Book 5

Strife over Spells

Midlife magic lessons are humbling enough without your instructor getting murdered halfway through the semester.

Fiona Shaw traded a not-so-predictable life for enchanted textbooks, a cozy tea shop that runs on carefully brewed magic, and the weekly adventure of being the oldest witch in Professor Cordelia Blackthorne’s special classes. The lessons were designed for Mystic Haven’s magical late starters, the witches whose powers came in sideways, fizzled at the worst possible moments, or simply never cooperated the way the books promised. Fiona fit right in.

Cordelia never made Fiona feel like a failure. She made it feel like a beginning. Then someone killed her.
Found in her warm, cluttered study with traces of scorched magic still lingering like smoke from a snuffed candle, Cordelia left behind hidden research, personal secrets, and a small circle of students who all had complicated feelings about a woman who knew their struggles better than anyone.

Now Fiona is juggling a murder investigation with the help of the distractingly handsome local handyman who notices things others miss, and her talking cat familiar whose opinions about every suspect are as loud as they are unsolicited. Her quirky barista is brewing tea while seeing flavors as colors.

Between comforting her fellow classmates, keeping the tea shop running, and following a trail of clues that winds through Mystic Haven’s most charming corners and most guarded secrets, Fiona is learning that the hardest lessons aren’t found in any textbook.

Book 4

Hazards to Hexes

Fiona Shaw doesn’t do cute. She doesn’t do whimsical. And she absolutely does not do poppet dolls turning her town into yet another level of strange.

After months of running the Mystic Haven Tea Shop (inherited ring, talking cat, zero formal training included), Fiona has the morning rush down to a science. The antique shop owner March gets her four daily cups timed to the minute. The regulars treat their chairs like personal property, and the samovar only editorializes twice before noon. It’s not elegant, but it works.

Then a box of handmade poppet dolls arrives, each one stitched to look exactly like someone in town, right down to the mustache on the professor and the badge on the constable. When the dolls start controlling the people they resemble, Fiona’s carefully organized world collapses faster than a celebrity’s PR strategy after an unvetted tweet.

With Nell’s nephew threatening to claim the tea shop property, a vampire paying a visit, and a killer who sews better than they confess, Fiona has to rely on a boatwright (who happens to be a handsome mage), a three-hundred-year-old cat named who treats patience as a professional skill, and her own stubborn refusal to let anyone else run the disaster she has come to call home.

Fiona struggles to show this puppet master what happens when you mess with Mystic Haven’s most recent and most reluctant witch.

Welcome to Kat McGee Books!

Once a professional ventriloquist, Kat McGee charmed audiences with quirky banter and puppets. But Kat’s got secrets too, like that hush-hush government-support job she once had. Yep, the kind where she’d have to tickle you with a feather duster if she told you about it.

From an early age, creative writing struck her fancy, but life’s twists and turns led her down a path filled with puppets and proposal specifications. Now, living in the southeastern United States, Kat has traded her puppets for paws and pens. In the moody, weather-challenged area, surrounded by whispering pines and lazy rivers, she’s the typical crazy cat lady who watches over a nearby community of feral cats.

Her home is a haven of chaos and laughter, shared with a lovable wire-haired sausage dog and a Siamese cat who’s as moody as a soap opera star.

Amidst the playful antics of her furry friends, Kat weaves tales that blend mystery and humor, all amid the sweet scent of honeysuckle and the soft glow of fireflies. As she crafts her stories with a glass of sweet iced tea within reach, her dog dozes at her feet and her cat keeps a watchful eye from atop a nearby bookshelf, overseeing the skitter of words on the screen.

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