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Title details for A New Lease on Death by Olivia Blacke - Wait list

A New Lease on Death

A Mystery

#1 in series

by Olivia Blacke
ebook
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Death is only the beginning in Olivia Blacke's A New Lease on Death, a darkly funny supernatural mystery that introduces an unlikely crime-solving duo.
Ruby Young's new Boston apartment comes with all the usual perks. Windows facing the brick wall of the next-door building. Heat that barely works. A malfunctioning buzzer. Noisy neighbors. A dead body on the sidewalk outside. And of course, a ghost.
Since Cordelia Graves died in her apartment a few months ago, she's kept up her residency, despite being bored out of her (non-tangible) skull and frustrated by her new roommate. When her across-the-hall neighbor, Jake Macintyre, is shot and killed in an apparent mugging gone wrong outside their building, Cordelia is convinced there's more to it and is determined to bring his killer to justice.
Unfortunately, Cordelia, being dead herself, can't solve the mystery alone. She has to enlist the help of the obnoxiously perky, living tenant of her apartment. Ruby is twenty, annoying, and has never met a houseplant she couldn't kill. But she also can do everything Cordelia can't, from interviewing suspects to researching Jake on the library computers that go up in a puff of smoke if Cordelia gets too close. As the roommates form an unlikely friendship and get closer to the truth about Jake's death, they also start to uncover other dangerous secrets.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Supernatural Mysteries

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 29, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781250336682

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781250336682
      • File size: 1767 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      May 1, 2024

      Blacke ("Record Shop Mysteries") launches a new series. Twenty-year-old Ruby Young moves to a new apartment in Boston and finds that she has a ghost for a roommate--Cordelia Graves, who died in the apartment a few months earlier. When a neighbor is killed, the two team up to solve the murder. With a 75K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      September 1, 2024
      Ruby's new Boston apartment comes with all sorts of ""amenities"": used furniture, plants (that she's bound to kill), noisy neighbors, and the ghost of the previous tenant. Cordelia does not remember her own death, so she continues to "live" as if it never happened. When Ruby moves in, Cordelia tries everything to scare her away, but when Ruby's next-door neighbor, Jake, is found murdered in front of the building, Cordelia decides to stop terrorizing her new roommate and team up with her to try and solve the murder instead. This series starter from Blacke (Rhythm and Clues, 2024) offers a creative take on the typical cozy mystery, with an enjoyable amount of laughs sprinkled amongst all the paranormal world building. Ruby is immature yet relatable and quirky, while Cordelia is earnest and snarky. This pair of amateur detectives just works, and readers will root for them and the friendship they're building. The satisfying conclusion offers the promise of a sequel. Recommended for readers who enjoy their cozies with a paranormal twist.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      October 1, 2024
      The fatal shooting of a Boston warehouse worker is investigated by an improbable pair of amateur sleuths. Like, really, really improbable. Even after he's died, Cordelia Graves can still chat with Jake Macintyre, the neighbor across the hall from her fourth-floor walk-up, for the simple reason that she's dead too, pronounced a death by suicide at 43 after she was found in her bathtub last Christmas full of painkillers and Jack Daniel's. Their halting conversation is abruptly terminated when Jake announces, "I don't believe in ghosts," and vanishes, never to return. Now that Jake's incapable of investigating his own murder, Cordelia takes it upon herself to look into it. Since she has limited ability to interact with the pre-dead, though, she needs an ally among the living. The natural candidate is Ruby Young, an unemployed 20-year-old who's moved into Cordelia's apartment and whose belief in ghosts is so much stronger than Jake's that she detects Cordelia's presence even before her roommate is prepared to reveal herself. Their initial communications are awkward, since, as Cordelia notes, "I couldn't touch a keyboard, and she couldn't read my handwriting," and the physical contact that allows them to talk to each other drains Cordelia of her energy. Soon enough, however, Cordelia has paved the way for Ruby to take over Cordelia's old job as the office manager at the software design firm TrendCelerate and start gathering evidence. The mystery is laughably slight, but the camaraderie between the two women is surprisingly strong, and every single joke about being dead or communicating with the dead lands with a pleasant ding. Here's hoping the two leads get a case worthy of their considerable talents next time.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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