D.E. Ireland - With a Little Bit of Blood is featured in the HBS Author's Spotlight Book Showcase

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The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES D.E. Ireland's New Book: With a Little Bit of Blood.

Author D.E. Ireland, the pseudonym of award-winning authors and Anglophiles Meg Mims and Sharon Pisacreta collaborate on the Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mystery series.

With a Little Bit of Blood

The Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins Mysteries Book 4

Author: D.E. Ireland


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In the fourth book from the Agatha Award nominated writing team of D.E. Ireland, famous literary characters Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins find they may have brought trouble with them when they attend a country house party in With A Little Bit of Blood.

Eliza is not happy when Higgins buys a snazzy roadster. Her misgivings prove correct when he becomes injured in a motor car crash. Forced to play nursemaid, Eliza is thrilled to accept an invitation to a house party from Lord Ashmore and his bride, the former Clara Eynsford-Hill. But upon their arrival at Banfield Manor, Eliza is dismayed to see her sweetheart Freddy arm in arm with a beautiful actress. Higgins is shocked to learn the woman who once stalked him is also attending the party. Things grow even worse when spiritualist Madame Evangeline arrives and warns of impending danger. Her prediction comes true when someone is killed during the following day's shoot in the forest.

Higgins and Eliza suspect it wasn't an accident, but murder. Every guest hides a dark secret that involved the dead man. But who hated him more? The French aviator, the American cinema actress, a lady novelist, the Austrian count, or a knighted explorer of the Amazon? Madame Evangeline's séance may reveal what is really going on. But her cryptic words deepen the mystery, especially after another guest turns up dead.

Who is behind these murders? And has Higgins himself been targeted? As the day of the fox hunt begins, it seems likely that more than the fox will die. Before that happens, Eliza and the Professor must discover who may have a little bit of blood on their hands.

Excerpt from With a Little Bit of Blood

September 1913

At the sound of a deafening crash, Eliza Doolittle jumped to her feet. Shouts rang out, followed by the raised voice of the housekeeper.

“Is something wrong, Mrs. Pearce?” Eliza asked. But she heard only the tinkling of broken glass in response. Had a gang of hooligans pushed their way through the front door of 27-A Wimpole Street? She scanned the drawing room for a weapon. Two decades in London’s East End slums had taught her to be prepared.

“What’s happening, Miss Doolittle?” her elocution student asked.

“I’m not certain,” Eliza told Miss Nash as she grabbed a brass poker from the fireplace. Thankfully, Professor Higgins did not have pupils scheduled this morning. Otherwise, he would be teaching in the drawing room, while she gave instruction in a parlor down the hall. And her usual “classroom” contained neither a fireplace nor a heavy metal poker to protect herself with.

“Can we lock ourselves in?” Nineteen-year-old Loretta Nash looked nervous.

“Unfortunately, no.” Eliza frowned at the oak pocket doors which lacked a keyhole. “But if anyone bursts in, Miss Nash, get behind me.”

Eliza had no sooner spoken when those pocket doors banged open. With a dismayed cry, Miss Nash scurried behind her. Ready to wield the poker like a cricket bat, Eliza raised the weapon, then stopped. “What are you doing here?” she asked the intruder.

Her stepmother, Rose Cleary Doolittle, stood in the open doorway. She put her hands on her hips. “Looking for that rude professor you’re living with. Don’t think for a minute I come to see you. I don’t enjoy having to put up with your snobbish ways.”

“Any more than I enjoy spending time in your company.” Eliza felt a twinge of regret that she wouldn’t be able to brain Rose with the poker.

“Shut yer mouth, girl. I’m your mother and deserve respect.”

Eliza tapped the hearthrug with the tip of the poker. “My mum died when I was two. You’re merely the latest woman playing house with my father.”

“I’m his wife, proper and legal. And don’t you forget it.”

“I only wish I could,” she muttered.

Alfred Doolittle had lived with a number of common-law wives since the death of Eliza’s mother, all of them ill tempered and foul mouthed. One of his former “wives” was currently serving time in Holloway Prison for theft and larceny. Eliza viewed it as bad luck that Rose happened to be living with Alfred when he experienced a financial windfall. Not surprisingly, Alfred felt his new status demanded a move to a proper middle class neighborhood. He also decided to make his personal life more respectable by marrying the woman who had illicitly shared his bed for three years. Eliza blamed Professor Higgins. He was the one who had convinced an American millionaire to hire her garrulous father to lecture for the Moral Reform League. Alfred was so successful as a lecturer that he toured six times a year, for which he received an annuity of three thousand pounds. In fact, his rise out of poverty this past year had been as rapid as her own.

“What’s the reason for this visit?” Eliza returned the poker to the fireplace rack. “And where is Mrs. Pearce? I heard her voice, along with all that banging and glass breaking. If you’ve upset her, I’ll kick your blooming arse all the way back to Pimlico.”

“I ain’t done a thing to the housekeeper. She’s busy with your dad. He’s a handful, let me tell you.” Rose threw herself onto a nearby chair, her silk taffeta skirt ballooning around her.

At forty, Rose was too old to wear a pink ruffled dress, especially one covered in enormous cabbage roses. Even worse, the color clashed with her brassy red hair and heavily rouged cheeks, as did the purple ostrich feather bobbing from her hat.

“That man will be the death of me,” Rose complained. “Soon as he makes his way in here, I’m telling that bossy housekeeper to get me something to drink.”

“And why is Mrs. Pearce busy with my father? Is he drunk?”

“Where are ya, Rose?” a voice bellowed. “You left me out here to fend for meself!”

Eliza rushed out into the hall and gasped at the sight of her bruised and bandaged father. With an arm draped over Mrs. Pearce’s shoulders, he brandished a cane in one hand.

“Crikey! What happened?”

“About time you come to greet me, Lizzie. Thought the Colonel taught you manners.”

Eliza helped Mrs. Pearce walk him into the drawing room. “Did you try to ride the Donegal Dancer again? The jockeys told you to stop doing that.” “Weren’t no horse I fell from, girl. Horses love me, specially my Dancer.”

“I can tell you what doesn’t love him,” Rose said as they entered. “That bloody car he bought this summer. Your father drives like the Mr. Toad character in a book I been reading to my nephew. Soon as Alfie gets behind the wheel, he turns balmy on the crumpet.”

Author: D.E. Ireland

Author Genre: Historical Mysteries, Humor And Comedy, Mystery

Website: Welcome to D.E. Ireland
Author's Blog: D.E. Ireland Blog
Twitter: @DEIrelandAuthor
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

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Author Description: D.E. Ireland is the pseudonym of award-winning authors and Anglophiles Meg Mims and Sharon Pisacreta - collaborating on the Eliza Higgins and Henry Higgins cozy mystery series for St. Martin's Minotaur. Book 1, WOULDN'T IT BE DEADLY, was nominated for an AGATHA AWARD. MOVE YOUR BLOOMING CORPSE is the second book of the series.

Both Meg and Sharon live in Michigan and are big fans of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Downton Abbey, Mr. Selfridge, Sherlock Holmes, classic and contemporary cozy mysteries. They prefer reading and visiting tea rooms to housework.
 

Meg Mims

Author Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery & Thrillers, Romance

Website: Meg Mims
Author's Blog: Meg Mims
Blog: D.E. Ireland Facebook
Twitter: @megmims
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Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile

Author Description:
Award-winning mystery author Meg Mims -- also one-half of the writing team of D.E. Ireland for the Agatha-nominated Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins Mystery series from Minotaur Books -- lives in Southeastern Michigan with her husband and a sweet Malti-poo. She loves writing novels, novellas and short stories, both contemporary and historical. Meg also earned a Spur Award for Best First Novel, a Laramie Award and an M.A. from Seton Hill University's Writing Popular Fiction program.

She's loved reading mystery, western, historical, romance and other genre fiction since first grade's adventures of Spot, Dick and Jane. She has published hundreds of freelance articles. Meg enjoys gardening, crafts, watercolor painting, with housework last.



Sharon Pisacreta

Author Genre: Mystery

Website: Sharon Pisacreta
Author's Blog: Lake Effect Living
Twitter: @Spisacreta
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Google+: Check Out Google+
Facebook: Check Out Facebook

Amazon Author Profile



Author Description:
Sharon Pisacreta is an award-winning author who lives along the beautiful shoreline of Lake Michigan. She declared herself a writer at age nine and hasn't looked back since. Published in romance, mystery, fantasy and nonfiction, Sharon is a former archaeologist who loves to read and write about history. Her work appears under the names Sharon Pisacreta, Cynthia Kirk and - most recently - D.E. Ireland. She has teamed up with friend and fellow author Meg Mims to write a mystery series as Ireland for St. Martin's Press starring Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins. WOULDN'T IT BE DEADLY is the first book in the series with a release date of Sept. 2014.



Author's Book List
Get Me To The Grave On Time - The Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mysteries Book 3
Although Eliza still refuses to marry Freddy Eynsford Hill, everyone around her seems headed for the altar. Not only is her cousin Inspector Jack Shaw about to wed his sweetheart, but Freddy's younger sister Clara is engaged, along with the niece of Henry Higgins. Another blushing bride is the sixty-year-old Duchess of Carbrey, who plans to marry a handsome fellow half her age. But when the groom is found dead, a jealous mistress is blamed for the murder. However, the death may also be connected to the stolen treasure of an Indian temple.

Disaster strikes next at Jack and Sybil's wedding. Soon after, the wedding reception of Higgins's niece takes a lethal turn. Someone is targeting bridegrooms, and the wedding of Freddy's sister is next. Before another bridal bouquet is tossed, Higgins and Eliza must track down the killer. Otherwise, Clara's bridegroom - and perhaps the bride herself - may be murdered before they can get to the church on time.


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Move Your Blooming Corpse - Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mystery Book 2
In the second book from talented writing team D.E. Ireland, famous literary characters Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins once again come to life as a hilarious investigative team. Move Your Blooming Corpse explores the Edwardian racing world and the fascinating characters who people it, from jockeys to duchesses, in this delightful traditional mystery that will appeal to fans of British mysteries.

Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins are at the posh Royal Ascot, the biggest horse racing event of the season. Eliza's father is the new co-owner of a champion racehorse, and Eliza and Henry are excited to cheer the Donegal Dancer on to victory. However, their idyllic outing takes a serious turn when a victim is trampled during the Gold Cup race and someone is found murdered in the stables.

With time running out before the upcoming Eclipse Stakes, she and Higgins investigate jealous spouses, suffragettes and the colorful co-owners of the Donegal Dancer. But can they outrace the murderer, or will there be another blooming corpse at the finish line?

Published under the pen name: D.E. Ireland by authors: Meg Mims + Sharon Pisacreta


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Wouldn't It Be Deadly - An Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mystery Book 1
Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins make an incomparable pair of sleuths in the start of a delightful new series

Following her successful appearance at an Embassy Ball--where Eliza Doolittle won Professor Henry Higgins' bet that he could pass off a Cockney flower girl as a duchess--Eliza becomes an assistant to his chief rival Emil Nepommuck. After Nepommuck publicly takes credit for transforming Eliza into a lady, an enraged Higgins submits proof to a London newspaper that Nepommuck is a fraud. When Nepommuck is found with a dagger in his back, Henry Higgins becomes Scotland Yard's prime suspect. However, Eliza learns that most of Nepommuck's pupils had a reason to murder their blackmailing teacher. As another suspect turns up dead and evidence goes missing, Eliza and Higgins realize the only way to clear the Professor's name is to discover which of Nepommuck's many enemies is the real killer. When all the suspects attend a performance of Hamlet at Drury Lane, Eliza and Higgins don their theatre best and race to upstage a murderer.

This reimagining of George Bernard Shaw's beloved characters is sheer pleasure. Wouldn't It Be Deadly transports readers to Edwardian London, from the aristocratic environs of Mayfair to the dangerous back alleys of the East End. Eliza and Henry steal the show in this charming traditional mystery.

Published under the pen name: D.E. Ireland by authors: Meg Mims + Sharon Pisacreta


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