As of November 16, Marry in Haste has been shipped from the publisher and is now winding its way across the country to warehouses where it will be inventoried and then shipped off once again to places like Amazon.com, Target.com, and BarnesandNoble.com. It will also begin shipping to libraries who are closely affiliated with the sales at Five Star Publishing.
Folks who ordered it as an e-book will see it downloaded, so they will get a head start.
It has been a long two-year wait for this book, so if you read Three May Keep a Secret, you know that it ended with a terrible injustice being righted at the Shady Meadows Cemetery in Endurance. Grace Kimball placed a small object on a coffin that was being moved to a new resting place with a different name on the stone.
TJ Sweeney’s books are closed on the Brenda Norris murder investigation, and another murder victim is now resting, along with Brenda, in the Shady Meadows Cemetery. For a small town like Endurance, two murders in one summer is an all-time record. The 175th centennial of the town is now over, Mayor Blandford has gone back to writing notes on his next speech about the history of the town, and costumes have been put away, waiting for the next generation of celebrants.
Now it is winter, 2012, and snow has fallen in the Midwestern town of Endurance, covering up the blood of the summer and providing a fresh new start. (I can hear you thinking, “Ah, but not for long!”) Charlie Sims has gone back to his quiet farming retirement, and Jill Cunningham is still out running each morning. Deb O’Hara is trudging through the snow from her car to her volunteer job at the Endurance Historical Society. Jeff Maitlin is still editing the newspaper three times a week, and Grace is writing historical columns. TJ Sweeney, Endurance police detective, is stopping by Grace’s occasionally for dinner and a piece of Lettie Kimball’s most recent pie. Lettie has a few surprises coming up in her life.
Things have gone “back to normal” since the fall when they all gathered at the cemetery.
Now it’s January, Christmas is over, and Jeff Maitlin decides to stay in the small town of Endurance permanently. He buys a gargantuan 1800s house known as Lockwood House, and he plans to renovate it and turn it into a bed & breakfast.
It appears that, as we suspected in the first book, he and Grace are dating.
But you know what happens when an author gets her hands on characters who look like they might be happy and have a wonderful future together. You guessed it. Things won’t stay calm and quiet in Endurance for very long. What was that saying about the course of true love?
I hope you enjoy this second offering about life in the small town of Endurance. I’d like to know that you feel as comfortable as I do in this little town, and you want to visit it occasionally and find out what’s happening. You get two stories for the price of one here: a plot from 1893 and another from the present day. I loved writing these stories about two marriages that share a dark secret.
“Marry in Haste, Repent at Leisure” … Benjamin Franklin