Monday, November 19, 2018

Book Tour and Giveaway: The Skeleton Makes a Friend (A Family Skeleton Mystery #5) by Leigh Perry

The Skeleton Makes a Friend
A Family Skeleton Mystery #5
by
Leigh Perry


Genre:
Cozy Mystery
Georgia Thackery is feeling pretty good about her summer job teaching at prestigious Overfeld College, and she’s renting a rustic cabin right by a lake for herself, her daughter, Madison, and her best friend, Sid the Skeleton. Together again, the trio are enjoying the quiet when a teenager named Jen shows up looking for her friend. Georgia doesn’t recognize the name, but she learns that the person Jen was looking for is actually Sid.

Sid reveals that he and Jen are part of a regular online gaming group that formed locally, and one of their members has gone missing. Sid admits that he might have bragged about his investigative prowess, enough so that Jen wants him to find their missing player. Given that Sid doesn’t have many friends offline—none, really, unless you count the Thackery family—Georgia agrees to help him search. They manage to discreetly enlist Jen, who lives in town, and follow the clues to… a dead buddy.

Now they’ve got a killer on their hands. Probing the life of Sid’s friend, they realize a lot is wrong both on campus and in the seemingly quaint town, and someone doesn’t want them looking deeper.

Book Trailer:
Sid unzipped the rest of the way, pulled himself out of the suitcase and back together, and tried to turn the knob. “It’s locked.”

“Can you open it?”

“Easy peasy,” he said, pulling a set of lock picks from inside the suitcase. My locksmith sister Deborah probably hadn’t realized that teaching my daughter Madison how to pick locks was tantamount to teaching Sid. Madison had shared everything she’d learned with him, and he’d promptly ordered his own picks online. “You really should learn to do this, Georgia. It’s not that hard.”

Despite his assurance, it seemed to take an awful long time to get the door open. Or maybe it just seemed like a long time because I kept looking down the stairs, worried that somebody would hear us and come to see what was going on.

Finally there was a loud click, and Sid said, “Nailed it!” He opened the door, and cold air streamed out.

“Brr!” I said. “Wouldn’t you know that a department with everybody on vacation would be the one with overachieving air conditioners?” The window unit in my classroom had gone out twice. “Not to mention the waste of electricity.”

“You can complain about it later,” Sid said. “Come on.”

I followed him into the human resources department, pulling the empty suitcase along.

There were four more closed doors: three offices labeled with names and one marked File Room.

“Here we go,” Sid said, using his picks on one of the office doors.

This lock was easier to deal with, which was a relief, but unfortunately, the smell seemed to be coming from that office. “I’m going in.”

“Remember what I said. Get in, look around fast, get out.”

“Got it.” He stepped inside.

Between the cold, the horrid stink, and the fear of being caught, I was hoping that Sid would be swift, but I was surprised when he came out in under two minutes. “That was fast. Did you find something?”

“Don’t go in there.”

“I wasn’t going to—”

Then I looked at him.

He shouldn’t have been able to look like anything but bone-colored, but somehow he seemed paler than usual, and his bones were so loose he was nearly falling apart. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s in there. At least I think it’s him.”

“Did he see you?” I said stupidly.

He slowly shook his skull, and only then did I realize what it was we’d been smelling.
Though Leigh Perry was born in Pensacola, FL and raised in Charlotte, NC, she has been living north of Boston, MA for 26 years or so. She shares the house with her husband, two daughters, two guinea pigs, and a ludicrous selection of books. While the population of people and guinea pigs stays constant, the number of books is on an ever-rising curve. Under the name Toni L.P. Kelner, she’s published eleven novels and twenty-something short stories, as well as co-edited six urban fantasy anthologies with New York Times bestseller Charlaine Harris.

Follow the tour HERE for exclusive content and a giveaway!

30 comments:

  1. Great excerpt, sounds like a book I'll enjoy :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I enjoyed the excerpt and the cover is really cute!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cute cover and sounds like a good read!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'd love to read this--great cover!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love the cover. It sounds like a really good read.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I love the cover. I have 3 dogs so any cover with a dog has to be good.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Love the cover and the book sounds good.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Loved the excerpt, thank you for sharing it.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Nice book cover and the book sounds interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Cover is nice and different to the norm.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Love the cover and the book sounds interesting!

    ReplyDelete
  12. It's a fun cover and sounds like a good book.

    ReplyDelete
  13. The cover is awesome! Sounds like an interesting read.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Such a clever idea for a series and the covers are so distinctive. Thanks!!

    ReplyDelete
  15. I read the excerpt and I like the cover

    tiramisu392 (at) yahoo.com

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thanks for the great giveaway!
    The book cover looks very interesting!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Like the cover and the story. Thanks for the giveaway and chance

    ReplyDelete
  18. Love this cover, book looks very interesting

    ReplyDelete
  19. I like the story! Thank you for introducing me to a new-to-me author. I love cozy mysteries.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I am really looking forward to starting this book!

    ReplyDelete
  21. My wife would love these stories

    ReplyDelete