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An Agatha Award-winning Author Someone has been trying to poison the 15th Earl of Lislelivet. Since he has a gift for making enemies, no one finds this too surprising. What is surprising is that the poison was discovered in a fruitcake made and sold by the Handmaids of St. Lucy of Monkbury Abbey. Max Tudor, vicar of Nether Monkslip and former MI5 agent, is asked to investigate. But just as Max comes to believe the poisoning was accidental, a body is discovered in the cloister well.



About the Author

G. M. Malliet

G.M. Malliet is the Agatha Award-winning author of the acclaimed St. Just mysteries, the Max Tudor mysteries, the standalone suspense novel WEYCOMBE, and numerous short stories collected in crime anthologies or published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Strand. Her recent short story, "Whiteout," was nominated for a 2020 Macavity award and finaled for the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers' Choice Award.She is represented by literary agent Mark Gottlieb of Trident Media Group, New York, NY. Detailed contact information can be found at gmmalliet.com/contact.html.Malliet calls her writing "trenditional"--"on the spectrum between cozy/traditional and twisty." Her modern-day favorite authors include Ruth Ware and Tana French; her TV favorites range from Midsomer Murders to Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The Doc Martin series is a further inspiration for its comedy, characters, and village setting.She was born in the U.S. but living in Japan, the U.K., and New Mexico gave her a special appreciation for the art and architecture of those countries. She has a B.A. in journalism and an M.A. in psychology; she also received an M.Phil. in psychology from the University of Cambridge and did further graduate study at Oxford University. Her fields of interest are psychology and the creative mind.In the U.S., she worked in corporate communications and marketing for Thompson and PBS. She always wanted to be an author and began writing crime fiction on weekends and mornings before work, submitting short stories to anthologies and competitions while also working on a novel. In 2008, her award-winning first novel (DEATH OF A COZY WRITER) was published.Along with five Agatha and three Anthony nominations, she's been shortlisted for the Macavity, Left Coast Crime, IPPY, Daphne, David, and Dilys awards. The audio version of her second novel (DEATH AND THE LIT CHICK) , read by Davina Porter, was a 2014 Anthony nominee. The Anthony Awards are given each year at Bouchercon, the book industry's premier crime conference in the U.S.The fourth St. Just book (working title: ST. JUST IN CORNWALL) will be published in 2021 after a ten-year hiatus for the series.Her series from Macmillan's Minotaur imprint featuring Max Tudor, a former MI5 agent turned vicar of a small English village, debuted in the autumn of 2011 with WICKED AUTUMN. Of the fourth book in the series, Cleveland.com raved: "[Malliet] may be the best mystery author writing in English at the moment (along with Tana French) . She's certainly the most entertaining."Her standalone suspense novel WEYCOMBE appeared in October 2017. She donated $5000 of the proceeds from sales of the book to the American Red Cross, to aid the victims of Hurricane Harvey and other natural disasters.The seventh Tudor novel, IN PRIOR'S WOOD, was published in April 2018. She is currently writing the 4th St. Just novel and polishing half a dozen short storie



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