Antique Auctions Are Murder

by Libby Klein

Overview

When vintage items go up for auction, gluten-free baker and B&B owner Poppy McAllister discovers some people will pay the ultimate price. . .
 
It’s peak summer season at the Butterfly House Bed and Breakfast in Cape May, with tourists fluttering in and out and wreaking enough havoc to rival a Jersey Shore hurricane. Also back in town is Courtney Whipple and his family of antique dealers for the annual Cold Spring Village antique show. Courtney’s son Auggie has a unique piece he believes will fetch them a fortune if he can get it authenticated in time—a piece rival dealer Grover Prickle insists was stolen from his store.
 
Poppy and her Aunt Ginny attend the auction, hoping to bid on an armoire for the B&B, and discover a veritable armory for sale—everything from ancient blades and nineteenth century guns to such potential killing devices as knitting needles and a blacksmith hammer. Strangely, they don’t see either Auggie or Grover—or the mysterious item they both claim to own. Then during the auction, a body falls out of the very armoire Poppy was hoping to acquire, stabbed through the heart. Now, surrounded by competitive dealers and makeshift weapons, she must find out who turned the auction house into a slaughterhouse . . .
 
Includes Seven Recipes from Poppy’s Kitchen!
 
“Lots of comical characters keep the chuckles coming as the determined Poppy solves a surprisingly difficult puzzle.”
—Kirkus Reviews on Midnight Snacks Are Murder

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496733177
Publisher:	Kensington
Publication date:	02/22/2022
Series:	Poppy McAllister Series , #7
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	90,535
File size:	946 KB

About the Author

Libby Klein is author of the Vice and Virtue series and the Poppy McAllister mysteries. A member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, she writes out of her Northern Virginia home with her sweet black Lab named Vader, and a very naughty Persian named Miss Eliza Doolittle. Please visit her at https://libbykleinbooks.com/ where you can find links to all of her social media.
 

Editorial Reviews

2021-11-30
A Cape May B&B looks more and more like an insane asylum.

Poppy McAllister runs the Butterfly Wings Bed and Breakfast with her eccentric Aunt Ginny, whose Victorian home is perfect for the purpose. Aunt Ginny’s oddball friends are always getting Poppy in trouble, and this time, Thelma Davis, whose relatives are deep into the antiques trade, involves her in yet another murder. Thelma’s brother, prizewinning gardener Courtney, has two children who are already fighting over their inheritance and a stepdaughter desperate to get pregnant. There seems to be nothing Courtney's son Auggie won’t do to inherit the family antiques business, so when his lifeless body tumbles out of an armoire in the middle of an auction at Adams Galleries, stabbed with a priceless stake from a vampire-hunting kit, Poppy has a plethora of suspects. Nor is murder her only problem. A widow with a body image problem, she can’t believe her gorgeous boyfriend, Gia, really loves her. Her latest group of guests are all kooks, her cook hates her, and the chambermaid has such a bad case of sunburn that Poppy has to press her late husband's mother, who’s never cleaned anything in her life, into service. Competing dealer Grover Prickle certainly had it in for Auggie, as does Blake Adams, the auction house owner, and yes, there are even more enemies. Overrun with Courtney’s gifts of kohlrabi and her nonstop annoying guests, Poppy struggles to crack the case.

Suspects and recipes galore don’t make up for zanies who strain belief in a story ripe for some judicious pruning.

Kirkus Reviews