mystery – Empowering women through fiction and history.

Release Day for The Case of the Washed-Up Corpse!

Title: The Case of the Washed-Up Corpse

Series: Grave Sisters Mysteries: Book 1

Author: Tam May

Genres: Historical Cozy Mystery

Release Date: April 26, 2025

New series!

Chosen for the Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite list!

It’s 1921, and Americans are still reeling from the effects of World War I. In Gyver, CA, on the California/Nevada border, three sisters own the only funeral home in town. The eldest, Eve, takes care of the administration and accounting. Middle sister Helena uses her scientific and medical knowledge for the more hands-on side of the business. Eighteen-year-old Violet, the youngest, skirts the edge of a flapper lifestyle, preferring parties and jazz to funeral services and burials.

Then, Gyver County’s newly appointed district attorney asks for their assistance in identifying the body of a young woman found along a remote part of the river. At first, the police think it’s suicide. Only it isn’t — it’s murder!

As far as the sisters are concerned, murder is police business. Their business is to see that the dead are laid to rest. But District Attorney Oliver Clarke needs their help, and they can’t say no.

What follows is a twisted tale with only a few clues to help untangle it: a missing engagement ring, a piece of rope, and a torn lapel.

Will Eve and her sisters succeed in bringing justice to a dead, innocent young woman?

You can get your copy of the book at a special promotional price of 99¢ at the following online retailers.

Button color: 8949c9

Excerpt

“Would you like some coffee, Oliver?” Helena rose. “I’m sure Agnes still has the pot going.”

“That’s mighty nice of you,” he said. “But this isn’t exactly a social call.”

She glanced at her sister. “Don’t tell me you need our services at this time of night.”

“Death, like birth, waits for no one.” Eve brushed the last cake crumbs from dessert off her lap. “A good thing we filled the hearse with gas this afternoon.”

“It’s not quite that kind of service.” Oliver’s dark eyes grew serious. “I need a different kind of help. A woman was found dead, and we don’t know who she is.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Helena asked.

“Me and the sheriff, of course,” he said. “And the county coroner. We’ve sent for Dr. Myers, but he’s a little difficult to locate at the moment.”

“All county men,” Eve murmured. “That means —”

“The woman did not die of natural causes,” Helena finished.

“We don’t know that yet,” he said. “We just got down there.”

“Down where?” Eve asked.

“The river.” He paused a moment. “Her body was washed up in the grass.”

“How horrible!” She shuddered.

“No more horrible than what we see,” her sister argued.

“You both know everybody in town,” Oliver said.

“We ought to,” Eve said. “Graves have been here since the town was built.”

“I thought you might know who she is.”

“You want us to look at the dead body?” Eve pressed her hands together.

Helena glanced at her. “It’s our business, isn’t it?”

“I’d like you to do more than that,” said Oliver. “You’re a doctor, aren’t you, Helena?” He glanced at her.

“I studied medicine, but they wouldn’t let me get a license.” A note of bitterness lingered in her voice.

“You have the knowledge and the training,” he insisted. “It looks as if it’s going to take a while before Dr. Myers gets there for the official ruling.”

“It’s that serious?” Eve asked.

“It is for me,” he said softly.

“Your first murder case in Gyver,” Helena remarked.

“Murder, like birth and death, waits for no one,” he said with a little irony.

Eve rose. “We’d better get our coats, then.”

“It won’t be pleasant, I’m afraid.” He helped Eve with hers. “She’s been in the water for some time. That much we do know.”

“As Helena said, Oliver, death is our business,” Eve assured him.

“Agnes!” Helena called. “We’re going out with the district attorney.”

The housekeeper came out of the kitchen, a dish towel in one hand and the cake platter, washed and dripping, in the other. “What’re you wanting to do that for?”

“Because he asked us to,” Eve snapped.

“I think we ought to take the hearse,” Helena said. “We might need it.”

“You can follow me in my car.” Oliver put on his hat.

“What’re you bothering these girls for?” Agnes glared at the man. “Ain’t you got the whole police station and courthouse at your beck and call? Zak never bothered anybody in town at this time of night.”

“I won’t keep them out long, Mrs. Bishop,” he promised.

“Shouldn’t be keeping them out at all,” the woman grumbled. “They need their beauty sleep.”

“You must excuse Agnes,” Helena said. “She still thinks of us as her little goslings.”

“Ain’t these girls got enough on their minds without being bothered by district attorneys?”

“Don’t be inhospitable, Agnes,” Eve said.

“I swear to have them back before ten, ma’am.” Oliver bowed.

“If Vi comes home before we do, make sure she gets to bed,” Eve instructed.

“She won’t be back before midnight, that wild kitten,” the woman snorted.

“I’ll tell the sheriff to send a deputy after her if she’s not back by the time we are,” Oliver said.

“Thank you.” Eve’s breath eased.

About the Author

Writing has been Tam May’s voice since the age of fourteen. She writes stories set in the past featuring sassy, sensitive women characters. Tam is the author of the Adele Gossling Mysteries, which takes place in the early 20th century and features suffragist and epistolary expert Adele Gossling whose talent for solving crimes doesn’t sit well with her town’s conventional ideas about women. Tam also has a new series, the Grave Sisters Mysteries, about three sisters who own a funeral home and help the county D.A. solve crimes in a 1920s small California town, set to release in 2025. She has also written historical fiction about women breaking loose from the social and psychological expectations of their era. Although Tam left her heart in San Francisco, she lives in the Midwest because it’s cheaper. When she’s not writing, she’s devouring everything classic (books, films, art, music), concocting yummy plant-based dishes, and exploring her new riverside town.

Social Media Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tammayauthor/

Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/tammayauthor/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/tammayauthor/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Tam-May/e/B01N7BQZ9Y/

BookBub Author Page: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/tam-may

Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16111197.Tam_May

Release Day for Murder Among The Rubble!

Title: Murder Among The Rubble

Series: Adele Gossling Mysteries: Book 7

Author: Tam May

Genres: Historical Cozy Mystery

Release Date: December 28, 2024

Chosen for the Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite list!

On a quiet morning in 1906, an earthquake of horrendous magnitude shakes one of California’s most vibrant cities. Buildings crumble to the ground. Fires destroy everything from South of the Slot’s dilapidated buildings to Nob Ill’s most ornate mansions, leveling nearly eighty percent of San Francisco.

Radical suffragist and progressive reformer Elsie Blessings calls her friends Adele Gossling and Nin Branch to her side at the Presidio’s refugee camp to help destitute women and children as San Francisco begins the slow process of rebuilding. Adele’s brother, Jackson, and Sheriff Hatfield accompany them as volunteers to help maintain law and order amidst the chaos of the ruined city.

While citizens come together to pick up the pieces of their homes and lives among the rubble, somebody thinks it’s just the right time for murder.

Includes an Author’s Note with background on the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906!

You can get your copy of the book at a special promotional price at the following online retailers.

Excerpt

“Perhaps if we saw her face, the ladies would be able to tell,” Hatfield suggested.

Dr. Fleming bent down and gently turned the woman over.

Missy’s piercing scream echoed among the quiet shrubbery. Nin closed her eyes, clutching Adele’s arm. Adele’s stomach turned over. The entire front of the woman’s body was bloody and full of slits as if someone had tried to rip the dress off her.

“My God, what an animal!” Jackson stared at the horror.

Adele felt as if another earthquake were swaying the ground. Nin seemed to know what was happening and pulled her friend away from the horrible sight into another clearing. Adele leaned against a redwood, feeling the sharp tips of bark pierce into her back. The breeze brushed gently against her cheeks and the sun created a warm umbrella over her. Gradually, the sick feeling passed.

“How could he have done that to her?” Adele choked out. “So much stabbing!”

“Some men are savages,” Nin snarled. “A wild coyote would have been more civilized.”

Adele glanced at her friend and gave a small laugh. “You have a strong stomach, Nin.”

“I’ve seen what humans can do to one another,” Nin said, her tone heavy.

Adele steadied herself. “The rage is more honest, anyway.”

“It was rage that did that,” Nin agreed.

“What could she have done that was so terrible, I wonder,” Adele murmured.

“She probably didn’t do anything but live her own life,” Nin said.

“That’s what I mean.” Adele was beginning to feel stronger. “A woman living her own life is bound to offend someone.”

Nin put her hands on her shoulders. “It’s coming closer, the time when women will be able to live their own lives without offending anybody.”

Adele smiled. “Don’t tell me you believe in our cause at last, dear.”

“I don’t believe in causes and you know it,” Nin declared. “I believe in what the Generous Ones tell me.”

“And they tell you that?”

“The years tell me that,” said Nin. “The years passing by other people’s prejudices.”

Adele pressed her hand. “We should be getting back. I’m all right now.”

“Take some peppermint,” her friend advised. “There’s plenty of it here and it’s very soothing.”

Adele bent down and picked some of the spiky, rough leaves. Nin was right. The stinging scent calmed her stomach. As she plucked a bunch from the ground, she caught sight of a golden ring that looked as if it had been carelessly tossed there. Picking it up, she saw it was inscribed L.S. & G.W.

“Nin, look at this!”

Her friend peered at the ring. “Do you think it belonged to the dead girl?”

“It might have,” Adele said. “Or it might have fallen from the finger of a woman who came out here to meet her soldier beau.”

“A very married woman,” Nin remarked with disapproval.

“It looks fresh to me,” Adele said. “I don’t think it could have been left here for very long.”

“The camp’s been open for only a few weeks,” her friend pointed out.

“No, I think it was even a shorter time than that.” Adele slipped it in the pocket of her jacket. “It hardly has any dirt on it.”

“Are you going to tell the police?” Nin took her arm.

“I think we’d better not,” said Adele. “We don’t know that it has anything to do with the girl.”

“And you’re not going to tell them we saw the girl last night, are you?” Her friend’s eyes were shrewd.

“If we tell Sergeant Walker she was near the Chinese camp, it wouldn’t look very good for them,” Adele said.

“Maybe a Chinese did kill her,” Nin suggested.

“I don’t think so,” Adele said as they carefully made their way among the shrubs. “It doesn’t seem likely someone from the Chinese camp would rip through her clothes like that.”

“Who knows what anyone would do under circumstances like these?” Nin sighed. “Some people have their sense of decency knocked out of them when Sister Nature reacts with such violence.”

“Violence begets violence,” Adele said, feeling her body shake.

About the Author

Writing has been Tam May’s voice since the age of fourteen. She writes stories set in the past that feature sassy and sensitive women characters. Tam is the author of the Adele Gossling Mysteries which takes place in the early 20th century and features suffragist and epistolary expert Adele Gossling whose talent for solving crimes doesn’t sit well with her town’s conventional ideas about women’s place. Tam is also working on a new series, the Grave Sisters Mysteries about three sisters who own a funeral home and help the county D.A. solve crimes in a 1920s small California town, set to release in 2025. She has also written historical fiction about women breaking loose from the social and psychological expectations of their era. Although Tam left her heart in San Francisco, she lives in the Midwest because it’s cheaper. When she’s not writing, she’s devouring everything classic (books, films, art, music), concocting yummy plant-based dishes, and exploring her new riverside town.

Social Media Links

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tammayauthor/

Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/tammayauthor/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/tammayauthor/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Tam-May/e/B01N7BQZ9Y/

BookBub Author Page: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/tam-may

Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16111197.Tam_May

Fun and Mischief: Halloween in the Early 20th Century

It’s Halloween in the United States today, and if you live in America, you likely already have bags of candy stashed on the front table near your door, expecting little nippers to come knocking and calling “trick or treat!”

Halloween these days is a relatively tame affair where fun is the name of the game. It means dressing up in costumes, taking the kids door to door to get candy, and for some, attending a party or settling on the couch to watch spooky movies (I already have my collection of classic horror films geared up). But in the early 20th century, kids had a very different idea of what constituted “fun” for Halloween. Mischief and mayhem were the order of the day (or, I should say, the night).

What do I mean by mischief? Watch this clip from the 1944 classic film Meet Me in St. Louis. The film is set in 1904 and gives a pretty accurate glimpse of how kids celebrated Halloween in the early 20th century. In the scene, kids build a bonfire, throwing in anything flammable they can get their hands on (and one suspects some of the chairs they’re throwing into the fire might have been ripped off neighborhood porches). Then, they huddle together, trying to figure out who they’re going to torture with their bags of flour (yes, knocking on someone’s door and throwing flour in their face was a thing back then). That was the turn-of-the-century’s idea of Halloween fun.

Photo Credit: A non-grotesque and non-creepy Halloween costume of a witch, 1910: jamesjoel/Flickr/CC BY ND 2.0

This scene also shows how kids dressed up for Halloween over one hundred years ago (and if you’re curious to see more costumes from this era, you can look here). Unlike today where we’re more likely to see cute costumes on smaller kids and spooky-fun costumes on older kids, kids used whatever they could find around the house. The results were creepier and, in some cases, even grotesque.

Trick-or-treating is an organized affair in the 21st century. In the neighborhoods in my area, the local newspaper designates specific days (not necessarily October 31) and times when trick-or-treaters can go around town. In the early 20th century, things were a lot more chaotic. Kids would go trick-or-treating in parades and they could become quite unruly. And did they get candy? Not always. Until the mid-20th century, kids got whatever was lying around. That could be a toy or a game the child of the house didn’t want anymore or some non-candy goodies or fruits or nuts (which would make many moms and dads very happy today).

But what really characterized early 20th-century Halloween was mischief. In addition to the bonfire and the flour-in-the-face, it wasn’t unusual for kids to vandalize homes belonging to people in town they didn’t like or even steal things off their lawn or porch (in the film clip above, one of the adults warns her children to return a neighbor’s hammock after they steal it). I remember when I was a kid, Halloween meant you were at risk of being “egged” (having kids throw rotten eggs at your house) if you didn’t open the door and give out candy. Thankfully, that practice has largely gone out of style.

Want to have even more Halloween fun this year? Come solve a mystery with the protagonist of my Adele Gossling Mysteries series as she helps search for a missing child from the community Halloween party! You can get this story (plus a novella and other goodies) only if you sign up for my newsletter here.

The Lady in the Pond: The Case of Hazel Drew

I love books and films that are “inspired by true events”. I actually like these better than biopics or fiction that tries to portray the life of a real-life person based on historical evidence. Stories inspired by true events are about creating another story that readers know isn’t supposed to be true but is inspired by the truth.

This is why I chose to write Book 6 of my Adele Gossling Mysteries inspired by true events from a real live unsolved mystery. The story of Hazel Drew took me in for several reasons. The murder happened in 1908, around the time frame of the Adele Gossling Mysteries. Modern life was starting to hit America in the face and the Progressive Era brought about many positive changes in the nation. Unsolved cases always intrigue me, and this one remains unsolved, though there are several theories about who could have killed Hazel Drew and why. After doing more research, I discovered the murder of Hazel Drew inspired another creative work that went on to become a cult classic in the 1990s: The hit series Twin Peaks.

Hazel Drew was, in many ways, one of the era’s modern women. She was a working girl who wasn’t confined to the ideals of the separate spheres. Rather than being conventional and restrained by her womanhood, she was not ashamed of going out and having a little fun and using what money she had to buy elegant things. There is evidence she wanted to move beyond her position as a domestic servant (something Victorian era ideology, with its rigid social definitions, wouldn’t have allowed), though what that would have looked like, no one knew. And, like many New Women of the day, she was an enigma.

Here lies the most fascinating aspect of this case. Hazel Drew presented herself as one thing but, digging into her life after she was murdered, police found evidence of a hidden self. Interviews with family members and friends reveal they observed Hazel didn’t have a beau and didn’t seem much interested in men. But in a suitcase she left at the train station on the day of her death, police found dozens of letters from men (most of them unidentified) who professed undying love and devotion to Hazel. These letters painted a picture not of the modest, church-going young woman most Sand Lake residents had known, but a vivacious, bubbly girl who loved expensive trinkets and fancy restaurants and sojourns to New York City, none of which were exactly within a domestic servant’s budget. Many in her more conservative and backward hometown thought her “too big for her britches” – owning jewelry and clothes her maid’s salary could ill afford and working for some of the most prominent families in town, including the city treasurer and a prominent businessman.

Photo Image: Postcard of Sand Lake, NY, where Hazel Drew lived and worked and was killed, 1910, eBay store: Amg37/Wikimedia Commons/PD US

Why, then, was she found face-down in Teal’s Pond one summer night in 1908, dead from a blow to the back of the head, her face so mangled from being in the water that only her dental records could identify her? Who might have had it in for this maid (another disposable working girl, which I talk about here)? And why, after months of searching for the killer, did the local police simply give up where the case remains unsolved today?

These are questions still left unanswered in the Hazel Drew murder case. But they are questions Adele and her friends answer about the case of Arabella Parnell in The Case of the Dead Domestic. The book celebrates its 1-year publiversary this month and is on sale now! Get all the information and buy links here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to newsletter subscribers here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more!

Historical Cozy Mysteries: Getting Cozy with the Past

Years ago, I belonged to an amazing group of creative businesswomen. When I shared with them in 2022 that I was shifting gears in my author career to focus on historical cozy mysteries, I got a deer-in-the-headlights look. One of them ventured to ask, “What’s a historical cozy mystery?”

It was my bad because I had forgotten not everyone is familiar with the word “cozy” nor are they aware historical cozy mysteries exist.

Historical cozy mystery is really a subgenre of a subgenre. In writer-speak, genre is a book’s category, usually with specific reader expectations. For example, romance is a genre (expectations: a love relationship as the main storyline and usually, though not always, a happily-ever-after ending). So is horror (expectation: You’re going to be scared out of your wits). Historical cozy mystery marries two subgenres: historical mysteries (subgenre of historical fiction) and cozies (subgenre of mystery fiction).

On the face of it, a historical cozy mystery is sort of a modern version of the traditional mystery (sometimes called the “whodunit”). Think Agatha Christie. One of my favorite things to do at the end of a particularly stressful and annoying day is to relax on my recliner with a cup of peppermint tea and open the Kindle reader on my iPad to a Poirot mystery (yes, he’s a pompous little man, but I like him). I immediately get into the story, following the clues and suspects, feeling the carefree times of 1920s England. I know I’m in for an hour of puzzle-solving and I know Poirot is going to get the criminal in the end one way or another. Nowhere else in the 21st century can you find that kind of justice. It makes me feel soothed and, well, cozy, like all the bad things that happened during the day don’t matter.

Ah, the epitome of cozy: A pipe and an Agatha Christie book!

Photo Credit: DietmarRauscher/Depositphotos.com

The cross between mystery and history gets interesting when we consider the main purpose of historical fiction is to submerge readers in the past, and the purpose of mystery fiction is to present a human puzzle for the amateur sleuth or detective (and the reader) to solve. Writers of historical cozy mysteries aren’t only building a story around a crime that has to be solved. They’re also giving readers insights into another era.

And not just the daily lives of people living in that era, but criminals and crime detection. We have to remember these things have changed dramatically over the centuries. There were no cyber crimes in the 19th century. There was no DNA testing to help solve crimes until the late 20th century. Taking photographs of a crime scene appeared on the scene in the mid-19th century but wasn’t common practice until the 1920s. So crime detection was relatively primitive and pretty crude in most cases. That makes it more of a challenge for the historical sleuth or detective, but funner for readers because detectives must make do with their wits and skills rather than rely on forensic scientific evidence.

In Book 1 of my Adele Gossling Mysteries, Adele’s brother, a former big-city detective, is amazed that the small-town sheriff of Arrojo knows enough to block off the crime scene so no one will tamper with it. Even fifty years before the book takes place (1902), this wouldn’t have been the case and it’s well-documented crime scenes were trampled over by police, reporters, and sightseers. Not a great start to solving a murder.

Another thing about how cozy mysteries differ from crime fiction, in general, is they introduce you to a host of quirky characters. That’s one reason I was drawn to writing cozies as opposed to other types of historical mysteries. In a cozy series, the characters become as familiar to readers as their own family and friends because flawed as they are, they’re also likable. I’ve had several readers tell me how much they love Adele and Nin and how they’re anxious to read more about them in each book of the series.

The sleuths in cozies are always approachable, often funny, and very human. Who doesn’t love Jessica Fletcher in the 1980s hit TV series, Murder, She Wrote? She’s grandmotherly while at the same time sharp-witted and shrewd. Holmes is a cocaine addict and an egotist (at least, in my opinion) but he also cares deeply about solving crimes, more than he’s willing to admit. Fletcher and Holmes couldn’t be more different, but they share one quality, as all cozy mystery sleuths do: They’re on the side of justice. It’s hard to dislike a character who’s on the right side of the law.

Writers don’t always strive for character likability because many feel an amiable character is unrealistic and too Pollyannaish. But cozies aren’t about realism. They’re about escaping into another world where justice is served and criminals are always punished. And with historical cozies, you get the double-whammy: Not only do you get to escape into a “crime doesn’t pay” world but you get to do it in another era.

So if you’re ready to give historical cozy mysteries a shot, I invite you to check out my Adele Gossling Mystery series. I published the first book exactly two years ago and it has not failed to delight readers. The Carnation Murder is forever free on all the bookstore sites. You can get more information about it plus links to download the book here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy my novella The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to my newsletter subscribers and you can get it here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more!