Love for Sale (Grace & Favor Mysteries, No. 4) - Hardcover

Churchill, Jill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060199423 ISBN 13: 9780060199425

Publisher: William Morrow, 2003

Synopsis

Award-winning author Jill Churchill once again brings a bit of dazzle to the Great Depression, in her fourth captivating and colorful trip up New York's Hudson River for some high living -- and dying -- in hard times.

Sister and brother Lily and Robert Brewster, raised in the lap of luxury, may no longer have a penny to their names, but at least they have a roof over their heads -- which is more than many can say in this bleak November of 1932. This is thanks to their eccentric great-uncle, whose will allows them to live in his mansion on a sprawling estate in Voorburg-on-Hudson. And now there's even some cash rolling in, since the Brewsters have taken part-time teaching duties at the local grade school.

But their luck turns sour when a mysterious and badly disguised stranger comes to Grace and Favor willing to pay generously to have a secret meeting there shortly before the presidential election. Are they gangsters? Pretty Boy Floyd is rumored to be somewhere near. Or worse, are they a rabid pro-Hoover political group trying to stop Roosevelt from being elected at the last minute by making up some nasty gossip about him?

When one of the mystery guests is murdered in his bath, a little boy is kidnapped, and Chief Howard Walker can't find anywhere to house all his suspects except the local Hospital for the Criminally Insane, the pace becomes hectic. In the end a local woman, a secretary from upriver whom Lily has befriended, and one of the children at the school provide the vital clues that allow Lily to put two and two together. But only after a wild car chase with three women drivers.

Jill Churchill is the winner of the Agatha and Macavity Mystery Readers Awards and was nominated for an Anthony Award for her bestselling Jane Jeffry series. She is the author of three previous Grace & Favor mystery novels, Anything Goes, In the Still of the Night, and Someone to Watch Over Me, and lives in the Midwest.

About this title

About the Author:

Jill Churchill has won the Agatha and Macavity Mystery Readers awards and was nominated for an Anthony Award for her bestselling Jane Jeffry series. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed Grace and Favor mysteries and lives in the Midwest.

From Publishers Weekly:

Agatha and Macavity winner Churchill once again brings the Depression era to appealing life in her latest well-plotted cozy (after 2001's Someone to Watch Over Me), set in Voorburg, N.Y. Siblings Robert and Lily Brewster, genteel victims of the '29 crash, run a guesthouse at Grace and Favor Cottage. On the eve of the 1932 presidential election, a "Mr. Smith" offers Robert and Lily $500 as a down payment on rooms for himself and three of his "business associates," who wish to hold a private meeting over several days. Can these men be gangsters, desperate Hoover supporters plotting to stop FDR at the last minute, or even Reds out to disrupt the election? Badly in need of cash, brother and sister reluctantly agree to the arrangement. When one of their mysterious guests gets murdered in his bath, Robert and Lily have even more cause to regret their decision. The victim turns out to be Brother Mark Luke Goodheart, a scoundrel who preached love and goodwill on the radio while fleecing the poor, the indigent and orphans. Lending some mild suspense are the disappearance of a local school teacher, the brief kidnapping of the boy Joey Towerton and Joey's mother's wait to learn whether her husband has been killed while working on Hoover Dam. Older readers will especially enjoy this look at dire times now safely past.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0060199423
• ISBN 13: 9780060199425
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224