WITCH AND FAMOUS

A librarian’s magical powers are tested when she has to cope with jealousy and murder.

Josie Way left the East Coast for a job at a very special library in a very small Oregon town. Now that she’s been involved in two murder cases, she looks forward to helping her friend Roz Chatterley Windsor, a romance writer and assistant librarian, conduct a more routine interview with famous actress Daphne Morris for her televised book club. Roz hopes the publicity will shoot her to stardom, but things don’t go exactly as planned. Before the interview, Daphne decides to spend some time in town, where her startling beauty and flirtatious manner attract Roz’s boyfriend, Lyndon, making Roz furious. Nor is Josie pleased that Daphne seems to be pursuing Sheriff Sam Wilfred, for whom she harbors feelings of her own. When Daphne’s chef, Bryce, is found electrocuted in her bathtub, everyone assumes that Daphne was the real target. After all, Roz openly threatened her, and her cousin Bianca, against whom she’s taken out a restraining order, is in town. As it turns out, most of Daphne’s staff have reason to hate her, since their contracts with her prevent them from working on any other projects. Josie’s suspicions of Daphne’s assistant, Morgan Stanhope, end when she becomes the next to die. Josie, who’s slowly learning to harness her powers as a witch, refuses to concoct a love potion for Sam, but those powers come in handy in solving two murders.

Red herrings galore compete with witchy library lore in an often humorous mystery.