by Morgana Best
There were those words again. Time seemed to stand still as I heard the words again, Happy Birthday To You, now sung in a failed attempt at what I guessed was meant to be a soprano.
I looked up to see the aunts and Linda trailing behind a waiter struggling under a huge birthday cake. He placed the cake on a little round table next to me. I eyed it warily, but had to admit it did look delicious. I did wonder, though, what the other patrons thought of the blood red cake covered with little black bats. I wondered if they were marzipan.
“Happy birthday, Pepper,” the aunts said in unison. “We’ll light the candles after the main course, and have the cake for dessert,” Aunt Agnes added.
“Sorry about this,” Linda said, as she gave me a playful whack on the arm. “Shame on you for not telling me it was your birthday!”
Aunt Dorothy grabbed a passing waiter and enveloped him in a big hug. She kissed him hard on the cheek. “Happy birthday, dear!” She clutched his head and shoved it into her bosom, and patted him five times on his hair.
The waiter managed to extricate himself. “Thanks, but it’s not my birthday,” he said before fleeing.
Aunt Dorothy did not appear to hear.
“Isn’t this a lovely surprise!” Aunt Agnes said. “We’re all here to join you both for dinner.”
“It’s a surprise, all right.” At least I could agree about that.
“It was my idea,” Aunt Agnes said proudly. “I told Lucas it was your birthday and said we should all have dinner tonight, but he objected. He said he had an intimate dinner planned for just the two of you. I said you would far prefer to have us all for dinner, given that it’s your birthday!”
Lucas and I exchanged glances. “Remember what I said about later in the week,” Lucas said in a low tone.
I smiled at him.
“And let’s make a pact,” he whispered. “No more secrets.”
“No more secrets,” I said, as we made a pinky promise.
Linda and the aunts took their seats at the table and beamed at me. “All’s well that ends well,” Aunt Agnes said, a smile from ear to ear. “We have faced unspeakable evils, and we have come through. No matter what is happening in the world, if you have friends and family, then you can get through anything.”
I looked around the table. Lucas and Linda were smiling at me, Maude was nodding at what Agnes had just said, and Dorothy was reading the label on the box of roses, thinking it was the menu.
This time, I did agree.
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NEXT BOOK IN THIS SERIES
DIZZY SPELLS (THE KITCHEN WITCH BOOK 2)
Witches’ Spells
While Pepper is looking through the attic, she finds a unopened package addressed to the aunts. There is no return address. Pepper discovers that the package holds the secret to her parents’ disappearance.
ALSO BY MORGANA BEST
Live and Let Diet (The Australian Amateur Sleuth Book 1)
Sybil Potts moves to Little Tatterford, a small town in the middle of nowhere in Australia, seeking to find peace and quiet after the upheaval of her divorce.
Although the town is sleepy and nothing has ever happened, her arrival coincides with a murder in the property adjacent to her cottage. Sybil soon finds she is at odds with the attractive Blake Wessley, the exasperated police officer who is trying to solve the murder.
After Sibyl narrowly misses becoming the next victim, she turns her attention to the suspects. Is it the English gentleman, Mr. Buttons, who serves everyone tea and cucumber sandwiches, or her landlord, Cressida Upthorpe, who is convinced that her fat cat, Lord Farringdon, speaks to her? Or is it someone else entirely?
Witches’ Brew (Vampires and Wine Book 1)
Romantic cozy mystery - with witches, vampires, and Shifters!
Pepper Jasper, an Australian witch who has long practiced traditional witchcraft, does not believe in the supernatural - such as Werewolves and Shifters, or Vampires.
Pepper moves from Sydney to the cozy town of Lighthouse Bay, answering a desperate plea from her aunts to help with their failing Bed and Breakfast business.
She discovers her aunts are more eccentric than she remembered, the Bed and Breakfast does not serve breakfast, and the cottages for lease have strange themes. And what’s more, within minutes of her arrival, she stumbles across a dead body.
Pepper soon has her hands full, contending with a murder mystery, irritating guests including the enigmatic Lucas O’Callaghan who is convinced every woman wants to fall into his arms, and her aunts, who are hiding more than one dark secret.
Who or what lurks in the forbidden room at the end of the dark corridor?
Why do the aunts insist she drink copious quantities of special label wine?
Find out what awaits Pepper Jasper at Mugwort Manor.
Miss Spelled (The Kitchen Witch Book 1)
Amelia Spelled has had a bad week. Her boyfriend dumps her when she inadvertently gives him food poisoning; her workplace, a telecommunications centre, fires all their staff as they are outsourcing offshore, and she is evicted due to smoke damage resulting from her failed attempts at baking. Amelia thinks her luck has changed when she inherits her aunt’s store and beautiful Victorian house.
Yet has Amelia jumped out of the frying pan into the fire? The store is a cake store, and her aunt was a witch. To add to the mix, the house has secrets all of its own.
When a man is murdered in the cake store, will Amelia be able to cook up a way to solve the crime? Or will her spells prove as bad as her baking?
A Ghost of a Chance (Witch Woods Funeral Home Book 1)
Nobody knows that Laurel Bay can see and talk to ghosts. When she inherits a funeral home, she is forced to return from the city to the small town of Witch Woods to breathe life into the business. It is a grave responsibility, but Laurel is determined that this will be no dead-end job.
There she has to contend with her manipulative and overly religious mother, more than one ghost, and a secretive but handsome accountant.
When the murder of a local woman in the funeral home strangles the finances, can Laurel solve the murder?
Or will this be the death of her business?
Christmas Spirit (The Middle-aged Ghost Whisper Book 1)
Prudence Wallflower tours the country, making live appearances. She connects people with loved ones who have passed on. However, her reputation as a clairvoyant medium is failing, and even Prudence has begun to doubt herself. She has never seen a ghost, but receives impressions from the dead. This all changes when the ghost of a detective appears to her and demands her help to solve a murder. Prudence finds herself out of her depth, and to make matters worse, she is more attracted to this ghost than any man she has ever met.
SERIES BY MORGANA BEST
Vampires and Wine (A fun, quirky cozy mystery series - no fangs involved!)
1) Witches’ Brew
2) Witches’ Secrets
3) Witches’ Charms
4) Witches Spells
5) Witches Magic
The Kitchen Witch
1) Miss Spelled
2) Dizzy Spells
3) Sit for a Spell
4) Spelling Mistake
5) Ex-Spelled
6) The Halloween Spell
7) Spellcheck
8) The Halloween Love Spell
9) Spell It Out
The Middle-aged Ghost Whisperer
1) Christmas Spirit
2) Ghost Hunter
3) There Must be a Happy Medium
Witch Woods Funeral Home
1) A Ghost of a Chance
2) Nothing to Ghost About
3) Make the Ghost of It
4) Ghost Stories
5) Ghost Blusters
And Morgana’s non-Witch Cosy mysteries:
Cocoa Narel Chocolate Shop Mysteries
1) Sweet Revenge
2) The Sugar Hit
3) Murder Sweetly Served
4) Chocolate to Die For
The Australian Amateur Sleuth
1) Live and Let Diet
2) Natural-Born Grillers
3) Dye Hard
4) The Prawn Identity
5) Any Given Sundae
6) The Last Mango in Paris
AUDIO. Most of Morgana’s books are currently on Audio.
GLOSSARY
The author has used Australian spelling in this series, so for example, Mum instead of the US spelling Mom, neighbour instead of the US spelling neighbor, realise instead of the US spelling realize. It is Ms, Mr and Mrs in Australia, not Ms., Mr. and Mrs.; cosy and not cozy; 1930s not 1930’s; offence not offense; centre not center; towards not toward; jewellery not jewelry; favour not favor; mould not mold; two storey house not two story house; practise (verb) not practice (verb); odour not odor; smelt not smelled; travelling not traveling; liquorice not licorice; leant not leaned; have concussion not have a concussion; anti clockwise not counterclockwise; go to hospital not go to the hospital; sceptic not skeptic; aluminium not aluminum; learnt not learned. These are just some of the differences.
Please note that these are not mistakes or typos, but correct Aussie spelling and terms.
AUSTRALIAN SLANG AND TERMS
Big Smoke - a city
Blighter - infuriating or good-for-nothing person
Blimey - an expression of surprise
Blue - an argument
Bluestone - copper sulphate (copper sulfate in US spelling)
Bluo - a blue laundry additive, an optical brightener
Bogan - someone considered to be rough, low-life, “trailer-trash”
Boot (car) - trunk (car)
Bonnet (car) - hood (car)
Bunging it on - faking something, pretending
Cark it - die
Come good - turn out okay
Copper, cop - police officer
Coot - silly or annoying person
Crikey! - an expression of surprise
Drongo - an idiot
Fair crack of the whip - a request to be fair, reasonable, just
Flat out like a lizard drinking water - very busy
Galah - an idiot
Garbage - trash
G’day - Hello
Give a lift (to someone) - give a ride (to someone)
Goosebumps - goose pimples
Laundry (referring to the room) - laundry room
Like a stunned mullet - very surprised
Mad as a cut snake - either insane or very angry
Miles - while Australians have kilometres these days, it is common to use expressions such as, “The road stretched for miles,” “It was miles away.”
Mow (grass / lawn) - cut (grass / lawn)
Swag - a (temporary) bedroll
Stone the crows! - an expression of surprise
Takeaway (food) - Take Out (food)
Torch - flashlight
Tuck in (to food) - to eat food hungrily
Ute /Utility - pickup truck
Vegemite - Australian food spread, thick, dark brown
Wardrobe - closet
Indigenous References
Bush tucker - food that occurs in the Australian bush
Koori - the original inhabitants/traditional custodians of the land of Australia in the part of NSW in which this book is set. Murri are the people just to the north. White European culture often uses the term, Aboriginal people.
ABOUT MORGANA BEST
Best selling Aussie author, Morgana Best, grew up leaving Tim Tams for the fairies at the bottom of her garden. Now she lives with a half-blind Chocolate Labrador who happily walks into doors, a rescue Dingo who steals zucchinis from the veggie patch, and a cat with no time for nonsense. A former college professor, Morgana enjoys big bowls of pasta, not working out, and visiting the local lighthouse, where she tries to spot the white humpback whale.
www.morganabest.com
