New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
MAGGIE SHAYNE
and
Olive Heber Books
present
Arsenic and Old Ladies
In this wickedly dark comedy series, four sixty-something women turn an accidental murder into a lethal vigilante mission, hiding their victims in signature "double-decker" graves beneath the town’s legitimate dead. The stakes turn deadly as the matriarchs balance Sunday dinners with tactical strikes while the ringleader’s deputy son investigates his own mother’s crimes.
Arsenic and Old Ladies
Soft-spoken retired teacher Bonnie Tucker just killed a pedophile by accident.
She’d followed him home and lied to get into his house. Being a cop’s mom (out of state, thank goodness) she knows this looks bad. So she calls her very best friends for help.
Bonnie is the friend the other three always look out for. To save her Diane, Christine and Rosie bury the evidence with the town’s own dead. It’s Diane’s idea, a signature double-decker method to hide a corpse.
Diane always knows where there’s an open grave, after all. At her age, she’s on the cemetery’s mailing list.
For a heartbeat, they think they got away with it. Then they hear from stranger who saw Bonnie’s crime via livestream. They realize he intends to silence them. They know too much
The ladies decide they have no choice but to silence him first. After all, they got away with it once.
Bonnie’s son Sam and her twin teen grandkids move back home. Sam’s taking a job with the Sheriff’s Department, investigating the very disappearance his sweet mom caused.
As Sam closes in on what’s looking more and more like a vigilante killer, Bonnie and her friends must keep their secret, all the while balancing Sunday dinners with with tactical strikes against a wealthy, powerful man who wants them dead…
A man who’s about to learn that the most dangerous thing in the neighborhood isn't him—it's the matriarchs who know where the bodies are buried.
Arsenic and Old Ladies
After I finished Lone Wolf, and began talking about what I would write next, a dear writer friend who is also my publisher suggested I give myself permission to write anything I wanted to. I had been listing series that needed new volumes like assignments. The notion of writing whatever I wanted was a breath of fresh air. I hadn't even thought about doing that in forever, just about keeping fans of each series as happy as I, as one writer with only ten fingers, can.
So I decided to sleep on it. I told my muses to send me whatever story felt right, whatever wonderful thing they had ready, no matter what it was.
And then I dreamed about Bonnie, Diane, Rosie, and Christine. I woke up and couldn't get them off my mind. The scenes were just playing out in my head, one after the next. I couldn't wait to get to the keyboard to write them down.
This is the first time a book has come to me organically this way in many years. I usually pick the next book in line, demand a story, and then begin writing, often building the tale from scratch, which is way more work!
Not this one. This one is coming through so powerfully my fingers can barely keep up. I wrote the first draft, 60,000 words, in about 5 weeks.
And I named the characters according to who I would cast to play them in the movie, that's how clearly they came through to me. Diane is Diane Keaton. Bonnie is Bonnie Hunt. Christine is Christine Baranski. Rosie is Rosie Perez.
As I write this, I have begun the second draft. I can barely tear myself away from the story, unless it's to work on something else related to the story–like this new page on my website, and the video above. (The video used AI assistance, but I write all my books entirely by myself.) My editor gets it June 1st, and then I'll do another polishing draft.
The cover was done by the wonderful Dar Albert of Wicked Smart Designs. I filled in the art request form with extreme detail. I knew exactly what I wanted, and it's as if she read my mind.
So here is what has already been put into place:
RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 22
It will be a TRILOGY.
RETAILERS: Paperbacks everywhere paperbacks are sold, including Bookshop, BN, Booktopia, BAM!, Foyle's, Blackwell's, Hugendubel and everywhere else you can think of.
eBook will be a Kindle exclusive.
PRE-ORDERS are going up as we speak where possible.
Some retailers don't allow paperback pre-orders until the final version of the book is complete.
That's what I've got for now. News on this will keep on coming. I'm super excited.
