Meet Penelope Pembroke:owner of the best (only) B&B in Amaryllis, Arkansas (pop. 5492) who’s flirting with 50, divorced (Travis Pembroke, had a wandering eye'), mother of Amaryllis PD Detective Bradley Pembroke, apple of her father Jake Kelley's eye, best friend of Mary Lynn Hargrove, the mayor's wife, and the only human creature tolerated by Abijah, the 18-pound orange tabby who stalks the family home-turned B&B.Penelope keeps her ear to the ground, her eyes open, and her battered heart in solitary confinement. Then one night, while having a beer and a Reuben at the seedy-though-popular Sit-n-Swill, she meets Tiny aka Sam who is about as much of a biker as she is a belly dancer.She insists on dabbling in danger and disaster despite Sam's best efforts to discourage her. The fireworks begin in Book 1, light up the skies in Books 2,3,4, and 5, and end in one spectacularly explosive display in Book 6.Book 1: The Bogus BikerA police raid on the Sit-n-Swill, a devastating fire at her ex-husband's historic home, and a game of cat-and-mouse with Tiny aka Sam turns Penelope's placid life upside down.About the AuthorJudy Nickles is a retired teacher who has been writing since she could hold a #2 pencil. She has been published by The Wild Rose Press and Champagne Books as well as in online and print magazines and anthologies. With a master's degree in history and 30+ years' experience in genealogical research, she believes stories are everywhere and wishes she had time to write them all. Besides researching her family tree, she enjoys reading biographies, WW II history, and mysteries and embraces travel and meeting new people. Her newest favorite possession is a Kindle Fire. Her most memorable experience in recent times was a flight in a WW II B-24 bomber built the same year she was born! She blogs at The Word Place (www.judythewordplace.blogspace.com). Visit Penelope Pembroke at www.thepenelopepembrokecozymysteryseries.yolasite.com and the author's website Someday Is Here (www.judynickles.com) Life is good--and she is enjoying her adolescent rebellion 50 years late!

In the waning days of the Great Depression, Celeste Riley wonders if life will always be the same: going to work, coming home to keep house for her widowed father, who ignores her. She clings to her married sister and to the recurring dream of a blue velvet curtain and a faceless lover who beckons her beyond it. Then a blue velvet dress in the window of a local department store seems to promise the change in her life she so desperately longs for. When she dances in the arms of traveling salesman Kent Goddard at the Roof Garden, she is sure she has found the man of her dreams and is crushed when he disappears from her life. Then, soon after Pearl Harbor propels the United States into war, Kent returns in uniform as a student at the new bombardier training school. Their deepening relationship is threatened by a wartime separation, but not as much as when Celeste realizes that what she doesn't know about the man of her dreams maybe become her worst nightmare.