Judy Bolton Days

Judy Bolton Days
First annual in 1991!

Friday, February 4, 2011

JUDY BOLTON-LIKE ADULT MYSTERY SERIES

THE FOXGLOVE CORNERS MYSTERY SERIES
by Dorothy Bodoin



This adult cozy mystery series of sixteen books by Michigan writer Dorothy Bodoin is very much like the Judy Bolton Mystery series by Margaret Sutton; any Judy Bolton fan or juvenile girls mystery fan is sure to love it. The series features Jennet Greenway as its heroine. She is a school teacher in a suburban Detroit high school and lives in a country area an hour north of the city dotted with lovely lakes and forests. Within it lies Foxglove Corners, an out-of-the-way neighborhood of Victorian homes and thick mysterious woods that yields far more than its fair share of mystery and suspense. It's a magical place, like Judy Bolton's Potter County PA, and like Potter County, it has a real-place alter-ego, Metamora, Michigan.

The Judy Bolton books are sometimes mentioned in the Foxglove Corners books. In the first book, Darkness at Foxglove Corners, Jennet moves into her new house at Foxglove Corners and buys herself a housewarming gift - a first edition copy of The Haunted Attic, Judy Bolton #2, at a nearby antique store. In the sixth book in the series, my special favorite, The Snow Dogs of Lost Lake, it is Christmas time, and Jennet buys herself a copy of The Secret of the Musical Tree, Judy Bolton #19, a Christmas mystery, at her favorite antique store.



The books are also similar to the Judy Boltons insofar as the mysteries are very cozy, usually concern friends and acquaintances, and they are constructed with eerie and magical plots, very much like the Judy Bolton books. Jennet also meets the man of her dreams in the series, Deputy Sheriff Crane Ferguson, and a relationship develops with him throughout the books. These books also feature dogs as important characters, usually collies, and Jennet has her own personal pet collie named Halley.


The titles are:


DARKNESS AT FOXGLOVE CORNERS
CRY FOR THE FOX
WINTER'S TALE
A SHORTCUT THROUGH THE SHADOWS
THE WITCHES OF FOXGLOVE CORNERS
THE SNOW DOGS OF LOST LAKE
THE COLLIE CONNECTION

A TIME OF STORMS
THE DOG FROM THE SKY
SPIRIT OF THE SEASON
ANOTHER PART OF THE FOREST
WHERE HAVE ALL THE DOGS GONE?
THE SECRET ROOM OF EIDT HOUSE
FOLLOW A SHADOW
THE SNOW QUEEN'S COLLIE
THE DOOR IN THE FOG





 In this terrific mystery, Jennet's house in town is destroyed by a tornado and she moves into her dream home in Foxglove Corners out in the country an hour north of the suburbs. It offers her bucolic peace and a new romance with a handsome lawman. But there is a secret in the old yellow Victorian house down the lane that threatens her new life when murderous revelations in an old tornado-tossed journal put an evil plan of revenge and terror into motion.


This is my personal favorite and a very special book. It is Christmas time and Jennet is warming up to a happy holiday season, finally meeting her boyfriend Crane's family from down south. But a chance encounter in a snowstorm at nearby Lost Lake with three ghostly white collies pulls her into a mystery about the legend of 'the snow dogs of Lost Lake', ghost dogs whose sightings are said to be harbingers of bad things to come. When murders in the snowy woods begin to accompany the sightings of the ghost dogs, and Jennet stumbles upon a mysterious painting of the very same dogs in an antique shop, she knows she has to get to the bottom of the eerie mystery no matter what dangers she may have to face.


Some of these books were originally published by Hilliard and/or Five Star and are now listed on online sites for very high prices, often $100 or more. Even the current editions by Wings ePress are listed at very high prices on some sites. You don't have to pay the high prices.


All of the Foxglove Corners books are now available directly from the new publisher Wings ePress for a reasonable price ($11.95 or $12.95) plus shipping. They are beautiful trade size paperbacks and promptly arrive in the mail within a few days. They are also available as ebooks in various formats at half the book price.


The website is http://www.wings-press.com/


Ms. Bodoin also has written other mysteries which are not part of the Foxglove Corners series. These are similar cozy mysteries usually set in and around the same Michigan area, often with ties of some sort to the Foxglove Corners stories. One of her specialties is winter cozies and the Foxglove Corners series has a few great ones. Among the standalones, Snowhedge and A Shadow on the Snow will really get you gettin' all comfy and cozy. Others are The Cameo Clue, Love Deadly Love, Ghost Across the Water, and Secret for a Satyr. Most of these titles are available in mass market paperbacks by World (Harlequin mystery) on eBay and Amazon for low reasonable prices.


You can read more about Dorothy Bodoin and her books, including complete first chapters, at her website:


www.dorothybodoin.com


Don't miss out on these books! They are terrific!

2 comments:

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  2. I LOVE the Foxglove Corner books by Dorothy Bodoin, I recently went
    through treatment I couldn't sleep because of the pain and her books
    was what got me through the pain they are a must read.

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