The Christmas Stranger: A Short Story Book Review

 

The Christmas Stranger: A Short Story

A Food Lover's Village Mystery

By: Leslie Budewitz

Publish Date: November 14, 2023

Publisher: Beyond the Page Publishing

Cooking, Food and Wine/Mystery and Thrillers/Novellas and short stories

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I would like to thank both NetGalley and Beyond the Page Publishing for allowing me to read and review this book. Sorry it took me so long. All opinions are my own.

Book Review:

With this book being a short story, it will be a little harder to review because I don't want to give anything away. I did enjoy this story, and I gave it 4 stars. This book is set about one week before Christmas in a small town. Erin is at the shipping office waiting in line to mail some packages to customers. While she is waiting in line an older gentleman comes in and needs to have a couple of copies made, but he doesn't want to bother the cashiers for help even though he can go to the head of the line. Erin ends up helping him and he wants to pay for the copies, but she tells not to worry about it she will just put it on her account. The gentleman leaves but then comes back and gives her a stamp to pay for his copies. She takes it to be nice but doesn't think much about it until later on. After she has finally shipped the packages, she goes back to her shop and of course there are more to be shipped. She will take care of it tomorrow along with some cards one of her employee's needs to send off but she is in need of one stamp. Erin remembers the stamp the gentleman gave her and offers to use it but makes the comment about having to lick the stamp. The employee says not to use it and in fact thinks something is strange about the stamp and she wants to have it checked out. Come to find out the stamp is worth some money and now Erin wants to find the gentleman to return the stamp. This lends her investigate and learns some interesting things about this man. What she learns and how much the stamp is worth you will have to read the book to find out. 

This is a quick read and heartwarming.

Home Fries and Alibis Book Review

 

Home Fries and Alibis

By: Lena Gregory

Book 8 of An All-Day Breakfast Cafe Mystery 

Publish Date: September 23, 2025

Publisher: Beyond the Page

Cooking, Food and Wine/ Mystery and Thriller

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I would like to thank both Beyond the Page publishing and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

Book Review:

This is the first book that I have read in the series. The author does a great job in letting you know a little background of each character that you really don't need to read the other books. But, if you want the true back story you should read this series in order., which I will do in the future.

With that being said I gave this book 4 stars. I love the friendship in this book and how they stand beside each other during good times and bad times. I also love the fact that each character has a love for animals.

In this book Gia is confronted by a neighbor about how her dog is digging holes in her yard. It gets a little nasty, and Gia is threatened that her could get hurt. This neighbor has been nasty to several other people in the area, so Gia tries to shake it off.

To protect herself and her dog Gia has a security camera installed by a friend. Early the next day Gia notices something across the street and calls her fiancé who is a detective with the police force. Come to find out the nasty neighbor is dead and looks like she was murdered. This upsets Gia because even though she didn't like the lady she didn't want her dead.

As the investigation goes on they find out some not nice things that this neighbor was doing, and a lot of people would have like to have seen her dead. Who killed her and why? Too many suspects to go through. You will have to read the book to find out who did it.