Book 1 of the Bay View Harbor Mysteries. Gypsy Lee Miller had a successful career in Washington, DC, but felt adrift. Her friends thought she was nuts when she decided to go back to her starting point before forging ahead. That point was Bay View Harbor on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. At her cousin Linda's suggestion, she renovates a building to become the Bay View Harbor Bakery and the two become entrepreneurs. Business doesn't pick up rapidly but it is growing until Gordy, the local handyman, drops dead on the bakery floor soon after taking a bite of a lemon cupcake.
Gordy owed money to a lot of people and was fixated on not being well-to-do. Was he trying to blackmail powerful people? When rumors spread and clues are sparse, Gypsy Lee uses her persistence -- against advice -- to delve into what happened. Being known as the Killer Cupcake Woman is bad for business. But the questions she's asking annoy powerful people and bring unwanted attention in the form of bricks through her bakery window and smashed taillights. She's on the right track, but will she be around to get to the finish line?
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Elaine L. Orr writes four mystery series, including the fourteen-book Jolie Gentil cozy mystery series, set at the Jersey shore. "Behind the Walls" was a finalist for the 2014 Chanticleer Mystery and Mayhem Awards. The second book in the River's Edge series--set in rural Iowa-- "Demise of a Devious Neighbor," was a Chanticleer finalist in 2017.
The Logland series is a police procedural with a cozy feel, and began with "Tip a Hat to Murder" in 2016 The Family History Mystery series, set in the Western Maryland Mountains began with "Least Trodden Ground" in 2020. The second book in the series, "Unscheduled Murder Trip," received an Indie B.R.A.G. Medallion in 2021.
She also writes plays and novellas, including the one-act play, "Common Ground" published in 2015. Her novella, "Falling into Place," tells the story of a family managing the results of an Iowa father's World War II experience with humor and grace. Another novella, "Biding Time," was one of five finalists in the National Press Club's first fiction contest, in 1993. "In the Shadow of Light" is the fictional story of children separated from their mother at the US/Mexico border.
Nonfiction includes :Words to Write By: Getting Your Thoughts on Paper: and :Writing When Time is Scarce. She graduated from the University of Dayton and the American University and is a member of Sisters in Crime and the Independent Book Publishers Association. Elaine grew up in Maryland and moved to the Midwest in 1994.
Her fiction and nonfiction are at all online retailers in all formats -- ebooks, paperbacks, large print, and (on Amazon, itunes, and Audible.com) audio in digital form. Paperbacks can be ordered through Barnes and Noble Stores as well as t heir online site.
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