M. S. Spencer ~ Tale Spinner: Backlist Surfing: Artful Dodging and The Mason’s Mark

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Backlist Surfing: Artful Dodging and The Mason’s Mark—DC stories

Since my new release won’t grace the internet until next year, I thought I’d do a little backlist surfing.

Let’s start with my two novels set in Alexandria, Virginia: Artful Dodging: the Torpedo Factory Murders and the Mason’s Mark: Love & Death in the Tower.

Artful Dodging: the Torpedo Factory Murders

Fun Fact: The Torpedo Factory was indeed a munitions factory. It closed after WWII and remained empty and derelict on prime waterfront property in Old Town Alexandria. In the 1970s a group of local women (including my aunt) got together and convinced the town to sell it to them, and thus was born the Torpedo Factory Art Center, an artists coop.

Blurb:

It’s just before Christmas, and Milo Everhart has two needlepoint stockings, a cross-stitch purse, and three canvases to finish for her clients. Waiting out the rain in a pub, she is captivated by the handsome man next to her, but blocking the road to romance are two mysterious corpses who turn up in the tower of her Torpedo Factory Art Center. As if that weren’t enough, a second crisis erupts—a proposal to gut her beloved Art Center.

Tristram Brodie, hard-driving corporate lawyer and former Marine, is focused on his plan to convert the Torpedo Factory into a box store. He is drawn to the beautiful woman sitting next to him, but their mutual attraction will be frustrated by both the murders and his intentions. As they edge closer to love, they must find a way to overcome both their differences and the still-fresh memory of her late husband.

Artful Dodging: the Torpedo Factory Murders

Wild Rose Press, 7/20/2016

Mystery/Cozy Mystery; Contemporary romantic Suspense

Ebook, 66,830 words; Print 268 p

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Now for The Mason’s Mark: Love and Death in the Tower

Fun Fact: The Mason's Mark arose in part out of a true story. Starting in the 1940s an Italian named Licio Gelli embarked on a lifetime of bizarre scams and crimes. Alternately linked to rightists and leftists, he bilked or used people from Italian politicians, to the Nazis, the Communists, the CIA, even to Juan Peron, dictator of Argentina. His exploits across the globe spanned four decades. At last check, he was still alive, in his nineties and writing poetry from prison. In 1996 he was even nominated for the Nobel prize in literature.

Blurb

In both the best and worst first day at work ever, docent Claire Wilding meets the man of her dreams, but her carefully rehearsed guided tour of the George Washington National Masonic Memorial collapses when she discovers a body and is drawn into a dark world of black ops and Italian renegade masons, of secret cabals and hidden treasure. Also cloaked in mystery is handsome Gideon Bliss, a George Washington expert who haunts the Memorial, his manner evasive. What is his secret? Claire fears she'll fall in love with him only to learn he's a thief or even a murderer. Juggling two eccentric mothers, an inquisitive sister, and an increasingly smitten detective, Claire must find answers to a complex web of intrigue, including who to trust and who to love.

The Mason's Mark: Love and Death in the Tower

Wild Rose Press, 5/6/2016; Imprint: Crimson Rose
Mystery/Cozy Mystery; Romantic suspense
79300 words; 322 pp.

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