#MMBBR Review: Nine Lives: A Lily Dale Mystery by Wendy Corsi Staub @WendyCorsiStaub

In this warm and witty series debut from New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub, a widowed young mom plans a fresh start in Chicago--but instead finds her way to a quirky lakeside village that just happens to be populated by mediums.

When reluctant road trippers Bella Jordan and her son Max detour to Lily Dale, New York, they're planning to deliver a lost cat to its home and then move on, searching for one of their own. But the footloose feline's owner Leona Gatto has unexpectedly passed away, leaving behind a pregnant pet without a mistress, a busy inn without a keeper--and a lovable circle of neighbors who chat with dead people.

After agreeing to help out temporarily, sensible Bella doesn't need psychic gifts to figure out that a houseful of tourists and a litter of kittens lie in her immediate future--or that Leona was murdered. It's up to her to solve the case so that she and Max can leave town, but their new home--like Leona's killer--might just lurk where she least expects it.

New York Times bestseller Wendy Corsi Staub is the award-winning author of more than eighty novels, best known for the single title psychological suspense novels she writes under her own name. Those novels and the women's fiction she writes under the pseudonym Wendy Markham also frequently appear on the USA Today, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Bookscan bestseller lists.

In 2015, Wendy will publish three new novels: THE BLACK WIDOW (on sale in February), which concludes her cyber predator suspense trilogy for HarperCollins; BLOOD RED (on sale in September), which launches Mundy's Landing, a new psychological suspense trilogy for HarperCollins; and NINE LIVES (on sale in October), which launches Lily Dale, a new cozy mystery series for Crooked Lane.

A two-time finalist for the prestigious Simon and Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award, she's won the 2008 RT Award for Career Achievement in Suspense, the 2007 RWA-NYC Golden Apple Award for Lifetime Achievement, an RWA Rita award, and five WLA Washington Irving Prizes for Fiction. 

She previously published a dozen adult suspense novels with Kensington Books as well as the acclaimed young adult series Lily Dale with Walker/Bloomsbury. Earlier in her career, she published in a broad range of genres under her own name and various pseudonyms, and has co-authored and ghostwritten for a number of celebrities.

Wendy grew up in a small town near Buffalo and graduated from SUNY Fredonia. She moved to Manhattan and became an editor before selling her first novel in 1992.
She now lives in the New York City suburbs with her husband and sons. A vocal and active supporter of Relay for Life, Support Connection, and the American Cancer Society, she was a 2012 Ovarian Cancer Awareness month national spokesperson for the Sandy Rollman Ovarian Cancer Foundation. As an animal rights advocate, she fosters for various rescue organizations.

I really enjoyed NINE LIVES, it is a perfect book to snuggle up with and read this Fall.  It was suspenseful without being gruesome or violent.  The characters were fun to hang out with and the setting was wonderful.  It is fun to be taken away inside a book with a fun premise and an engaging story-line.  4 stars