Description: "Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. So what could be more fun than a food walk in the city's Chinatown-International District, celebrating the Year of the Rabbit? But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man's body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out. Who was he? What was he doing in the dust-encrusted herbal pharmacy in the hotel's basement? Why was the pharmacy closed up--and why are the owners so reluctant to talk? As Pepper begins to expose the long-concealed truth, a bigger question emerges: Can she uncover the secrets of the Gold Rush Hotel without being pushed from the wok into the fire?"--
Brief description: Leslie Budewitz tells stories about women's lives, seasoned with friendship, food, a dash of history, and a heaping spoonful of mystery. She writes the Spice Shop mysteries set in Seattle's Pike Place Market, as well as the Food Lovers' Village mysteries and historical short fiction set in her native Montana. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody suspense. A three-time Agatha Award winner--2013 Best First Novel for DEATH AL DENTE, the first Food Lovers' Village mystery; 2011 Best Nonfiction, and 2018 Best Short Story, for "All God's Sparrows," her first historical fiction--she is a past president of Sisters in Crime and a former board member of Mystery Writers of America. Leslie lives and cooks in NW Montana.
Review Quotes: "Although the spice shop setting, and all the discussion of food puts these mysteries in the cozy category, there's a depth to the stories that is often lacking in cozies. This time, Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop, learns about Seattle's Chinatown, its culture and history, right along with the reader. ... If Pepper Reece left the past alone, readers wouldn't have such absorbing mysteries. She's an amateur sleuth who loves her community, the people she works with, and the history of the area. She cares when someone dies, wondering about the people who loved and missed the victim. If Pepper didn't care about people, she wouldn't get involved in thought-provoking mysteries such as Between a Wok and a Dead Place."--Lesa Holstine, Lesa's Book Critiques