Happy New Year! Pre-order and get your FREE EBOOK!

Hi, folks!

How were your holidays? I hope they were filled with family and friends and love. But I know they can also be a time for nostalgia and sadness, missing those who have passed. 

It was a mixed blessing in our home, as both Dale and I lost our mothers over the past couple of years. But we managed to have plenty of joy with the little ones. We had all six grandchildren here at once and it was just crazy/marvelous! 

We got a big snowstorm Christmas Eve, which followed a recent ice storm. So the whole week was truly a crystalline Winter Wonderful around here. 

But now the holidays are over and the tree is down. Those vintage ornaments are all carefully repacked in the closet and I'm happy to say we didn't break any at all this year, which was kind of a miracle! 

I'm ready to look forward to a new year, including ditching the Christmas cookies and going back to healthier eating. How about you? So far I've made it on the treadmill two of my three mornings, so I guess that's a start!

To celebrate the new year, I thought I'd bring you some super deals. If you pre-order the new Gus LeGarde Mystery (available Feb 1), Murder on the Brewster Flats, I will give you a free eBook of your choice. (some of you already pre-ordered and I will honor this new deal for you, too.) Since I have 27 books, that gives you 26 titles to choose from. Whether it's romance, mystery, adventure, or getting inside a writer's head, you can see them all  at www.lazarbooks.com.

Just send me an email (at this address) with your proof of purchase and tell me which book you want and what format you need it in. I can provide mobi (Kindle), epub (Nook), or pdf (all others). 

On top of that offer, I'm going to reduce the price the chronological prequel to Murder on the Brewster Flats, Lady Blues: forget-me-not, one of my favorite Gus LeGarde books. (Remember, these all can be read in any order just like standalones if you wish. ;o))

I still miss some of the characters I created in that one, like Kip Sterling, the octogenarian musician who lost his memory and is desperately searching for the love of his life, Arabella DuBois. 

You'll also see some more special deals from fellow authors, below. 

It's not going above zero degrees today, and I hope if you're on the east coast dealing with the storms or in a cold part of the country that you can stay warm. 

Happy reading, and don't forget to take pleasure in the little things.

Aaron Paul Lazar

www.lazarbooks.com

Today's Deals:

• Murder on the Brewster Flats - PRE-ORDER & get a free book!
• Lady Blues: forget-me-not: 99 cents!
• LeGarde Mysteries Book Set - still on sale for one more week!
• Special offers from Fellow Authors

Some family secrets shouldn’t stay buried…  

Music professor Gus LeGarde and his wife Camille are looking forward to a relaxing vacation at Paines Creek Beach on beautiful Cape Cod. But Gus barely has a chance to feel the sand between his toes before a near-miss car accident drags him right into the middle of a local family feud — and a centuries-old mystery that’s begging to be solved.

As Gus is drawn further into the conflict between the Cooks and the McNabbs — two families with a grudge going all the way back to Colonial times — he and Camille keep uncovering more questions than answers. Where is the long-lost Cook family treasure? What’s really wrong with Beckett, the McNabb-side member who’s the father of young Jane Cook’s son? And who’s telling the truth about Beckett and Jane’s clandestine relationship: Jane’s grandfather, surly patriarch Albert Cook; or Beckett’s slightly odd parents?

Before long, mounting tension gives way to true danger as people start vanishing. And in the middle of a fast-brewing hurricane, Gus discovers the real secret at the heart of the feud: someone who will stop at nothing to make sure their side wins. Including murder.

Packed with shocking twists, exciting action, and fascinating tales of family lore and pirate treasure, Murder on the Brewster Flats is the first LeGarde Mysteries crossover novel with award-winning author Aaron Paul Lazar’s popular Paines Creek Beach series. Don’t miss this installment! 

Pre-order and Get Your Free eBook!

Lady Blues: forget-me-not - 99 cents! (save $3.00 off regular price) Past and present collide when an Alzheimer’s patient’s fragile memory holds the key to solving mysteries dating back to World War II—including a long lost secret love affair. Music professor Gus LeGarde is just doing a favor for a friend when he agrees to play piano for church services at a local nursing home. He doesn’t expect to be drawn into a new friendship with an elderly Alzheimer’s patient dubbed “the music man” or to stumble across a decades-old mystery locked inside the man’s mind. Octogenarian Kip Sterling doesn’t know his own name—but he speaks Gus’s language, spouting jazz terms like “cadence” and “interlude” and “riff.” He’s also obsessed with “his Bella,” but nobody knows who she is. When Kip is given a new drug called Memorphyl, he starts to remember bits and pieces of his life. Gus learns Bella was Kip’s first and only love, but their relationship was shrouded in scandal. Intrigued, Gus agrees to help search for her. Could she still be alive? Horrified when the miracle drug suddenly stops working and patients begin to backslide, Gus panics. Can he help Kip find his beloved Bella before his newfound memories disappear?

Read Excerpt

Read Excerpt from Lady Blues: forget-me not

Get Lady Blues on Amazon

On Sale One More Week!

Today through : Jan 15th 2018

LeGarde Mysteries: a mystery/suspense boxed set

by Aaron Paul Lazar

Usual Price: 6.99 Sale: 1.99

The LeGarde Mysteries Boxed Set contains the first four books in Aaron Paul Lazar's award-winning Gus LeGarde mystery series.

Book 1. Double Forté - Gus LeGarde's life essentially ended four years ago, when his beloved wife leapt to her death. Today, Gus lavishes love on his family, trying to bury the pain. But trouble arrives when his arrogant son-in-law's business partner goes missing, and Gus's innocent friend is set up to take the fall.

Book 2. Upstaged - When Gus LeGarde agrees to play piano for the high school drama club's production of "Spirit Me Away," a sixties-style musical he wrote in college, he doesn't expect to face a barrage of menacing pranks played on his fiancée Camille and the drama club. Who's sabotaging the show? And what do they have against Camille? Gus must unravel the mystery before the backstage saboteur stakes his final, deadly claim.

Book 3. Mazurka - Join Gus LeGarde in this European rollercoaster ride where he unearths a scandalous family secret linked to a nineteenth century composer. When brother-in-law Siegfried is framed for a neo-Nazi’s murder, they’re plunged into a sizzling cat-and-mouse game where the stakes are lethal.

Book 4. FireSong - What would you do if your country church was hit by a rogue tornado during services? What if the shrieking winds unearthed the bones of a missing parishioner in a nearby wheat field? Now add the discovery of heroin in your elderly minister's bloodstream. When Gus LeGarde is thrown into the middle of the mess, he knows life has finally gone berserk in East Goodland, New York. Join Gus as he's lured into a bizarre network of underground tunnels to expose the most shocking discovery ever to rock the Genesee Valley.

LeGarde Mysteries Boxed Set

Deals from Fellow Authors:

Start Date: 01-12-2018 End Date: 01-16-2018<--this a="" coming="" freebie="" ones="" soon="" strong="" up="">

A Single Step

By Georgia Rose

Usual Price: .99 Sale: FREE

Meet Emma Grayson, heroine of The Grayson Trilogy, a series of mysterious and romantic adventure stories, for adults.

Start Date: 12-15-2017 End Date: 01-07-2018<-- get="" it="" or="" span="" today="" tomorrow="">

Gun Kiss

By Khaled Talib

Usual Price: 5.99 Sale: 1.99

A stolen piece of history, an abducted actress and international intrigue… When the Deringer pistol that shot Abraham Lincoln is stolen and ends up in the hands of a Russian military general, covert agent Blake Deco is tasked by the FBI to head to the Balkans to recover the historical weapon. Meanwhile, the United States media is abuzz with news of the mysterious disappearance of Hollywood movie star, Goldie St. Helen. After Blake’s return from overseas, he receives a tip from a Mexican friend that a drug lord, obsessed with the beautiful actress, is holding her captive in Tijuana. With the help of a reluctant army friend, Blake mounts a daring rescue. What he doesn’t expect is to have feelings for Goldie—or that a killer is hunting them.

FREE!

In the Beginning (Baby Girl Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Elle Klass (Author),‎ Terri Klaes Harper (Editor)

Follow Cleo on her epic saga which begins when she abandoned by her mom at twelve. She has no other family which she is aware of, and in order to survive she leaves her home and lives on the streets. She meets interesting characters and gets into amusing predicaments all in the name of survival, such as jumping trains, being chased through the woods by a crazy man with a loaded shotgun and witnessing an unspeakable crime. After a few months on the streets she runs into another group of kids, Einstein is the oldest and a leader in the group, and they form a family of sorts. For survival and money they lean towards a life a crime which inevitably breaks up their family and sends Cleo and Einstein spiraling into their own adventure. Eventually they settle into a “normal” life however their pasts can’t be hushed forever …

Start Date: 12-26-2017 End Date: 01-31-2018

Jetsetters

By S J Crabb

Usual Price: New Release Sale: .99

The crazy world of the Jetsetters. Warning, this book contains lots of sun, sea, sand and tequila. Four friends go crazy in Mexico with life-changing consequences.

What Happens When Two Music Men Get Together in a Mystery?

copyright 2014 Aaron Paul Lazar

Gus LeGarde’s affable, but pushy, minister from his local church is always pressuring him to play piano for extra church services on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes it’s the local prison, sometimes it’s nursing homes, but in Lady Blues: forget-me-not, Reverend Hardina asks Gus to accompany the hymns at the new Bello Mondo Manor, a beautiful new facility for Alzheimer’s patients.

Gus has his plate full on Sundays, literally, as he always prepares an afternoon feast for his extended family and friends, including the dear Reverend Hardina. So when he’s asked to do even more for his church, he hesitates. How can he get it all done?

On this particular Sunday, he agrees, however, and is shocked to find a “jewel” of a chapel at Bello Mondo, featuring real stained glass windows, beautiful woodwork, velvet drapery, and most shocking of all, a pipe organ. He wonders how the place can afford such luxury, and uncovers ties to a big drug company.

Meanwhile, the residents in wheel chairs and bathrobes seem dead to the world in their pews, until they hear the music. They sing their hearts out when Gus plays familiar hymns like “Rock of Ages” and “Morning Has Broken.”

Most interesting is an elderly gentleman dressed in a black suit and red bowtie, who stands and conducts the hymns with his pencil, and whose fingers move in concert with the notes, as if he’s playing piano. Gus learns that this fellow—dubbed “the music man” by Kip’s nurses—has been in homes since he was dropped on their doorstep by the Armed Forces in 1946.

Kip Sterling doesn’t know his own name—but he speaks Gus’s language, spouting jazz terms like “cadence” and “interlude” and “riff.” He’s also obsessed with “his Bella,” but nobody knows who she is.

Because Gus is a music professor (actually based on my own father who was a pianist and professor of music) the Bello Mondo nurses suggest that maybe he can connect with Kip through music. Although Gus’s expertise is in classical works, including his obsessions with Chopin, Khachaturian, and Puccini, he also is passionate about jazz and blues, and strangely enough, plans to write a book on Ella Fitzgerald and her generation. He befriends the old gentleman, and when a new medicine starts to restore Kip’s memories, things heat up.

Music is woven throughout the Lady Blues story, from Gus’s “Opera 101” and “American Composer” classes he teaches at the local university, to his daughter Shelby, whose voice is startlingly beautiful and to whom he’s teaching Ella Fitzgerald’s songs at home, to Bella’s background as a bluesy nightclub singer… it ties the book and the entire series together.

I’ve even put in a plug for my good friend Paul Stuart, who is an award-winning composer in his own right. He’s written operas and symphonies that are played worldwide, and I refer to them within the story.

Side by side, both “music men” piece together the puzzles, which reunite long lost lovers and shed light on a historical mystery dating back to World War II.

You can check out LeGarde Mysteries here at www.lazarbooks.com, and can read them in any order. ;o)

LADY BLUES: forget-me-not

In book 10 of the LeGarde Mystery series, Gus unravels twin mysteries of an abused Korean seamstress and a 1940s jazz ingénue whose pianist lover disappeared overseas on the same night Glen Miller’s plane was lost in English Channel. Gus helps an Alzheimer’s patient reclaim his identity, while dodging a drug company who will silence any witness to keep the truth of their breakthrough Alzheimer's treatment under wraps.

Lady Blues: Food Matters in a "Literary Sine Wave."

copyright 2014 Aaron Paul Lazar

Gus LeGarde, the main character in Lady Blues: forget-me-not, has always loved to cook for his friends and family. Every Sunday he invites his mother-in-law, her cop boyfriend, the reverend from church, his daughter’s fiancé, elderly family friends, Oscar and Millie Stone, and anyone else who he happens to befriend in each new book in the series of ten mysteries starting with Double Forté.

I didn’t plan it this way, but when I wrote the first book and every novel since then, I’ve employed the device of tension and release, or what I like to call the "literary sine wave." I feature an action vignette first – someone’s being chased or there’s a tornado coming, or a saboteur is pulling nasty tricks backstage on high school kids…then when the scene fades, I “pan” to a family vignette. Gus is cooking, or playing with his grandkids, or walking through his gardens. Family is shown in their every day chaos or quiet, and I use these scenes to encourage my readers care about Gus and his family, who will be most definitely threatened in scenes to come.

It just so happens that when we’re the “lower” half of the sine wave, beneath the x axis, if you will, in those quiet times, Gus tends to be cooking.  

I’ve pulled meals from my own life every time I need material for these scenes. Yes, every meal Gus cooks, I’ve probably just cooked the weekend before I wrote that chapter. Yes, in a large family feast. Yes, for lots of family around a table much like Gus’s. But how Gus and I are alike is an article for another day.

Some of my readers have expressed interest in recipes from the books. In Lady Blues, I do feature a fair amount of comfort food.  Problem is, I don’t cook by the book. I just sort of estimate everything and throw things together. That’s how Gus does it, too. But today I’ll try to make things a bit more specific. ;o) Use your own judgment, though. If you need more or less of something to make it work, just do it. We don’t stand on ceremony in the LeGarde…er…Lazar household.

Here are a few of the meals Gus cooked in Lady Blues: forget-me-not. I’m not a recipe writer, I’m a seat-of-the-pants cook. So I hope the quantities I estimated here will work for you.

Scalloped Tomatoes (that’s right, not potatoes!)

This dish is very popular in my house. It’s also very fattening, but we don’t care when it’s a special occasion. It’s also very easy to make. I use frozen tomatoes from my garden, defrosted and drained, but you can use chopped canned tomatoes if you have them, or whole roma tomatoes, canned or fresh. I leave the skins and seeds in, and they taste just fine.

This will feed a huge crowd, and I bake it in an enormous rectangular baking pan, but you can use whatever is handy and cut the amounts in half if you’re serving a smaller family.

Ingredients (roughly estimated)

- 8 cups chopped, diced, or whole plum tomatoes, drained of all liquid (squish ‘em in a colander)

- 8 cups Mozzarella or cheese of your choice, shredded

- 1 pound butter

- 1 box of coarsely crushed ww Saltines or regular Saltines (other crackers or crumbs can work) (I put them in a big baggie and mash them with a rolling pin.)

Directions

1. Melt the butter and mix with the crushed crackers. (You can add parsley or any seasonings you prefer, but it doesn’t need much!)

2. Build layers of tomatoes, cheese, buttered crackers (like lasagna) until the dish is full. I usually get about three layers of each.

3. Cover with shredded cheese and/or crumbs.

4. Bake for ~ an hour until the cheese is melted and crispy on top.

That’s it!

(I told you it was fattening, but it’s so delicious, it’s worth the calories!)

Homemade cranberry sauce with pears

This is so easy to make, I often prepare it when we serve baked turkey legs, or turkey patties. I made it for Thanksgiving, too, but I’m the only one who likes it over the gelled type of canned cranberry, LOL. I buy bags of cranberries around Thanksgiving and freeze them for the whole year. That way, I can just grab one from the freezer and make this in 15 minutes.

Ingredients

- One package fresh or frozen cranberries

- 1-2 cups sugar or sweetener of your choice (I used Blue Agave sometimes)

- Two pears, skinned and diced

- Cinnamon

- Nutmeg

Directions

1. Place frozen or fresh cranberries and pears in a large stockpot and cover with water.

2. Boil until nearly softened.

3. Add sweetener at the end to make it syrupy. If using sugar, you need several cups to counteract the delicious tartness of the berries.

4. Sprinkle cinnamon and a little bit of nutmeg.

Gus LeGarde is now officially proud of you.  ;o)

 Bavarian Cabbage

This dish goes great with pork chops, mashed carrots and parsnips, or a pork loin roast. Adjust the flavors as you go to suit your taste.

Ingredients

- One head red cabbage, sliced

- Six tart apples, peeled and sliced.

- Two onions, thinly sliced

- Extra Virgin Olive Oil

- Vinegar OR Apple cider, about 1 cup

- Brown Sugar, about 1 cup, but add more or less to taste

- Clove powder, just a tiny sprinkle at the end.

Directions

1.     Sautee onions in EVOO until translucent.

2.     Add red cabbage and apples, apple cider (or vinegar).

3.     Cook down until the cabbage and apples are tender, keep stirring.

4.     Add brown sugar to taste halfway through cooking. The color will become more purple/blue as the dish cooks down.  

5.     Adjust flavors until it has a sweet/sour taste and sprinkle just a touch of clove powder in at the end. 

Enjoy!!

Aaron Lazar

www.lazarbooks.com