Shelton, Carlisle & McKinlay @ The Poisoned Pen

John Charles recently welcomed authors Paige Shelton, Kate Carlisle and Jenn McKinlay to The Poisoned Pen. Shelton’s latest book is Lost Hours. Carlisle’s is The Twelve Books of Christmas. McKinlay’s latest Cupcake Bakery mystery is Sugar Plum Poisoned. You can order signed copies through the Webstore.

Here’s the description of Lost Hours.

Lost Hours is the fifth instalment in Paige Shelton’s gripping, atmospheric Alaska Wild series.

A year after arriving in Benedict, Beth Rivers is feeling very at home in Alaska, even as outsiders are starting to return to enjoy the brief summer perfection. Beth feels like she’s finally let go of most of her demons. She’s even found her father, Eddy Rivers—or, rather, he found her—and she’s trying to find the middle ground between anger and forgiveness.

One sunny July day, Beth boards a tourist ship to see the glaciers, the main reason visitors venture to the area, and something Beth hasn’t attempted until now. But when the captain has to navigate to an island, a bloodied woman is found standing on the shore, waving for help. When she’s brought aboard, she claims she was kidnapped from her home in Juneau three days earlier, and that a bear on the island killed her captor. She, however, is unharmed.

The woman, Sadie, finds a sympathetic ear in Beth. She tells her that she’s been in Juneau under witness protection, and that the Juneau police don’t like her. When another kidnapping occurs, Beth and police chief Gril can’t help but think the two cases are interwoven, though the clues to solving them will be harder to unravel.


PAIGE SHELTON had a nomadic childhood, as her father’s job as a football coach took her family to seven different towns before she was even twelve years old. After college at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, she moved to Salt Lake City. She thought she’d only stay a couple years, but instead she fell in love with the mountains and a great guy who became her husband. After many decades in Utah, she and her family moved to Arizona. She writes the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series and the Alaska Wild series.Her other series include the Farmers’ Market, Cooking School, and Dangerous Type mystery series.


Kate Carlisle’s Bibliophile Mystery is The Twelve Books of Christmas.

The first ever Christmas mystery in the beloved New York Times bestselling Bibliophile Mystery series!

San Francisco book-restoration expert Brooklyn Wainwright and her hunky security-expert husband, Derek Stone, face a locked-room murder mystery during the holidays in Scotland.

In the middle of a wonderful Christmas holiday in Dharma, Brooklyn and Derek receive a frantic phone call from their dear friend Claire in Loch Ness, Scotland. The laird of the castle, Cameron MacKinnon, has just proposed to her! They plan to be married on New Year’s Day, and they want Derek and Brooklyn to be their witnesses. And while they’re visiting, Claire hopes that Brooklyn will be able to solve a little mystery that’s occurred in the castle library—twelve very rare, very important books have gone missing.

Once in Scotland, Brooklyn starts working on the mystery of the missing books but is soon distracted by all of the thumping and bumping noises she’s been hearing in the middle of the night. You’d think the Ghost of Christmas Past had taken up residence. But when one of the guests is poisoned and another is killed by an arrow through the heart, Brooklyn and Derek know this is not the work of any ghost. Now they must race to find a killer and a book thief before another murder occurs and their friends’ bright and happy future turns dark and deadly.


Kate Carlisle is the New York Times bestselling author of the Bibliophile Mysteries, including Little Black Book and The Grim Reader, as well as the Fixer-Upper Mysteries, including Absence of Mallets.


Sugar Plum Poisoned is the first Christmas mystery in the Cupcake Bakery series.

It’s Christmastime, and this holiday season, things are heating up for the bakers at Fairy Tale Cupcakes, in the newest Cupcake Bakery Mystery from New York Times bestselling author Jenn McKinlay.

When up-and-coming singing sensation Shelby Vaughn arrives in town for two weeks of concert dates, she hires her old friend Angie and the rest of the bakery crew to supply cupcakes for the VIP guest lounge every night.

After overhearing Shelby in a heated argument with her manager, Mel is concerned, but she and the crew decide to make the best of their time working with the star. Just as the bakers fall into the rhythm of the job, Shelby’s manager is found dead, clutching a bit of fabric from a Santa suit and a cupcake. With the bakery crew and Shelby’s backup dancers all dressed in similar Santa costumes, it’s impossible to say who is the killer. When all suspicions lead back to Shelby, Mel and Angie stand up for their friend, determined to prove her innocence before she’s frosted for a crime she didn’t commit.


Jenn McKinlay is the award-winning New York TimesUSA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of several mystery and romance series. Her work has been translated into multiple languages in countries all over the world. She lives in sunny Arizona in a house that is overrun with kids, pets, and her husband’s guitars.


Enjoy the conversation with Paige Shelton, Kate Carlisle, and Jenn McKinlay.