HALLOWEEN NIGHT MURDER novella collection featuring Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Liz Ireland will be released on August 26, 2025, by Kensington Cozies.
HALLOWEEN NIGHT MURDER by Leslie Meier
Lucy Stone is shocked on the morning after Halloween when she learns that a teenage trick-or-treater was killed by a hit-and-run driver near her home. The teenager’s siblings are living in squalor at a nearby abandoned house where their mother’s boyfriend is illegally breeding cats. Lucy helps the younger kids get into a foster home and then, under the guise of her newspaper reporter job, investigates who killed their brother and then fled the scene.
I have read a couple of Leslie Meier’s Lucy Stone Mysteries, so I was familiar with the main characters and the setting. Out of the three novellas, I enjoyed this one of the most. There was not as much focus on Halloween as I would have liked, but the mystery was solid and the plot kept me engaged.
DEATH OF A HALLOWEEN NIGHT STALKER by Lee Hollis
Following a concert in Boston, Hayley Powell and her friends attempt to return to their homes in rural Maine during a severe storm. After accidentally driving off the road, they seek help at an isolated house that they come upon in the literal middle of nowhere. The residents—a mother and son duo—give Hayley and her friends the creeps. Unable to call for help, the three women try to flee the house of horrors but are repeatedly thwarted by the weather and their hosts.
It’s obvious who the bad guys are in DEATH OF A HALLOWEEN NIGHT STALKER. The question is, what exactly have they done in the past? What crimes are they guilty of? And what lengths are they willing to go to continue hiding those crimes? This story was full of suspense and kept me rushing to the end to see what would happen.
MRS. CLAUS AND THE WILY WITCH by Liz Ireland
It’s Halloween at the North Pole, and a disgraced, caramel-making elf is accused of casting spells on a grumpy snowman. Mrs. Claus believes Flake the elf is being wrongly accused, and she recruits a witch from the outreaches of the North Pole to help reverse the spell and find the person responsible before Halloween is ruined for everyone.
I don’t know exactly what I was expecting with MRS. CLAUS AND THE WILY WITCH, but it was not this…The elves I could deal with. But the talking snowmen and reindeer…It was just too much for me to handle. The story was well-written, but it did not compel me to read any more of the books in the series. I did thoroughly enjoy the crazy witch that Mrs. Claus brings in to help reverse the curse on the snowman. If there was a series featuring Imelda as the main character, I would be tempted to read that. She was a hoot.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.