This Easter was my first one ever away from home—or I should say away from my mother’s Easter breakfast, egg hunt, and afternoon feast of lamb and twice-baked potatoes. (What can I say the woman knows how to hide an egg and season a Brussels sprout.)
I’m no spring chick, and I wasn’t sure how my absence would go down: with the family or with me.
Nonetheless the wee hours of Easter morning saw me on a plane headed east to help an old friend struggling to coax a manuscript into the story he was meant to tell, a looming deadline having made it an emergency take-no-prisoners operation.
And while the day was not a typical Devlin Easter for sure: no vigil Mass with my family, no bartering with siblings over Russell Stover cream eggs (we always have too many strawberry, not enough vanilla), and no opportunistic round-trip drive to Grandma’s in which to wheedle information from my youngest son (I rarely have access where he can’t flee and I can no longer out run him). It ended up being a lovely Easter.
I returned home with my friend’s book back on track and the realization that while roast turkey and horse radish go quite well together (who knew!?), nothing beats a sweet slab of Easter ham.
There are many ways to celebrate a holiday . . . but nothing, not baskets of chocolate or tins of coffee cakes or blooming azaleas, beats helping a friend in need.
Out in the American West, #1 New York Times Best-selling Author Linda Lael Miller had her own simple down-home Easter, she says, complete with turkey and mashed potatoes and four canine guests. Last we heard she was worried about spring flowers surviving an unexpected April snow Monday. This month, Harlequin reissues the paperback McKettricks of Texas: Austin, Book 13 in Miller’s best-selling McKettricks series.
A few states over with the Easter weekend also behind her, #1 New York Times Best-selling Author Robyn Carr was headed today to Scottsdale where she’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes tidbits about her latest book, Never Too Late, at the Scottsdale Civic Center Library—she follows that with a tea, talk, and book signing of Never Too Late tomorrow morning at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale.
Fittingly for the season Carr’s new book is about a woman who learns that it only takes three seconds to turn a whole life around.
For readers craving a little historical romance, don’t miss the new Amanda Quick hardcover Garden of Lies with its “coolly capable heroine” and its “dashing hero, who has some wonderful Indian Jones-like qualities,” according to Booklist’s recent starred review. And if you missed Quick’s Otherwise Engaged in hardcover last year, your wait is over: the romantic suspense set in England is now out in paperback.
Meanwhile the final chapter in Rebecca Zanetti’s Sins Brother Series, Total Surrender: Sins Brothers Book 4, is out and basking in the glow from an RT Book Reviews Top Pick designation.
And last but not least for you aspiring Rachael Rays and Martha Stewarts who found that whipping up Easter brunch failed to satisfy your cooking itch, why not pick up The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook—Wickedly Good Meals and Desserts to Die For by J.T. Ellison, with recipes from Lee Child, Mary Higgins Clark, Harlan Coben, Nelson DeMille, Gillian Flynn, Sue Grafton, Charlaine Harris, James Patterson, Louise Penny, Scott Turow, and a host of other plot stirrers.
Be sure to share which mystery writer you thought shared the best recipe!
I’m dying to know.
One person who comments on today’s blog will win a trio of Berkley Jove books!
—Jeanne Devlin
My favorite two things in life lol books and food 🙂