Elaine Orr

• May-2026
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• Dec-2025
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• Jul-2025
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Fired Up and FeistyBook 1 of the Shore Shenanigans Series     Fired Up and Feisty puts the Ocean Alley High School Reunion front and center. The Golden Grads  (alums from long ago) end up at the Cozy Corner B&B after a fire at...

• Jul-2024
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14th Jersey Shore Cozy Mystery    More than most faculty, the band director at Ocean Alley High School doesn't want students to have phones in class, and he especially doesn't want the band distracted by them when they march on the foo...

• Dec-2023
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A dinner invitation for Digger, who is accompanied by the very pale Uncle Benjamin, gets her involved with a recently discovered relative of their elderly friend Thelma, whose brother died during World War II. DNA testing has led his until-now-unknow...

• May-2023
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Kirkus Review: New Lease on Death is.. a welcome addition to the Jolie Gentil Cozy Mysteries series, developing the narrative arcs for established characters while seamlessly introducing new ones...An engaging mystery and a fun return to familiar pla...

• Aug-2022
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When a Maple Grove resident discovers some old gold coins in the woods near town, it's an intriguing event -- but not one that seems dangerous. However, the article Digger's friend, Marty, wrote for the Maple Grove News, seems to have attracted unwar...

• Dec-2021
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This Christmas season is different. For one thing, Mildred's humans have two unexpected house guests. Cyndi, good friends with Mildred's owners Frank and Fergie, and her socially awkward cat, Mittens, can't stay at their home. Cyndi's dad has COVID. ...

• Dec-2021
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Sticky-Fingered Books12th Jolie Gentil Cozy MysterySpecial Price Until November 15thIt isn't every day that you find a body at your kids' school. Unless you're Jolie Gentil. Then it's more of an option.Someone broke into Sand and Sea Daycare, leaving...

• Jul-2021
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Mountain Rails of Old, third book in the Family History Mystery Series.Digger's mountain hides some aspects of its past. Rumor says it hosted a stop on the Underground Railroad, and it boasts remains of the first schoolhouse west of Cumberland. She n...

• Feb-2021
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Unscheduled Murder Trip Bodies turn up in the strangest places in the Maryland Mountains. Digger Browning lost her job and her uncle. Then she found her reinvigorated uncle sitting on the kitchen table in the Ancestral Sanctuary, the home she inherit...

• Oct-2020
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Aunt Madge is horrified that her Jersey shore town will give big tax breaks to a huge resort. Ocean Alley will be swallowed up in a condo canyon. She runs for mayor to promote sensible progress over massive growth. A lot of people agree with her. May...

• Oct-2020
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Digger listened to Uncle Benjamin's stories and got her nickname while helping him plant flowers at the family graves. She looks forward to spending time with him after busted pipes put her kitchen ceiling on the floor. She didn't expect to find his ...

• Dec-2019
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Mildred Mistletoe, the cat born in the manager under her family's Christmas tree, has her paws full. She needs to get her high school humans, Fergie and Frank, to get over being mad at each other about a silly school dance. And then she spots a deser...

• Dec-2019
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"The Twain Does Meet" is a between-the-numbers book in the Jolie Gentil series, and while there are joys and problems to discover it's not a traditional cozy mystery. In book 10 (The Unexpected Resolution) Jolie solves a murder, she and Scoobie get m...

• Jun-2019
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Logland, Illinois City Clerk Donald Dingle is a pest. He's a tightwad with the city budget and criticizes the police department to the point that Police Chief Elizabeth Friedman would love to see him retire. And she did mean retire, not expire. When ...

• Dec-2018
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Marti and Nick have inherited The Bully Pulpit Diner in Logland, Illinois, and they've learned some customers are toxic. When Marti heads to the laundromat to retrieve clean linens, she finds the body of town grouch Louella Belle Simpson cycling thro...

• Oct-2018
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Life for Melanie has returned to normal. She works as a gardener with friend Stooper, eats at Mason's Diner, and sits on her farmhouse porch with friends Syl and Sandi. Her biggest challenge is helping Mr. Tibbs get used to the still-unnamed black ca...

• Sep-2018
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Jolie Gentil has sworn off butting into other people's business. To those who know her, it sounds as far-fetched as finding used bubble gum on Mars. Only a request from a most unlikely source could send her sleuthing again. Is there a connection betw...

• Jun-2018
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Corozón, her mother, and little brother Pico have left Honduras to seek asylum in the U.S. Grandfather Tito and her father Manuel saved the life of Colonel Bill, an American soldier, many years ago. It's probably part of the reason Coroz&oacut...

• Dec-2017
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Mildred Mistletoe may have been born under a Christmas tree, but that doesn't mean her life is problem-free. When her human, Fergie, is accused of stealing coins from a Christmas collection tub, Mildred needs to make things right. She also has to fin...

• Oct-2017
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War changes people. Because of it, Everett was a stay-at-home dad before it was a choice. Only his wife Sue Ellen had a clue why he seemed to find it hard to cope. His four children, while respectful, wished he could do more than create gardens and f...

• Jul-2017
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A midnight wedding, Army veterans who face repercussions of two wars, and a startling wedding guest. Wedding days are special, but they don't usually pack as big a surprise as Jolie and Scoobie's New Year's Eve nuptials. Scoobie never knew much about...

• Jan-2017
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The reverberating bangs shake Melanie Perkin's nerves. Either someone's aiming at her truck, or they don't know fireworks are supposed to go upward. Could things get any worse? Yes. The next day she discovers a dead body in the barn on her late paren...

• Nov-2016
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When the owner of the Bully Pulpit Diner and Grill decided to stop letting servers accept tips, he figured the raise he gave them would keep them happy. Apparently not, because waiters Marti and Nick found his body on the diner floor. Or were some of...

• Nov-2015
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"You're fired!" Grouchy news publisher Hal Morris sends reporter Melanie Perkins packing for taking too many photos of flowers. Panicked at being unemployed, she lands a job as a landscaper, but an ugly surprise greets her on her first day. A pile of...

• Nov-2015
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Opening your apartment door to see a woman sliding down it is distressing. Especially when that woman has a knife in her chest. How could a murderer be roaming the halls in the middle of the night? After all the times she has encouraged Jolie to mind...

• Dec-2014
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When Jolie Gentil goes to buy a cup of coffee the morning after a storm knocks out power at her house in Ocean Alley, she finds Java Jolt unlocked and minus its owner. A bigger surprise is seeing proprietor Joe Regan a few minutes later, badly injure...

• Jun-2014
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Bad enough that Jolie ends up in the emergency room because she tried to avoid hitting a deer. Worse to find a dead woman in the hospital restroom after Jolie gets patched up. As the chief budget cutter at the hospital, Tanya Weiss was unpopular, esp...

• Nov-2013
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It's fun to buy a house. Unless there is something hidden behind the walls and someone wants it. Someone who is willing to kill for it. Jolie is pursued by a purse thief and a burglar, but the guy she's most worried about is the one who left an elder...

• Nov-2013
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When Jolie Gentil's parents leave her with Aunt Madge for her junior year so they can 'work things out' in their marriage, she's angry. She knows no one at Ocean Alley High School. Some kids snub her, but she makes friends with the irreverent Scoobie...

• Mar-2013
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From Hurricane Sandy to B&B repairs to Aunt Madge's wedding in three weeks. If Jolie can handle that surely she can deal with a sobbing woman who shows up at midnight. When the next morning Jolie learns that Pooki's husband is missing and his partner...

• Sep-2012
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Jolie Gentil and friends are putting the finishing touches on the Talk Like a Pirate Day fundraiser for the food pantry and trying to figure out who's breaking into some of the houses Jolie appraises. When she realizes a new face in town is leading h...

• Mar-2012
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Jolie never liked the idea of sitting on the plank above the dunk tank for the food pantry's fundraiser at the carnival. Even so, she never dreamed what Scoobie saw that day would leave him battling for his life. Scoobie's ex-con mother shows up and ...

• Feb-2012
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Secrets of the Gap is a modern mystery set the ancient Roman Baths of Bath, England. Can events of centuries ago matter today, and will archeologists Carolyn and Greg them out in time? In school they butted heads, now their lives may depend on workin...

• Nov-2011
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When Jolie Gentil appraises the vacant Tillotson-Fisher house, she finds the skeleton of Richard Tillotson hidden in an antique attic wardrobe. He vanished just after his sister married his business partner in 1929. Jolie sees a link to the Fisher fa...

• Sep-2011
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Frank Myers never met the uncle he was named for. His mother's brother Franklin died in Vietnam when he was only 22. At least, everyone thinks he did. He's still MIA. As the young Frank Myers grows up in the schools and on the streets of Washington, ...

• Sep-2011
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Christa Heckertt did not expect to interrupt an intruder trying to steal parts from the computers her Iowa City fourth-grade class had won in the mayor's competition. And the last thing Kirk Reynolds wanted was to be called from a drug surveillance t...

• Sep-2011
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Jolie Gentil moves to Great Aunt Madge's bed and breakfast at the Jersey shore, taking her cat Jazz, and joining Madge's pair of prune-eating dogs. Jolie does not view this as a retreat from her embezzling ex-husband, just a smart change. She had no ...

• Sep-2011
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