Winnie Archer's Bread Over Troubled Water Blog Tour with a Spotlight, Excerpt and Giveaway

 

I am so excited to have Winnie Archer here at Mystery Thrillers and Romantic Suspense Reviews with a Spotlight, Excerpt and Giveaway.

Thanks Winnie and Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours for allowing me to join your Bread Over Troubled Water Blog Tour!

Please take it away, Winnie!  

Excerpt

Olaya slowed her steps and surveyed Mae and Taylor, and for a second, I thought she might stop to intercede. She didn’t, though. She nodded to Felix, then carried on, almost purposely blind to the inner workings of the kitchen. The fabric of her palazzo pants snapped against her legs as she marched into her office, a space big enough to hold only a small desk and chair, a mounted bookcase, and a mini filing cabinet. She held the door open for me. I slid past her and sat in the single, ladder-backed chair facing her desk. “What’s going on?” I asked, more concerned now that I saw the dark circles around her eyes set into her drawn and pallid face. In the time I’d known Olaya, she’d never raised her voice to anyone. It wasn’t in her nature, except that I’d just witnessed it, and in front of customers no less.

She drew in a slow, shaky breath. She exhaled and said, “Oh, Ivy. Life, it is not always good.”

I’d also never heart Olaya speak so forlornly. It shook me. “What do you mean? Are you okay?”

“Me? Yes, yes. It is my brother, Guillermo, and my cuñada—my sister-in-law, Alessandra.”

I couldn’t help but react. I knew Olaya’s two sisters, Consuelo and Martina, but none of them had ever mentioned having a brother and a sister-in- law.

Her lips quivered unexpectedly, and her eyes glazed. “They . . . they were in an accident a few days ago,” she said. “Both . . . both are dead now.” I’d also never known Olaya to be a particularly religious person, but the moment the words left her lips, she crossed herself, holding together her thumb and forefinger as she pressed them against her forehead, her chest, then from her left shoulder to her right shoulder. She muttered some- thing in Spanish before adding, “God rest their souls.”

Shock and sadness surged through me. An accident. Her brother and sister-in-law, gone in the blink of an eye. I cleared my throat, swallowing my emotions. “I’m so sorry, Olaya. Can I do anything to help?”

“Guillermo and Alessandra, they have . . . had . . . one child. She is my goddaughter, Pilar,” she said, pronouncing the i like a long e, rolling the r at the end. “She is fourteen.”

“Oh no,” I breathed. I knew what it was to lose a parent. And she’d lost two. My heart instantly broke for the girl.

Olaya rubbed the center of her forehead with the tips of her fingers. She let out a deep sigh. “We are her family now. She is coming here. To stay.”

“Do you need to go get her?” I stood up and slung my camera strap over my shoulder. “Where do they live? I can drive you.”

Olaya shook her head. “No, Ivy, pero I thank you. Consuelo and Freddy, they will bring her from San Diego. Soon. Very soon.”

I sat back down, dropping my bag to the floor. “Okay. So what can I do?”

She heaved a heavy sigh. “I am not a mother, Ivy. None of us are. Only Guillo and Alessandra had a child.”

Oh God. She was worried about how she’d be able to parent her niece. “You’re a natural, Olaya. She must already love you —”

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bread Over Troubled Water (A Bread Shop Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
8th in Series
Setting – California
Kensington Cozies (November 29, 2022)
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1496733568
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1496733566
Digital ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09TX2QMZY

Rising cozy mystery author Winnie Archer cooks up her latest installment in her delightful and delicious Bread Shop Mystery series.

Photographer Ivy Culpepper is soon to make a home with her husband-to-be in the California beach town of Santa Sofia — but the Yeast of Eden bakery remains her second home. It’s not just a place to work, but a community. And now one member of the community has been murdered . . .

A regular who used Yeast of Eden as a workspace, Josh Prentiss always turned heads with his startlingly good looks and thousand-watt smile. But Ivy can’t help noticing one morning that he seems distracted and off his game. Later, during a visit to the park where she and Miguel plan to hold their engagement party — with plenty of baked goods on the menu — her rescue pug, Agatha, sniffs out Josh lying in a bed of poppies…scone cold dead.

There’s no reason for Ivy to get involved. She’s busy enough holding down the fort as the shop’s owner, Olaya, cares for her recently orphaned niece, not to mention the stress when a new employee is fired and storms out in a rage. Then a band of rabble-rousers starts picketing the bakery, claiming that Olaya’s sourdough roll is what killed Josh — and Ivy hears some salacious gossip about her beloved boss. She doesn’t think there’s a grain of truth to the seedy rumors — but to prove it, she’ll have to start sleuthing. 

 

 
 

 

 

About Winnie Archer

Winnie Archer is the nationally bestselling author of the Bread Shop Mystery series, as well as the Lola Cruz Mysteries and the Magical Dressmaking Mystery series written as Melissa Bourbon. A former middle school English teacher, lives in North Carolina with her educator husband, Carlos, and the youngest of their five children. Visit Winnie Archer online at www.MelissaBourbon.com!

Author Links Website: http://www.melissabourbon.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MelissaBourbonWinnieArcherBooks/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookishly_cozy/

Purchase Links: Kensington – Amazon – B&N – Kobo – IndieBound 

 

Giveaway

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/028877921449

Please follow the rest of the tour here, thanks:

https://www.escapewithdollycas.com/great-escapes-virtual-book-tours/books-currently-on-tour/bread-over-troubled-water-a-bread-shop-mystery-by-winnie-archer