A Trifle Dead: Cafe La Femme, Book 1 (25 page)

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If you’re interested in staying up to date with all things Livia Day and the Café La Femme series, sign up to my mailing list and I’ll also send you these freebies:

•
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of A TRIFLE DEAD, Book 1 in the Café La Femme series

• A copy of the novella set in between books 1 and 2 in the Café La Femme series, THE BLACKMAIL BLEND

• A sneak peek at the first chapter of Book 3 - forthcoming in 2016!

• Readers’ Library exclusive extra Tasmanian trifle recipe

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ou can get
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L
ivia Day is a stylish
, murder-obsessed fashionista who lives inside the head of someone else entirely. Tansy Rayner Roberts is a mother, a blogger, a podcaster, and a Hugo-award winning critic. Together they WRITE CRIME. And sometimes they invent ice cream recipes. Livia is the author of the Café La Femme series of cozy mystery novels, including
A Trifle Dead
and new release
Drowned Vanilla
. Warning: reading these books will make you crave dessert.

You can find her online at

• @liviadaysleuth
  
• Livia Day
  

H
ave
you read all the books in the Café La Femme series yet?

A
TRIFLE DEAD
:
Book 1, Café La Femme

Tabitha Darling has always had a dab hand for pastry and a knack for getting into trouble. Which was fine when she was a tearaway teen, but not so useful now she’s trying to run a hipster urban cafe, invent the perfect trendy dessert, and stop feeding the many (oh so unfashionable) policemen in her life.

When a dead muso is found in the flat upstairs, Tabitha does her best (honestly) not to interfere with the investigation, despite the cute Scottish blogger who keeps angling for her help. Her superpower is gossip, not solving murder mysteries, and those are totally not the same thing, right?

But as that strange death turns into a string of random crimes across the city of Hobart, Tabitha can’t shake the unsettling feeling that maybe, for once, it really is ALL ABOUT HER.

And maybe she’s figured out the deadly truth a trifle late…

Includes recipes to make your own trifles.

T
HE BLACKMAIL BLEND
:
Café La Femme mini mystery, set between Book 1 and Book 2

Cake, not murder. Cake hardly ever gets you killed...

Tabitha can quit solving murder mysteries any time she likes - and right now, she's far more interested in her catering job for Queen Beattie's high tea. Beatrice Wilde is a famous and beloved romance novelist, who nurtures new writers with tea, sympathy and career advice. She's also obnoxious, demanding, and a hot contender for 'Client Most Likely To Be Murdered By Cake Fork.'

Queen Beattie's high tea sets off a murderous chain of events involving poison, blackmail, revenge ... and a special blend of mayhem. Once again, Tabitha is right in the centre of the chaos, and the only way out is to solve the crime - even if that means losing one of the very confusing and attractive men in her life.

W
ay
too many teacups and tiny sandwiches...

D
ROWNED VANILLA
:
Book 2, Café La Femme

It’s the beginning of a hot, hot summer in Hobart. Tabitha Darling is in love with the wrong man, and determined to perfect the art of ice cream. Playing amateur detective again is definitely not on the cards—not even when her friends try to lure her into an arty film noir project in the historical town of Flynn.

But when a young woman goes missing from a house full of live webcams, and is found drowned in the lake outside Flynn, Tabitha is dragged into the whole mess— film crew, murder victim, love life and all.

There were two girls using the internet pseudonym French Vanilla, and only one is dead. So where is the other one? Why is everyone suddenly behaving like they’re in a (quite specific) Raymond Chandler novel? And how the hell did the best kiss of Tabitha’s life end up on YouTube?

Even ice cream isn’t going to get them out of this one.

M
y dad introduced
me to crime fiction, to so many authors and characters who are still among my favourites: Robert B Parker’s Spenser, Sara Paretsky’s VI Warshawski, and Dick Francis’ Kit Fielding, among others. It is a great joy to me that later, as an adult, I have introduced him to some new favourites I discovered myself, such as Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, and Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher and Corinna Chapman.

Surely the whole point of having children is so they can grow up to recommend awesome books to you? And maybe write a couple…

My friend Isabel continued my crime fiction education, and still occasionally throws books (and detectives) at my head to this day. Someday I hope to see her awesome murder mystery series on the shelves alongside mine.

A Trifle Dead
began many, many years ago. I wrote a version that is almost entirely different (only the names remain the same) back in college for a writing class (we were only supposed to write 5000 words, I wrote a novel) and then I wrote it again, the following year, with a plot that showed how much I still had to learn about murder mysteries.

With the financial assistance of Arts Tasmania, for which I am very grateful, I wrote the book a third time, from scratch, and it started to look a lot closer to the one you are holding in your hands right now.

Thanks go to Ron Serdiuk, who attempted to give this book a home some years ago, and to Diane Waters and Angela Slatter, for their editorial work on the manuscript.

A billion thanks to Alisa Krasnostein, who gave the book its last (and lasting) title as well as bringing it to publication. If publishers were muses, she would be mine. Thanks also to her team at Twelfth Planet, especially the magnificent Amanda Rainey, who makes us all look good, even when there are bloodstains in the trifle.

Three cheers for the writers of the recipes and those who took part in the Great Trifle Test Kitchen, eating quantities of custard that were above and beyond the call of duty. Your sacrifice was not in vain.

As always, I am grateful for my family that keeps me sane and forgives me for being cranky and distracted when it’s proofreading time.

F
irst published
in Australia in March 2013

by Deadlines

w
ww.twelfthplanetpress.com

©
2
013 Livia Day

Design and layout by Amanda Rainey

eBook layout by Charles A. Tan

A
ll rights reserved
. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the “above publisher of this book.

N
ational Library of Australia Cataloguing
-in-Publication entry

Author: Day, Livia.

Title: A trifle dead [electronic resource]: a cafe la femme novel / by Livie Day; editor, Helen Merrick and managing editor, Terri Sellen.

ISBN: 9781922101006  (eBook)

Other Authors/Contributors: Merrick, Helen. Sellen, Terri.

Dewey Number: A823.4