50-Plus Give-Away!

I told myself that if I reached 50 followers I would start thinking about putting together a Give-Away to celebrate. I have now gathered 59 new friends and followers and the time has come. I will be awarding books to two lucky winners....if by chance I manage to top 100 followers, I will give away all four books shown below. Naturally, since I'm a big mystery fan, the prizes are all mystery-related and all are books that I have read and recommend.

Okay, here's the big question: What do you have to do to enter?

1. You must be a follower to be eligible. Every follower is eligible--no matter where you live. If I can mail it to you, you can enter.
2. Simply comment below and, if you like, post a link back to this contest on your blog.
3. Hum "It's So Easy..." to yourself. (optional)
4. Wait until September 12th to see if you're a winner.

That's it. This is my first try at a give-away, so I thought I'd better make it easy on everybody. Sometime in the evening of September 12th, I will put the names of all entrants into a hat and have either my husband or son draw the winners. I will contact the winners to find out address and book preference. The first name drawn will have first choice and the second name will choose from the books remaining (and so on if 41 others join my happy band by next Sunday).

Here are the prizes:



100 malicious little mysteries (selected by Isaac Asimov, Martin H Greenberg & Joseph D. Olander): "Charmingly insidious, satisfying, & devious...[It] is the perfect book to fit your most malevolent mood. Each story has its own particular & irresistible appeal--that unexpected twist, a delectable puzzle, a devastating relevation, or perhaps a reassuring display of pernicious spite."






The Wench Is Dead (Colin Dexter) "The body of Joanna Franks was found at Duke's Cut on the Oxford Canal at about five-thirty a.m. on Wednesday, 22 June 1859. At around ten-fifteen a.m. on a Saturday morning in 1989 the body of Chief Inspector Morse--though very much alive--was removed to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Treatment for a perforated ulcer was later pronounced successful. As Morse begins his recovery, he comes across an account of the investigation and trial that followed Joanna Frank's death...and becomes convinced that the two men hanged for her murder were innocent..."




The Death of Colonel Mann (Cynthia Peale) "Behind curtained windows, in the proper parlors of town houses lining cobblestoned streets, the lives of Bostonians in the highest classes of a stratified Victorian society may not be exactly what they seem. And there are always those waiting to denounce the smallest indiscretion, as well as those who would kill to preserve their reputations."





Maisie Dobbs (Jacqueline Winspear) "The daughter of a struggling greengrocer, Maisie Dobbs was only thirteen when she was sent to work as a maid for wealthy London aristocrats. But being bright & thoughtful beyond her years, Maisie studies her way to Cambridge, then serves as a nurse in the Great War. Now, it's the spring of 1929...and Maisie has just opened her own detective agency. Her first assignment, a seemingly open-and-shut infidelity case, will reveal a much deeper, darker mystery, forcing Maisie to revisit the horrors of the war & the ghost she left behind."