It's

Cozy Food Friday

and a

*****!!!GIVEAWAY!!!*****

That means it's time to share a recipe from 

another great cozy mystery!

Today I'm featuring a recipe from

Book 8 in the Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mysteries

DEATH OF A PUMPKIN CARVER

by

Lee Hollis

Pre-order now.

Available August 30!

For Hayley Powell, food and cocktails columnist for the Island Times, Halloween is all about costume parties and holiday treats—until a killer crashes the party...

This Halloween, Hayley can’t imagine a worse trick than her ex-husband Danny returning to Bar Harbor. Her kids may be happy to see their dad, but Hayley’s determined not to be taken in by his charms, and suspects he’s in financial trouble—again.

Still, the haunted holiday is about to get a whole lot scarier after Danny’s moonshine-making uncle is found lying dead next to a tombstone in a cemetery—and Danny quickly becomes the prime suspect. To prove her ex is innocent, Hayley will have to dig deep into her own bag of tricks to unmask the real culprit . . . before anyone else—including her—ends up in the graveyard...

Includes delectable recipes from Hayley’s kitchen!

About Lee Hollis

Holly Simason

Holly Simason is an award winning food and cocktails columnist who worked for the Mount Desert Islander newspaper in Bar Harbor, Maine for ten years.

While working at the paper, she won her first award for her column in 2010. It was at that point her brother Rick Copp saw an opportunity. He writes mysteries and she writes recipes. Combine the two for a new book series. They would write under a pen name comprised of their middle names “Lee” and “Hollis”. And the successful Hayley Powell Food & Cocktails Mystery series was born.

Holly now resides on the Crystal Coast in North Carolina where she continues to write the popular series with her brother. She is also busy creating and testing new recipes for a future Hayley Powell cookbook.

Holly continues to visit her home town of Bar Harbor every summer where the series is set to reconnect with friends and keep her Maine roots intact.

Any similarities between her and Hayley Powell are strictly coincidental.

Rick Copp

Rick Copp is a veteran TV and Film scriptwriter whose many credits include The Golden Girls, Wings, Teen Titans, The Brady Bunch Movie, Scooby Doo, Barbershop among many others. Currently he writes, produces and stars in the hit web series Where the Bears Are.

In 2003, he wrote his first comedic murder mystery The Actor’s Guide to Murder, which was followed by two sequels. He also penned a 2007 stand alone novel Fingerprints & Facelifts and a 2010 graphic novel Celebrity Zombie Killers. Once he read his sister’s food and cocktails column, he became an instant fan of her recipes and it was his editor at Kensington Publishing who first suggested a cozy mystery series with recipes featuring an intrepid food columnist with a nose for crime solving.

Rick bounces back and forth between LA where he continues to work on TV and film projects and Palm Springs, California where he writes the Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mystery series.

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*****!!!GIVEAWAY!!!*****

Win one of 4 signed copies of

DEATH OF A PUMPKIN CARVER

This giveaway is open

WORLDWIDE!

Use the Rafflecopter form at the end of this post to enter

Please note: The author is waiting for copies to arrive. There may be about a two week wait before the winning books are mailed out. 

MY REVIEW

Eight must be a magic number for author Lee Hollis, because this is the best Hayley Powell mystery to date! (I bet I’ve said that before, but it’s always true)

I am in my happy place when reading. I’m in my thrilled place when reading a cozy mystery. But I am in my ecstatic place when reading a Hayley Powell Food and Cocktail Mystery! DEATH OF A PUMPKIN CARVER practically had me in a reading coma of bliss! I didn’t come up for food, drinks, or potty breaks once I opened the book. What I did do is laugh a lot, gasp a lot, and have some full on “no way” shout out loud moments!

Along with all the other great characters associated with this series, in DEATH OF A PUMPKIN CARVER we finally get to meet Hayley’s ex-husband. I can see why they’re no longer married, but having Danny around for this book made for an intriguing storyline, and gave the police someone to blame the murder on. Despite their differences, Hayley knows Danny is no killer, and she sets out to prove it.

A fast moving story, things really turned into a reading frenzy near the conclusion of the book with the reveal of the culprit and all that followed. I was sitting dangerously close to the edge of my recliner by the time the book was over. I’m not ashamed to admit, when I finished reading I held the book close to me and just smiled. J

You’re going to devour the wonderful recipes spread throughout this book! And, there’s a sneak peek of the next Hayley Powell mystery, DEATH OF A LOBSTER LOVER.

On to the recipe!

EASY PUMPKIN CHILI in the CROCK-POT

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 pound ground beef

1 onion chopped

2 14-ounce cans diced tomatoes

2 cups fresh pumpkin

1 15-ounce can chili beans

1 15-ounce can black beans

3 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon pumpkin spice

1 tablespoon chili powder

Feel free to spice this up to your taste.

Heat the tablespoon of olive oil in a pan on the stove on medium heat; add your ground beef chopping it up with a spoon and cook until brown. 

Add the ground beef and all the ingredients to the Crock-Pot , stirring to combine all the ingredients. 

Set on low heat and cook for 6 hours. 

I like to eat my bowl of chili with a big slice of buttered cornbread. It's so darn good on a chilly evening. ~ Hayley

With cold weather coming (very soon I hope), and pumpkins a plenty, this is the perfect recipe for a hearty dinner!

~*~*~

Please keep reading and check out my 

installments of 

Book Beginnings on Fridays

and

The Friday 56

~~~~~~~~~~~~

My Book Beginnings and Friday 56

 for this week are also from 

DEATH OF A PUMPKIN CARVER

Book Beginnings on Fridays is a meme hosted by Rose City Reader

Share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading

My Book Beginnings

Halloween was Hayley Powell's favorite day of the year, but it was also incredibly dangerous. 

Especially for her waistline.

All that candy. 

The peanut butter cups. 

The candy corn. 

The mini Milky Way bars. 

The Friday 56 is a meme hosted by Freda's Voice

Rules: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader (If you have to improvise, that's okay.) *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grab you. *Post it.

My Friday 56

"I like the ray gun," he said giving her a quick once-over before turning his attention back to his movie.

As always, please leave a comment and 

let me know what you think!

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GOOD LUCK!

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