggestions. You can also grab an audiobook as part of a free trial on Audible details here. You might also enjoy some of my audiobooks.
For more cozy mystery audiobook suggestions check out my Pinterest board here.
Since this month we're celebrating all the culinary and Halloween cozy mystery books, I thought I would blend the two collections together and share some pumpkin cozy mystery books with you. Well it turns out that today also happens to be National Pumpkin Day - who knew! (Just me that didn't know it seems!). Anyway, I hope that you will find something in this little selection to get you in the Halloween and culinary mood, and if you still need more books, then I put a Pinterest board together with even more pumpkin books here. Feel free to add any other pumpkin themed books, maybe even some recipes, in the comments section, I'm sure I missed a lot more. Have a great weekend! Check out even more Halloween cozy mysteries over on my Pinterest board, and don't forget to download your free Halloween cozy mystery books. If you want the heads up on more cozy mystery book freebies, come and join us in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook or sign up to my mailing list.
In 1930 a small group of mainly English and Irish detective fiction writers (including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L.Sayers, E.C.Bentley, Emma Orczy, and G.K. Chesterton formed the Detection Club, a kind of dinner club and guild, based in London, England. The club remains an invitation only organisation, and one of the main caveats is that members adhere to Knox's 10 rules of detective fiction - though the rules are less strict these days, but I think they are of great help to new cozy mystery writers like myself. I hope you will find them useful too. Detection Club Oath"Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?[1]" Knox's 10 Commandments of Detective Fiction Writing
As part of October's Halloween Cozy Mystery book celebration I thought I'd share some zombie inspired cozy mystery books with you. I have to admit, that I couldn't find a whole lot of zombie books but if you know of more then please do add them in the comments section at the bottom of the page so I can add them to the Pinterest board for future reference. Check out even more Halloween cozy mysteries over on my Pinterest board, and don't forget to download your free Halloween cozy mystery books. If you want the heads up on more cozy mystery book freebies, come and join us in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook or sign up to my mailing list.
As part of October's Culinary Cozy Mystery book celebration I thought I'd share some cozy mystery books that are the perfect accompaniment to your evening glass of wine! And yes I am a bit of a wine snob. In fact when I was born, I lived on an award winning English vineyard in Berkshire, and later got my WSET qualifications in wine. Whatever your tipple, I hope that these will wet your appetite. Check out even more wine, alcohol, and vineyard themed cozy mysteries over on my Pinterest board, and don't forget to download your free culinary cozy mystery books. If you want the heads up on more cozy mystery book freebies, come and join us in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook.
Cozy mystery or 'cozies' are a sub-genre of crime fiction. Classic examples include Agatha Christie's Poirot and Miss Marple, and television shows like 'Murder She Wrote' and 'Midsomer Murders'. Cozies are different to 'hard boiled' mysteries because they contain an amateur sleuth, there is little or no sex, violence, or bad language, and the murder always takes place off stage, without any blood and gore. Cozies are books that people read when they want to feel cozy, where the murderer is always caught, and a sense of justice prevails. They involve clues and red herrings (clues that lead you down the wrong path) and are the perfect books for readers who are smart and enjoy trying to work out 'who done it' and why. So when you pick up a cozy mystery book, you should always know what you are getting, even though the setting and characters are very different in every story.
If you want a more detailed definition and some more background on the cozy mystery genre, click on the links below: Free to download Kindle books that are on my 'to be read' list this weekend...all with a little Halloween spookiness to celebrate October's Halloween Cozy Mystery Collection. If you don't have the free Kindle app for your phone, computer, or tablet you can download it here. If you are thinking about getting a Kindle, check out my blog post here, or grab yourself a 30 day free Kindle Unlimited trial. If you want some more Halloween cozy mystery inspiration, check out my Halloween cozy mystery board on Pinterest
Wow, I can't believe that it's coming up to my first year anniversary as a writer. Have I got it all figured out yet, heck no, but looking back on what I have achieved over the last 12 months I'm really pleased, especially now that I've found a genre (cozy mystery) that suits me perfectly. I wrote my first novel as part of NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month, which takes place in November every year. There is an adult version, and a version for schools and young people (which I especially love as I run a UK registered charity that promotes education and literacy for children around the world). It's absolutely free to take part in, there is a massive community of people participating, and what's more, it is nowhere near as daunting to write 50,000 words as you might think. If you can write an average of 1667 words per day, you'll have a 50,000 word novel by the end of the month! Writing lake Love FoundI actually ended up writing several books in the month, one was a collection of stories from my primary school days (I might publish this one day), and a contemporary romance, based in the Lake District where I was living at the time, and which I ended up publishing - albeit under a pen name because I was too scared to put it under my own name. I didn't even tell anyone I had written it, and I was terrified that it would get awful reviews, so it was a huge secret for almost a year. I didn't have an editor, I had zero funds for a cover, and I didn't feel at all worthy of having a book published, so if I can do it, then there is no reason why you can't do it too. It's no best seller, but a year later, it's still getting plenty of reads and downloads, it has been translated into Spanish, and is doing well as an audiobook. I'll be writing blog posts about how I tackled each of things, but first things first, you need to write your novel before you worry about anything else. It's all about taking baby steps, every single day, and I'd love to be a part of your journey and to share any tips I have learnt over the year. Why Did I Write a Romance?I was nervous about writing anything, let alone writing a romance, but I felt that it would be the easiest of the genres for me to write in. I based the story on Rydal Water where I walked my dog each day as that meant that I was familiar with the world I was writing in, my characters, and in creating a simple story. Once I had the confidence in knowing I could do it, I then wrote my Bertram Bile time travel adventure series for middle-grade, and as I started to read more and to learn about books, I came to realise that cozy mystery was the genre I loved the most. Something I discovered by accident whilst working on a number of murder mystery programmes for film and television. But there is no reason why your first novel can't be a cozy mystery, especially if you are already familiar with the genre, which I wasn't when I started. How Do I Get Involved in NaNoWriMo?The first thing to do is to set up an account on the NaNoWriMo website, it's free of charge, but setting up your profile will give you access to loads of writing resources and to a community of people getting ready to write their book. Over the next week or so, I'll try and share cozy mystery specific resources that have helped me on my journey, but the first thing you'll want to do is to plan out your book, or at least think of your characters, setting, and murder scenario. Try and follow the #NaNoWriMo and #NaNoWriMo2018 hashtags on social media too, you might just connect with some new friends along the way, who can become writing buddies. There are loads of YouTube videos out there too. If you are struggling for an idea for your Cozy Mystery, a good place to start is audiobook stories, watching series like Murder She Wrote or Poirot, and watching mystery movies. Think about what you love about them, and why they appeal. Is it that you don't know who the murder is, or that you have to follow clues, or you like the characters? Can I Add You as a Writing Buddy?If you do decide to take part in NaNoWriMo, I'd love to be your writing buddy, so feel free to add me so we can support each other with writing our next novels. To find me, just type in Sarah Jane Weldon in the search bar on your dashboard. More the merrier!   It wouldn't be October without some Halloween cozy mysteries now would it! So here are two books that you can download for free from Prolifick Reads. This is a great way to try out books by other authors to see if they are your cup of tea (or pumpkin spice latte!). If you are an author, why not add your book to one of the future collections. There are even more halloween mystery themed books over in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer private group on Facebook. And if that isn't enough inspiration for your next free book, then check out some beautiful covers on my Pinterest board. Murder of a Working Ghost by Robyn Beecroft
The Case of the Love Spell by Amorette Anderson
Want to know what next month's collection theme will be? Take a peek here.
Each month I'm going to be putting together a collection of themed stories by 10 different cozy mystery authors, to run alongside my monthly cozy mystery collections. To be included in the collection, you must write a story on a set topic, of no more than 25,000 words, which has not been published anywhere else. The ten stories will then be edited and a cover designed for the collection, before it is released wide through Bundle Rabbit. Royalties will be automatically paid each month through Bundle Rabbit. Each author will be required to sign a basic contract and to share the cost of editing and cover art design ($40 per author payable once we have the ten stories ready for editing and cover design). You can submit stories for as many or as few of the themes as you like, once we have ten stories we will get the book ready for publishing during that month. You can submit your story any time. If we have our ten stories ready to go long before the month of the collection, we can publish it anyway, and it will simply be featured during the collection's month. Some collections and themes are likely to be more popular than others. The aim of the collection is to have some fun writing in different worlds, to promote each other as authors, to reach new readers, build up a following, earn some royalties long term, and who knows, we might even make the New York Times Best Seller list! Each collection will be on sale wide, for $0.99 to give us the best chance of sales and finding new readers. I'll be formatting and uploading the finished book, so all you have to do is to write the story that you want readers to discover. Stories can be submitted by email in the first instance and once we have ten stories that we are all happy with, we'll set up the contract, and send the collection off for editing, and have the cover designed. I'm planning to ask Mariah Sinclair to create custom covers for each collection of stories for ebook and print. You'll receive a digital copy of the finished collection for your approval before it gets published. You will be able to publish your story as an individual after submission as long as it is not in KU since it will be available wide and you won't want to get in trouble with KU. Happy writing! Sarah x Story Themes and DatesNovember 2018 - Historical Cozy Mystery Month
December 2018 - Christmas and New Year Month
January 2019 - Paranormal Cozy Mystery Month
February 2019 - Animal Cozy Mystery Month
March 2019 - Ageing Sleuth Cozy Mystery Collection
April 2019 - Easter Cozy Mystery Collection
May 2019 - British Cozy Mystery Collection
June 2019 - First Book in Series Cozy Mystery Collection
July 2019 - Travel and Destinations Cozy Mystery Collection
August 2019 - Honeymoon, Wedding, Romance Cozy Mystery Collection
September 2019 - Medieval Cozy Mystery Collection
October 2019 - Halloween Cozy Mystery Collection
November 2019 - Other Worlds Cozy Mystery Collection
December 2019 - Christmas and Hogmanay Cozy Mystery Collection
January 2020 - Knitting, Quilting, Crafts Cozy Mystery Collection
February 2020 - Butlers, Maids, Slaves Cozy Mystery Collection
March 2020 - Fashion and Shopping Collection
As part of October's Culinary Cozy Mystery book celebration I thought I'd share some egg themed cozy mysteries with you for your reading pleasure. Who knew that eggs could be so murderous!! Enjoy! Check out even more egg themed cozy mysteries over on my Pinterest board, and don't forget to download your free culinary cozy mystery books. If you want the heads up on more cozy mystery book freebies, come and join us in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer group on Facebook.
Free to download Kindle books that are on my 'to be read' list this weekend...all with a little culinary flavour to celebrate October's Culinary Cozy Mystery Collection. If you don't have the free Kindle app for your phone, computer, or tablet you can download it here. If you are thinking about getting a Kindle, check out my blog post here, or grab yourself a 30 day free Kindle Unlimited trial.
If you want some more culinary cozy mystery inspiration, check out my culinary cozy mystery board on Pinterest
As you may or may not know, all of my books are available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited, but what exactly are Kindle and Kindle Unlimited, and how do you get them? Are they even worth it? And how do you find books to download for free? In this little blog post I'm going to do my best to guide you through these questions. What is an Ebook?An e-book is essentially just a digital version of a print book that you can download to read on your mobile phone, your computer or on a special device designed especially for reading books. Digital books (e-books) are great if you travel a lot or find yourself bored on the train or sat around in a waiting room wishing you had brought something along to read. They are environmentally friendly, and they take up very little space, so you can have hundreds of books stored on your computer at the same time. Some websites allow you to 'borrow' these e-books, whilst other websites allow you to download them and keep them forever (we'll come to this in a moment). What is a Kindle?A Kindle is a bit like an iPad or tablet computer, except that it is usually a lot less heavy and the screen has been designed for more comfort whilst reading. The Kindle is a reading device that was designed and marketed by Amazon for the purposes of reading books. It's basically just a device that you can use to read books on. Some devices are even waterproof so that you can enjoy reading your book by the pool or on holiday. Do you Need a Kindle to Read Kindle Books?Absolutely not. You can download a free Kindle app to use on your mobile phone or your computer, and this app allows you to read any Kindle book. Once you have the app, you can then download any Kindle book you want and it will stay on the virtual bookshelf on your device until you decide to delete it. Kindle books are made from MOBI files (like a PDF that the Kindle app can read). There are loads of places to find free Kindle or ebooks and you can then use the Kindle app to open the files. What is Kindle Unlimited?Kindle Unlimited is a kind of book club or library, where you pay a monthly subscription in return for access to a large collection of books, that you then 'borrow' to read on your Kindle app or device, before selecting a new one to read. The monthly subscription is currently £7.99 so it can work out a lot cheaper than buying individual books, especially if you read a lot. Unlike when you buy an ebook for a one off fee, with Kindle Unlimited you are instead 'borrowing' the book and once you have finished reading it, the book will disappear from your device. The good thing with this is that it saves space with not having lots of books downloaded to the same reader all the time, the only downside is if you like to make notes on your books as you read them as these will be lost once you give the book back. For most people, this isn't an issue at all. How do I Know if a Book is in Kindle Unlimited?If we look at the top 100 best selling cozy mystery books in the image below, we can see that some of the books have the Kindle Unlimited orange and grey branding just above the cover. That means that if we have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, we can download and 'borrow' these books for free. But if we don't have the Kindle Unlimited subscription we will have to pay the individual cost of the book. For example, Loved Up (Nr 71) would be free to download on Kindle Unlimited, or £2.99 to buy. From the image below, we can see that there are two books not in Kindle Unlimited; Digging Deep (Nr 76) and Pineapple Gingerbread Men (Nr 73). So if we wanted to read these two books, then we only have one option and that is to buy them outright.  How do the Authors Earn their Money?When an author publishes their ebook, they have two options. Firstly, to put their book into Kindle Unlimited, or secondly, to put their book 'wide' (non-exclusive to Amazon) meaning that they could also put it on places like Google Play, Nook, Kobo, iTunes, not just on Kindle. When an author is in Kindle Unlimited that means that they have made their book exclusively available to Kindle and you won't be able to get the digital version of their book anywhere else at all. In exchange for making their new book exclusively available to Kindle, Amazon rewards authors by paying them a small fee for every single page that a reader reads. Currently this works out at around $0.00488 (just under half a cent) per page. Amazon calculates page reads not by what we might know as page reads, but as a KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Page) count, a kind of unified metric. So the more popular the book is, the more page reads it gets, and the more money the author will earn, so sometimes the author can be paid more than what they would get if a person simply bought a copy of the digital book instead. For the authors who have the most page reads per month, they can get an All-Stars bonus or award. How to Show your Favourite Author your LoveIf you downloaded an author's book, the best way to show them some love if the book is in Kindle Unlimited, is to go ahead and actually read their book. That way they will receive some royalties for your page reads. The other thing you can do is leave them a review and to tell others about the book if you think those people might enjoy it too. The more page reads your favourite author gets, the better chance they have of other readers finding their books for the first time, and the more money they will be able to earn, which all helps with the costs of things like editing, book cover design, formatting, etc. In the long run, that means better quality, and more free books for you as the reader. If you want Amazon to let you know when that author has a new book out, then it's worth following that author on Amazon too. Like my author page here. Where do I go to Find Kindle Books, Kindle Unlimited Books, and Free Books?If you are like me and you love to find new cozy mystery books and to read books of other authors, the best way to find new books is to check out the cozy mystery bestsellers lists on Amazon. You can find the bestseller lists by looking underneath any book to see what category it is in. Let's take one of Adele Abbot's books as an example. In the first image we see that the book is available at three different prices and formats. The Kindle Unlimited edition is free, the paperback is £7.49, and the audiobook is £16.97. If we look to the box on the right side, we can see that the ebook is also available to buy for £2.99. Next on the product page, we will see, in this case, a list of other books from the same series, along with the prices and the Kindle Unlimited banner above the image. Sometimes there are similar images of similar books by other authors, or sponsored products where the author has paid to have their book featured next to the particular book you are looking at. Below this you will find the product details, and at the bottom of these, if the book is currently ranking in the charts, you will see which categories it is ranking for. For this particular book 'Witch is when Life Got Complicated', we can see that it is currently at number 5 for cozy mystery books with a hobby or craft theme, is at number 10 in the bestselling cozy mystery animal books, and it is ranked at position 122 for mystery books with a female sleuth.    To find out which other books are on the bestseller list, we can click on any of the words in the rank, so if we click on 'cozy animal mystery' this is the page we get next:  Sometimes publishers and authors don't have their books in the right categories unfortunately, but on the whole if you love cozy mystery books about animals then the books in this category should be exactly what you are looking for. These are the bestselling animal cozy mysteries on Amazon right now, and if you have Kindle Unlimited you can click on the image for each of the books with the Kindle Unlimited branding, and borrow them to read for free. There are actually two bestseller lists here, and if you look right below where it says 'BEST SELLERS IN COZY ANIMAL MYSTERY' you will see that it says 'TOP 100 PAID' and 'TOP 100 FREE'. Click on where it says 'TOP 100 FREE' and this is what we get now:  The top 100 bestseller list updates itself every hour or so, and the books are ranked by country, so if you visit the UK Amazon store, the books might be slightly different to the books in the USA store or the Canadian, Indian, Mexican, Australian, or Italian store or whatever, so it's worth checking them all out for even more free books to download. But basically, you can download all of these books absolutely free, even if you aren't in Kindle Unlimited, and they will be yours to keep forever. The difference is that the author does not get paid per page read as they have given a copy of their book away for free in the hopes that you might read it, and become a fan of their other books. Authors spend a lot of hours creating their books, so don't forget to show them a little love and leave them a review or follow their author page as a thank you. If a Book is Available for Free, Won't it Be Rubbish?Totally not the case. These books are exactly the same books that are available in the paid store, in fact most of them are usually around £3.99 or more to purchase as a book. The only difference is that they are on a free promotion for up to 5 days (for Kindle Unlimited), or the author is not exclusive to Amazon and has decided to make the book permanently free so that readers can try out the first book in their series, in the hopes that they will then go on to buy all of the other books in the series. You will that London Lovett does this with her first book in series (Image below). That's a lot of high quality books you've got to keep you busy with reading, and at zero cost to you!! That's pretty cool when you think about it. Much like when you go to Starbucks or wherever and they have little bit of a cake sliced up so you can try it and see if you like it. If you do, chances are you will want to come back for more! To download a book on Amazon, simply click on it's cover image, then in the box on the right, click on the button to download the book. It will give you the option to download the book to your computer, mobile phone Kindle app, or tablet computer. Then all you have to do is to open the app and start reading your book. Personally, I tend to download all 100 of the books when I see them on free promotion, and then I check back in from time to time to see if there are any other new books that I don't yet have. That way I always have books stored on my computer or phone to read when I get the chance, and they don't ever expire.  Finding Kindle, Free, and Kindle Unlimited Books Using the Search BarThe other way to find books to read on Kindle is to use Amazon's search bar at the top of the page. You can either scroll down to 'KINDLE STORE' or you can type into the search bar and it will suggest the common things that people have searched for, like 'FREE BOOKS', or 'FREE KINDLE UNLIMITED BOOKS'.
Can I Try Kindle Unlimited for Free to See if I Like it?Yes you can. Amazon offers a 30 day free trial so that you can see how you get on. And if you don't like it then you just cancel before the paid subscription (£7.99 a month in the UK) starts. You can get all of my books on Kindle Unlimited so it could be a good way to get them all for free, along with loads of other books, and magazines too. Don't forget that you will need to sign up for your own country's Amazon store though, so if you are in the USA you will need to get an Amazon.com account not a UK account, but once you are set up you can continue to download books even if you are travelling to another country. There are load of books for children, adults, young adults, across all genres as well as non-fiction and self help books, revision books for exams, and fiction books.  I Know I Don't Need a Kindle to Read Kindle Books on, But I've Got a Birthday Coming Up and I'd Like to Have a Dedicated Reading Device. Are they Very Expensive to Buy? |
 | KINDLE FIRE £39.99 This is the lowest entry point, but is great value for a Kindle reader and comes in a few different colour covers. You can also access Alexa on it, watch Netflix videos, check your Facebook, Twitter, etc. Brilliant if you are on the move a lot, or if you want to get your kids into reading Kindle books without the worry of them breaking something really expensive. |
 | KINDLE £59.99 This Kindle doesn't have the other distractions of Facebook, etc, and is more tailored to reading only. It has the added benefit of a low light screen for bedtime reading, and feels a bit more like reading a regular book. |
 | Kindle Paperwhite £99.99 This is the next level up, though to be honest I don't know what the extra features are compared to the £59.99 version (which also includes Audible for audiobooks unlike this one). |
 | Kindle Oasis £229.99 The Kindle Oasis is the first waterproof Kindle, which makes it great for cruises and beach holidays. All of the Kindles have anti glare screens, and this one in particular has great battery life and you can listen to your Audible audiobooks on it too. |
So there we have it. Hopefully that has answered some of your Kindle related questions. Happy reading!
October is all about culinary cozy mysteries and you can download all of the following books and previews for free on Prolifick Reads. This is a great way to try out books by other authors to see if they are your cup of tea. If you are an author, why not add your book to one of the future collections. There are even more culinary mystery themed books over in the Cozy Mystery Book Explorer private group on Facebook.
Risky Bisqueness by Hillary Avis
 | When the public library computers are stolen in a late-night burglary, Bethany Bradstreet misses out on a catering job that would have paid this month’s rent. To add sizzle to the pie, the bakery where she works has to shut down because of mice—the little thieves. With no money and no job prospects, Bethany only has her suspicious nature to fall back on as she hunts down Newbridge’s most notorious sticky fingers (and paws). Risky Bisqueness is a clean cozy mystery with no cliffhangers or explicit content. The novelette is a complete short read that takes place between Book 1 and Book 2 of the Death Du Jour series (releasing Autumn 2018). |
Cupcakes and Curses by P.L. Harris
 | Murder and cupcakes, a deadly mix. Clair McCorrson has spent the last three years building her business. CC’s Simply Cupcakes with her sister gaining a reputation for mouth-watering excellence in their seaside town of Ashton Point. Expanding their business to the nearby town of Watson’s Creek is Clair’s idea, and acquiring the Sweets Mansion is her dream come true, her chance to step out from her sister’s shadow and make it on her own. Clair’s excitement quickly turns sour when she stumbles across the murdered body of local settlement agent. Newspaper headlines screaming Cupcake Killer Strikes Again! Clair’s life seems to be going from bad to worse. Bodies literally begin to mount up and all the evidence points to Clair. Wrongly accused of murder, it’s a race against time to find the real culprit before she spends the rest of her life behind bars. The is book 2 in The Cupcake Capers Series and may contain elements of humour, drama, and danger. However, it will definitely not contain any of the following potentially lethal substances: swearing or profanity, gore or graphic scenes and cliff-hangers or unsolved endings. |
Mocha Cake and Murder by Angelica Willow
 | When Libby Landry reopens the Caffeinated Cakery after a devastating fire, she has high hopes she’ll recoup enough funds to keep the debt collectors off her back. But when a handyman is found face down in her lobby with a knife between his shoulders, the shop is declared a crime scene and Libby is forced to shut the doors once more. Libby is confident the police will catch the killer and she’ll be back to the grind in no time. That is, until her ex-husband is assigned to the case. With her business teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, she refuses to sit by while the man who broke her heart holds her future in her hands. Will she catch the killer? Or will she have to close up shop for good? This is a preview. Get the full book. |
The Salty Taste of Murder by Christine Zane Thomas
 | The food here is to die for... Thirty-year-old Allie Treadwell is a singleton. She's a foodie, and a runner. A restaurant reviewer by day, and a Netflix aficionado by night. Even if it doesn’t make her the most popular dinner guest in the charming southern town of Lanai, Georgia, Allie’s reviews are always honest. And her latest is no different from any other. But Allie’s review isn’t the only thing to hit the newsstand. The restaurant’s owner and Allie’s one-time high school nemesis, Jessica Hayes, is found murdered. When Jessica’s husband, Miller, is labeled the prime suspect, Allie’s convinced the police are mistaken. As if dodging the bad press while she works to clear Miller’s name isn't enough, one false step could put the real killer onto her. |
Dead on Doughnuts by Sarah Jane Weldon
 | Madeleine and her best friend Eloise are working at a coffee shop in the Austrian ski resort of Val D’Isera, saving up for uni. Both are nervous but excited as this is their first time away from home and both are looking forward to the adventure. When a customer dies after eating one of Madeleine's doughnuts, Madeleine and Eloise are thrust into a mystery that they must solve. Failure to clear their names could spell disaster for the whole resort. |
