It's

Cozy Food Friday

That means it's time to share a recipe from 

another great cozy mystery!

Today I'm featuring 

DEATH BY EGGNOG

by

Lee Hollis

from the 

EGGNOG MURDER 

anthology by authors

Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross

With the fireplace crackling, the tree twinkling, and the carols humming, few things in life are as picture perfect as Christmas in Maine—until murder dampens the holiday spirit. It must be something in the eggnog . . .
 
EGGNOG MURDER by LESLIE MEIER
When a gift-wrapped bottle of eggnog—allegedly from the Real Beard Santa Club—proves to be a killer concoction for a Tinker’s Cove local, all Lucy Stone wants for Christmas is to find the murdering mixologist who’s stirring up trouble.
 
DEATH BY EGGNOG by LEE HOLLIS
Food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell has never cared much for Bar Harbor’s grouchy town librarian, Agatha Farnsworth. But after the Scroogy senior has a fatal—and suspicious—allergic reaction to supposedly non-dairy eggnog, it’s up to Hayley to ladle out some justice.
 
NOGGED OFF by BARBARA ROSS
Julia Snowden’s tenant Imogen Geinkes seems to be jinxed. First, her poorly named “Killer Eggnog” gives all her co-workers food poisoning at the holiday party, then her boyfriend’s body shows up in Julia’s moving truck as she’s headed back to Busman’s Harbor. Now Julia has to get moving to catch the cold-hearted culprit. 
 
Cozy up with a glass of eggnog and enjoy the spirit of murder and mystery in a Yuletide treat perfect for those winter holidays . . .

!!!GIVEAWAY!!!

Lee Hollis is giving four (4) lucky winners 

a signed hardcover copy of

EGGNOG MURDER

This giveaway is open Worldwide! 

You the Rafflecopter form at the end of this post.

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.

MY REVIEW

I’ve heard good things come in small packages. In this particular case…Great things!

I’m a huge fan of the Hayley Powell Food and Cocktails Mysteries. Not to go all Kathy Bates Misery or anything, but there is a chance I am this series biggest fan! So, when I got my hands on the EGGNOG MURDER anthology by authors Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross, of course I had to read DEATH BY EGGNOG by Lee Hollis first!

With DEATH BY EGGNOG being half the length (or less) than a whole book in this series, Lee Hollis still pens a cohesive tale from beginning to end with the same brilliance as a full length book. The story moved at a fast pace, but was in no way rushed, and still had all the mystery, hilarity, and intelligence that I have come to know and look forward to with each and every Hayley Powell book.

I was stumped as to who the killer was. The ending took me completely by surprise. I read the reveal with on the edge of my seat, opened mouth, and muttering Nah-uh over and over. Well done!

DEATH BY EGGNOG is a true tasty delight!

Today's recipe is from

DEATH OF A PUMPKIN CARVER

by Lee Hollis

HAYLEY'S PUMPKIN 

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Ingredients

1 stick of butter melted (½ cup)

¼ cup brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

6 tablespoons pumpkin puree

1 ½ cups flour

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

½ cup chocolate chips

Directions

In a bowl mix your melted butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar together. Whisk in the vanilla and pumpkin puree.

In a large bowl mix together your flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Pour your wet ingredients into your dry and mix together. This dough will be soft. Mix in your chocolate chips and cover and chill the fridge for at least 30 minutes or up to 3 days.

Line your baking sheets with parchment paper and remove dough from fridge. Take rounded tablespoons full of dough and make balls and place on cookie sheets. Lightly flatten with your hand. Bake in a preheated oven for 10 minutes then remove from oven cool slightly and place on wire rack to finish cooling. 

Oh yeah. You can smell them, can't you?

You know you're going to bake some of your own!

~*~*~

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 from 

DEATH BY EGGNOG

from the

EGGNOG MURDER

anthology

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

Hayley wasn't sure she had heard right. She looked up from her desktop computer to see Island Times crime reporter Bruce Linney staring at her and waiting for an answer. 

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 

(Since this is the second

story in an anthology, 

the 56th page is actually 

page 188)

"You know, last night I had a dream that he came here and arrested me and I was carted off to jail and then convicted of first-degree murder and sent to a state prison and had to wear one of those unflattering orange jumpsuits like on that Netflix show." 

GOOD LUCK!

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