SPOTLIGHT BOOK SERIES TOUR: Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novels by Michelle Cox

 

 

Join Us for this Series Spotlight Tour from Mar 16 to April 3, 2020!

SERIES DETAILS:
Series Title:  Henrietta and Inspector Howard by Michelle Cox
Category:  Adult Fiction (18+)
Genre:  Historical Mystery
Publisher:  She Writes Press
Release dates:   April 2016; April 2017; April 2018; April 2019; April 2020
Tour dates: Mar 16 to April 3, 2020
Content Rating: R: Books 1-2 do not have any sex scenes, though there is sexual reference, Books 3-5 do have explicit sex scenes (tasteful). There is periodic swearing and violence, but not a lot. There are some dark themes (though not graphic examples) of suicide, prostitution, mob involvement, rape, drinking, homosexuality.

Author Interview

1. What excites you most about writing?

Creating something out of nothing.  I’ve always been a really creative person.  Looking back, I see now that I’ve always been striving to create, and for a long time it took on many different forms.  As a kid, I was always trying to illustrate Louisa May Alcott’s books or write little fan fiction stories based on Jo March.  As I got older, it took the form of gardening and decorating the house, and then baking and then creating elaborate kids’ birthday party invitations!  When I finally decided to try writing (long story), the creativity within me, that divine essence, finally found it’s true home.  I’m happiest when I’m creating, and I hope I can keep writing for a long time.

2. Do you ever experience writers block? What do you do to overcome it?

Not really!  I have a lot of story ideas in my head, and thus I usually have the opposite problem.  This is where outlining can really help.  If you have a pretty weighty outline sketched out, then when you sit down to write each day, you pretty much already know what you’re supposed to write that day.  Likewise, I enjoy taking an evening walk (or I try to, anyway!), during which I think about tomorrow’s chapter and what needs to go into it.  Sometimes I even voice record if I have a really good idea or some strands of dialog.  There’s something about walking—moving the legs back and forth, back and forth—that seems to stimulate something in the brain. They say that Dickens used to walk the streets of London for hours in the wee hours of the night.  Now I know why.

3. What has been your greatest challenge as a writer?

My biggest challenge is definitely balance.  I didn’t realize when I started writing and publishing books that this is a business venture.  Had I really understood that, I might not have done it!  That sounds harsh, but it is unfortunately true in this modern age of publishing.  So now I have two lives: my life as a wife, mom, and house manager; and my business life.  And then within the business life, I’m split into the writer (the one who produces the actual product) and the marketer/promoter (the one who actually sells the product.)  Maybe this is easy for other people (I sure hope so!), but balance between all of these worlds is definitely very hard for me.  I always feel like there’s not enough of me to go around!

4. What is the last historical novel you read?

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.  It’s the best book I’ve read in a long time. Quick surprising fact: I much preferred it to Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, but don’t tell anyone!

5. What’s the one habit you have that you would recommend to others?

Set aside a certain portion of the day, even ten minutes, to meditate/pray/center yourself.  Be grateful.

SERIES DESCRIPTION:

A GIRL LIKE YOU: Beautiful Henrietta Von Harmon works as a 26 girl at a corner bar, Poor Pete’s, on Chicago’s northwest side. It’s 1935, but things still aren’t looking up since the big crash and her father’s subsequent suicide. Left to care for her antagonistic mother and seven younger siblings, Henrietta is persuaded to take a job as a taxi dancer at a local dance hall. Henrietta is just beginning to enjoy herself, dancing with men for ten cents a dance, when the floor matron suddenly turns up murdered. The aloof Inspector Clive Howard then appears on the scene, and Henrietta unwittingly finds herself involved in unraveling the mystery when she agrees to go undercover for him in a burlesque theater where he believes the killer lurks.

Even as Henrietta is plunged into Chicago’s grittier underworld, she struggles to still play the mother “hen” to her younger siblings and even to the pesky neighborhood boy, Stanley, who believes himself in love with her and continues to pop up in the most unlikely places, determined, ironically, to keep Henrietta safe, even from the Inspector if needs be. Despite his efforts, however, and his penchant for messing up the Inspector’s investigation, the lovely Henrietta and the impenetrable Inspector find themselves drawn to each other in most unsuitable ways. 

Buy the Book:
Amazon.com ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Apple iBooks
IndieBound ~ Kobo ~ Google Store

A RING OF TRUTH: In this second book of the series, Henrietta and Clive delightfully rewrite Pride and Prejudice―with a hint of mystery!

Newly engaged, Clive and Henrietta now begin the difficult task of meeting each other’s family. “Difficult” because Clive has neglected to tell Henrietta that he is in fact the heir to the Howard estate and fortune, and Henrietta has just discovered that her mother has been hiding secrets about her past as well. When Clive brings Henrietta to the family estate to meet his parents, they are less than enthused about his impoverished intended. Left alone in this extravagant new world when Clive returns to the city, Henrietta finds herself more at home with the servants than his family, much to the disapproval of Mrs. Howard―and soon gets caught up in the disappearance of an elderly servant’s ring, not realizing that in doing so she has become part of a bigger, darker plot.
As Clive and Henrietta attempt to discover the truth in the two very different worlds unraveling around them, they both begin to wonder: Are they meant for each other after all?

Buy the Book:
Amazon.com ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Apple iBooks
IndieBound ~ Kobo ~Google Store

A PROMISE GIVEN: This third book in the Henrietta and Inspector Howard series provides a delightful romp through the English countryside and back.

Anxious to be married, Henrietta and Clive push forward with their wedding plans despite their family differences, made worse now by Oldrich Exley’s attempts to control the Von Harmons. When the long-awaited wedding day arrives, there is more unfolding than just Clive and Henrietta’s vows of love. Stanley and Elsie’s relationship is sorely tested by the presence of the dashing Lieutenant Harrison Barnes-Smith and by Henrietta’s friend Rose―a situation that grows increasingly dark and confused as time goes on.

As Clive and Henrietta begin their honeymoon at Castle Linley, the Howards’ ancestral estate in England, they encounter a whole new host of characters, including the eccentric Lord and Lady Linley and Clive’s mysterious cousin, Wallace. When a man is murdered in the village on the night of a house party at the Castle, Wallace comes under suspicion―and Clive and Henrietta are reluctantly drawn into the case, despite Clive’s anxiety at involving his new bride and Henrietta’s distracting news from home.
Delicately attempting to work together for the first time, Clive and Henrietta set out to prove Wallace’s innocence, uncovering as they do so some rather shocking truths that will shake the Linley name and estate forever.

Buy the Book:
Amazon.com~ Barnes & Noble ~ Apple iBooks
IndieBound ~ Kobo ~ Google Store

A VEIL REMOVED: Murder is never far from this sexy couple . . . even during the holidays!

Their honeymoon abruptly ended by the untimely death of Alcott Howard, Clive and Henrietta return to Highbury, where Clive discovers all is not as it should be. Increasingly convinced that his father’s death was not an accident, Clive launches his own investigation, despite his mother’s belief that he has become “mentally disturbed” with grief. Henrietta eventually joins forces with Clive on their first real case, which becomes darker―and deadlier―than they imagined as they get closer to the truth behind Alcott’s troubled affairs.

Meanwhile, Henrietta’s sister, Elsie, begins, at Henrietta’s orchestration, to take classes at a women’s college―an attempt to evade her troubles and prevent any further romantic temptations. When she meets a bookish German custodian at the school, however, he challenges her to think for herself . . . even as she discovers some shocking secrets about his past life.

Buy the Book:
Amazon.com~ Barnes & Noble ~ Apple iBooks
IndieBound ~ Kobo ~ Google Store

A CHILD LOST: A spiritualist, an insane asylum, a lost little girl . . .

When Clive, anxious to distract a depressed Henrietta, begs Sergeant Frank Davis for a case, he is assigned to investigating a seemingly boring affair: a spiritualist woman operating in an abandoned schoolhouse on the edge of town who is suspected of robbing people of their valuables. What begins as an open and shut case becomes more complicated, however, when Henrietta―much to Clive’s dismay―begins to believe the spiritualist's strange ramblings.
Meanwhile, Elsie begs Clive and Henrietta to help her and the object of her budding love, Gunther, locate the whereabouts of one Liesel Klinkhammer, the German woman Gunther has traveled to America to find and the mother of the little girl, Anna, whom he has brought along with him. The search leads them to Dunning Asylum, where they discover some terrible truths about Liesel. When the child, Anna, is herself mistakenly admitted to the asylum after an epileptic fit, Clive and Henrietta return to Dunning to retrieve her. This time, however, Henrietta begins to suspect that something darker may be happening. When Clive doesn’t believe her, she decides to take matters into her own hands . . . with horrifying results.

Release Date: April 28, 2020!

PREORDER NOW:
Amazon.com~ Barnes & Noble ~ Apple iBooks
IndieBound ~Google Store

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Michelle Cox is the author of the multiple award-winning Henrietta and Inspector Howard series as well as "Novel Notes of Local Lore," a weekly blog dedicated to Chicago's forgotten residents. She suspects she may have once lived in the 1930s and, having yet to discover a handy time machine lying around, has resorted to writing about the era as a way of getting herself back there. Coincidentally, her books have been praised by Kirkus, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and many others, so she might be on to something. Unbeknownst to most, Michelle hoards board games she doesn't have time to play and is, not surprisingly, addicted to period dramas and big band music. Also marmalade.

Connect with the Author:

website ~ facebook ~twitter ~ instagram ~ goodreads

TOUR SCHEDULE:
Mar 16 – Working Mommy Journal – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 16 - Rainy Day Reviews – series spotlight / guest post / giveaway
Mar 16 - Hall Ways Blog – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 17 – Corinne Rodrigues – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 18 – I'm Into Books – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 18 - Mystery Suspense Reviews – series spotlight / guest post
Mar 19 – Rosepoint Publishing – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 20 – Bookmark and fork – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 23 – Book Corner News and Reviews – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 23 - T's Stuff - series spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Mar 24 – eBook Addicts – series spotlight
Mar 24 - The avid reader – series spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Mar 25 – Locks, Hooks and Books – series spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Mar 26 – Jazzy Book Reviews – series spotlight / guest post / giveaway
Mar 27 – Cheryl's Book Nook – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 30 – A Madison Mom – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 31 – @momfluenster – series spotlight / giveaway
Mar 31 - Dab of Darkness Audiobook Reviews – series spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Apr 1 – StoreyBook Reviews – series spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Apr 1 - 411 on Books, Authors, and Publishing News - series spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Apr 2 – Library of Clean Reads – series spotlight / author interview / giveaway
Apr 3 – fundinmental – series spotlight / giveaway
Apr 3 - My Chaotic Ramblings - series spotlight / author interview / giveaway

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