Monday, August 31, 2026

Teresa Crowe & The Salt Widow—new dark cozy mystery

Please welcome Teresa Crowe, author of the new dark cozy mystery, The Salt Widow, the first of five in the Salt Widow Mysteries set on the Chesapeake Bay. It releases officially today, August 31. Teresa, could you tell us about the story? 

Truth is a tide. You can’t keep it from coming in.

When Janessa “Nessa” Douglas inherits her grandmother’s house in Mystic Beach on the Chesapeake Bay, she intends to sell it and never look back. The locals still whisper about her grandmother, Elspeth, who wrote strange fairy tales about women who kept dangerous secrets.

When a college intern named Ivy Camden vanishes while studying those same folktales, Nessa’s plans are pulled out to sea. Ivy’s research hints that Elspeth’s most infamous story, The Salt Widow, was not born of myth but of murder.

With help from her childhood friend, Nessa begins to unravel the buried history of the town: drowned girls, a power family’s cover-up, and a legacy of silence stretching back more than a century. The deeper she digs, the more she realizes her grandmother’s stories weren’t warnings. They were confessions.

As storms roll in from the bay and old sins rise with the tide, Nessa must decide whether to flee from her family’s darkness or finish what the Salt Widow started.

The Salt Widow

Teresa Crowe Books, August 31, 2026

Genres: Dark Cozy Mystery, Thriller, Paranormal Mystery

Keywords: Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Amateur Sleuth, Small Town, Seaside, Superstitions, Secrets, Cold Case, Family Trauma, Crimes against women, Mythology, Legacy Family

Amazon Sales Link: https://a.co/d/01qDrNeZ

The Salt Widow Mysteries are a planned five-book series featuring the seaside, superstition, and small town secrets unraveled by amateur sleuth Nessa Douglas.

Order of books to be released:

1.     The Salt Widow

2.    The Salt Widow’s Key

3.    The Salt Widow’s Curse

4.    The Salt Widow’s Tide

5.    The Salt Widow’s Watch

 


About the Author & Social Media:

www.teresacrowebooks.com

www.facebook.com/teresacrowebooks

I’m Teresa Crowe, a mystery writer, social work professor, and longtime believer that stories help us understand what people hide, what they survive, and what they carry with them. I live near the Maryland Atlantic coast, where the water, weather, small towns, and shifting tides constantly find their way into my fiction. I’m drawn to places that feel beautiful and unsettling at the same time, like boardwalks after dark, quiet marinas, old houses, isolated shorelines, and small communities where everyone knows more than they say. When I’m not writing or teaching, I’m usually reading, boating, spending time on the beach, or hanging out with my husband and our dogs. My background in social work shapes how I think about people, but my mysteries come from a lifelong curiosity about secrets, motives, and the stories beneath the surface. I write coastal mysteries with psychological depth, atmospheric settings, and buried truths that refuse to stay buried.

Sunday, August 16, 2026

A New Five-Star Review for The Wishing Tree!

 

Out of the blue! A Five-Star Review from Kim Ligon for The Wishing Tree: Love, Lies and Spies on Chincoteague Island. Here’s a tidbit: “Spencer's highly descriptive narrative whisked me away to Chincoteague Island and the non-stop action kept me riveted there.”

The story:

Will the wind whip her token from the Wishing Tree and make her wish come true?

Addison Steele dreams of the day her husband—lost at sea—returns to her. Instead, she meets Nick Savage, whose every word may be a lie. She is soon embroiled in mystery, all related to the top secret science station at Wallops Island, Virginia.

After a Belarusian scientist at Wallops is murdered, the questions multiply. Was it because he caught the person stealing classified documents or because he wanted to defect? Is Nick the spy—or is it his brother? How can she trust the man who is slowly claiming her heart when his story keeps shifting?

To read the whole review click here:

https://www.bookbub.com/reviews/1947521497

Thank you, Kim!

Monday, August 3, 2026

Now available for preorder ~ Fair Winds and Foul Play: an Amity Landing Mystery!

Now available for preorder ~ Fair Winds and Foul Play: an Amity Landing Mystery!

What do a government official, a loony environmentalist, and a batty old lady have in common?

Zoe’s run-in with the newcomer in Albion Cottage is hardly promising, but his gunmetal gray eyes and air of mystery stick with her. Why is he hiding? Who is he? His prickly attitude grates on the neighborly—well, to be honest, nosey—folks of the village of Amity Landing, but when he confesses to Zoe that he is the witness to a gruesome murder, she jumps at the chance to help the handsome stranger.

Two more corpses make their appearance in quick succession, but their connection to the first body is murky at best. Is it simply a series of unfortunate incidents? Has Amity Landing become a hotbed of homicide or is there a pattern to the madness? Do more have to die before Zoe and the stranger can fit the puzzle pieces together?

You can preorder Fair Winds here:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fair-Winds-Foul-Play-Landing-ebook/dp/B0GX35YY4X

Barnes&Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fair-winds-and-foul-play-m-s-spencer/1150931840

The Wild Rose Press: https://shop.app/products/9410606498010/fair-winds-and-foul-play-an-amity-landing-mystery

Monday, July 20, 2026

Fair Winds & Foul Play Release Date September 30!

 

Get Ready! Fair Winds and Foul Play: an Amity Landing Mystery is on its way. Releasing September 30 of this year, it’s a story of murder and romance in small town Maine. Here’s the blurb:

What do a government official, a loony environmentalist, and a batty old lady have in common?

Zoe’s run-in with the newcomer in Albion Cottage is hardly promising, but his gunmetal gray eyes and air of mystery stick with her. Why is he hiding? Who is he? His prickly attitude grates on the neighborly—well, to be honest, nosey—folks of the village of Amity Landing, but when he confesses to Zoe that he is the witness to a gruesome murder, she jumps at the chance to help the handsome stranger.

Two more corpses make their appearance in quick succession, but their connection to the first body is murky at best. Is it simply a series of unfortunate incidents? Has Amity Landing become a hotbed of homicide, or is there a pattern to the madness? Do more have to die before Zoe and the stranger can fit the puzzle pieces together?


Monday, July 6, 2026

The Pit & the Passion: Murder at the Ghost Hotel in NN Light's Summer Event

A drop-dead gorgeous editor who may or may not be a villain, a publisher with a dark secret, and a mysterious ring—a famous writer & ace reporter unearth an unexpected link to the most famous circus family in the world. Do come by N. N. Light’s Book Heaven for her Summer Bookish Event, featuring my Longboat Key historical mystery the Pit and the Passion: Murder at the Ghost Hotel. I have a new excerpt for you. Enter to win fabulous prizes!

https://www.nnlightsbookheaven.com/summertime-books-bookish-event