I am delighted to shine the spotlights on
Funerals and Familiars
(A Cozy Midlife Witch Mystery)
Willowmere Mysteries by Carmen Radtke
About Funerals and Familiars
Funerals and Familiars (A Cozy Midlife Witch Mystery) Willowmere Mysteries
Paranormal Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Oregon
Independently Published (May 23, 2025)
Digital Print length : 248 pages
ASIN : B0F4S6S3DP
Midlife can be murder – or magic…
Almost fifty and freshly divorced, Bex Merriweather is going through The Change – battling hot flashes and night sweats. Little does she realize that when an elderly relative dies and leaves her a lending library in sleepy Willowmere, complete with cat, her whole life is going to change…
Turns out Aunt Violet left behind more than books and home-made herbal teas, like full-blown witch powers, and a small town where murder is very much on the menu. Even Cosmo the cat is no ordinary feline, but a sassy talking familiar. And when rumors about her aunt’s death begin to circulate, Bex has no choice but to embrace her witchy inheritance, and her inner detective.
Now the novice witch, armed only with her circle of lifelong friends and a snarky, judgemental cat mentor, must uncover the truth, before her newly acquired magical life goes up in smoke.
Perfect for fans of cozy mysteries, magical mayhem, and heroines who believe it’s never too late for a new chapter—or a little witchcraft!
Excerpt 1 (Opening)
Forget thunderbolt and lightning or the gentle chimes of angelic bells as the harbinger of great change. In my case all that happened was a sudden warmth surging through my body and covering my forehead in what in a younger woman would have been called a healthy glow when I reached for the bottle with the ammonia free, cruelty free hair dye. The colour was periwinkle in case you’re wondering.
Going from an instantly forgettable brown with a few silvery threads to vivid blue had been a spur of the moment decision, one more step in reclaiming my life. I fought the urge of also grabbing a bottle of cold water and dumping the contents all over me.
What was going on? I’d had a few hot flashes lately, but nothing compared to this.
I fanned myself with my free hand.
The sales assistant, who’d helped me select my hair dye, gave me a knowing nod. “It’s only going to get worse from here,” she said. “I’ve given birth to three kids and passed a kidney stone the size of a walnut and believe me they’re a picnic compared to the perimenopause.”
I gave her a wan smile, trying to mind my manners. I did not intend to discuss my age, which edged close to fifty, the state of my ovaries, or anything else private with a woman I’d never met before, and that in a public space.
To make matters worse, I noticed a few familiar faces staring at me as I dissolved into a puddle.
It would be only a matter of hours until it spread through our small town that recently divorced Bex Merriweather was having a menopausal meltdown in the middle of the drug store aisle. I could imagine my ex-husband sharing the joke with my much younger replacement, his former personal assistant who’d become his personal everything.
The man was such a cliché. Even his midlife crisis had followed the same pattern I’d noticed lately. Among all my divorced friends, only one of the men hadn’t dumped the old “model for a younger version. He’d instead decided on searching for himself in a monastery in Europe.
I averted everyone’s gaze as I paid for my hair dye and rushed home.
Following the instructions was easy. Forgetting the nagging sensation in my stomach that something was wrong was not. The hot flash had been too intense to put it down to business as usual.
About Carmen Radtke
Carmen has spent most of her life with ink on her fingers and a dangerously high pile of books and newspapers by her side.
She has worked as a newspaper reporter on two continents and always dreamt of becoming a novelist and screenwriter.
When she found herself crouched under her dining table, typing away on a novel between two earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, she realised she was hooked for life.
The shaken but stirring novel made it to the longlist of the Mslexia competition, and her next book and first mystery, The Case Of The Missing Bride, was a finalist in the Malice Domestic competition in a year without a winner. Since then she has penned several more cozy mysteries, including the Genie and Adriana Darling ghost mysteries and the Jack and Frances series set in the 1930s.
Carmen now lives in Italy with her human and her four-legged family. Although she possesses no witchy powers, she’s known to be easily held spellbound by animals.
Author Links
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BookBub – Instagram – BlueSky – Threads
Purchase Links
Also by Carmen Radtke
Find all of Carmen’s books HERE.
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