Christmas Cookies at the Cat Café A Furrever Friends Sweet Romance By Kris Bock

Christmas Cookies at the Cat Café

A Furrever Friends Sweet Romance 

By Kris Bock 

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Book Blurb:

Christmas isn’t the same since Diane’s kids grew up and her husband died – so when her high school sweetheart comes back to town, maybe it’s time for some cozy new holiday traditions. 

Diane had a great marriage and a wonderful life. Now she’s a widow at 53, and her grown children are encouraging her to slow down and do less – but she wants more. She starts planning for a new career by arranging a photo shoot at the cat café her daughters run. Unfortunately, the cats won’t cooperate. 

Rick loved Diane in high school, but he chose to travel the world while she settled down with another man. Now he’s back for a visit, but he’s not planning to stay – even if Diane still tugs at him. He’ll help her get what she wants from life, and then he’ll say goodbye. 

Rick temps Diane to quit her job, sell her house, and travel. But she can’t leave the people she loves so dearly, the family that might still need her just a little bit. Diane tempts Rick to end his wandering ways, but he can’t simply step into the hole left by her husband’s death. As the weeks pass from Thanksgiving to Christmas, the holiday season brings out complicated emotions. 

Can Diane and Rick find a way to make a new life together while holding onto the best parts of the past? They'll need more than attraction and affection. They might even need a Christmas miracle. 

The Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the workers and customers at a small-town cat café, and the adorable cats and kittens looking for their forever homes. Each book is a complete story with a happy ending for one couple (and maybe more than one rescued cat). 

Excerpt:

The cat did not want to wear a hat. 

   “Come on, Miles, it’s for your own good,” Diane muttered. “I’m not trying to insult your feline dignity. I’m trying to find you a forever home. Wouldn’t that be nice?” 

   Once again, Diane got the cat settled on a table against the autumn backdrop. Miles seemed perfectly content to sit there and watch the proceedings. But as soon as Diane tried to put the sunflower hat on the cat’s head, he dropped and flailed as if touched by flaming thorns rather than soft felt. Miles wrestled with the hat as Diane rushed to wake up her cell phone. Maybe she could get something cute, with the cat chewing a sunflower petal. 

   Diane aimed the camera. The hat sailed to the floor. 

   Miles leapt off the table, streaked across the room, climbed one of the cat trees, and calmly perched on a platform staring out the window, pointedly ignoring her. 

   “That Cat in the Hat book is nonsense,” Diane said. “I used to get a diaper on a squirming baby in under a minute. You’d think I could get one cat to wear a lousy hat or at least pose nicely.” 

   Diane slumped into a chair and sighed. This had seemed like such a good idea. Many animal rescues reported higher adoption rates after professional photo shoots. Instead of posting pictures of the dirty, matted, cringing creatures they first brought in, they waited until the dog or cat had been groomed and any health issues addressed. They gave the animal time to relax and get used to being around people. Then they took a nice studio portrait of the calm cat or grinning dog.  

   It was basic psychology. It wasn’t that people didn’t care about the animals that suffered the most; they simply wanted to envision their future with a happy, loving pet. Great photos helped potential adopters see what was possible. 

   A series of holiday photo shoots should have been winners. Make the cats extra cute, and they might clear the shelter before New Year’s Day. 

   The cats didn’t seem to appreciate her brilliant idea. 

   She picked up her coffee, which was now lukewarm, and took a sip as she studied the room. She’d already attempted to take pictures of five of their residents, and the rest were getting skittish as they picked up on their companions’ nervousness. Maybe she should quit for the day. She still had to put the paintings back on the walls and clean up her supplies. 

   But getting three of the paintings propped up where she wanted to photograph the cats had been tricky. She hated to waste the morning entirely. She looked around for one more candidate.  

   A tapping came at the window. Diane turned toward it, but with the glare, she could only make out a bulky silhouette. She got the impression of a man with broad shoulders, but with the heavy winter coats everyone was wearing after the cold snap earlier in the week, she couldn’t say for sure. It didn’t look like either of her daughter’s husbands, and they both had keys anyway. 

   She crossed to the window. Would she be able to convey the message that the café didn’t open for another sixteen minutes? 

   As she neared the window, she caught the glare at a different angle. She still couldn’t see the person clearly, but a jolt of recognition hit her like a punch to the gut. 

   She did know this man. Had known him for a long time, or at least had known him well long ago. But she couldn’t yet name him, as her mind hadn’t caught up to what her gut knew. 

   The bright winter sunlight lit up a pom-pom on top of a jaunty knit cap in rainbow colors. It took a certain type of man to wear a hat like that in public, and the prickle of recognition deepened. 

   She shifted and bobbed her head, trying to get a clear view. He leaned closer to the window, grinned, and waved. 

   The breath left her lungs. Of course. Rick. How many years had it been since she’d last seen him? They’d been closest in high school, bonding in a photography class and dating for almost two years, until he graduated a year ahead of her. He’d been her first love. But that was thirty years ago – no, more like thirty-five. When he graduated, he left to see the world. He hadn’t asked her to wait for him. He probably knew then his journeys would take him years to complete, maybe a lifetime. Still, she had waited, optimistically, for six months. 

   Then she met Patrick. They fell in love. They shared the same dreams: family, a home, work in the small town where they’d grown up. They’d had two beautiful daughters and a good life until he died suddenly, far too young. They were coming up on the second anniversary of his death. 

   Memories crashed over her. The grief, the loss, the affection for both men. The dreams lived and the dreams never explored. 

   She gave herself a little shake and blinked to clear her eyes. Diane was good at holding back all the messy feelings and only showing the world what she wanted people to see. She could think about everything later. For now, one thought jumped to the front of her mind. 

   Rick was a professional photographer. He’d had photo essays in National Geographic – people, wildlife. If anyone could help her figure out how to corral a few playful house cats, it was Rick. 

   She smiled, waved back, and went to answer the door. 

Author Bio:

Kris Bock writes romance, mystery, and suspense. Her Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café. Watch as they fall in love with each other and shelter cats. Get a free 30-page story set in the world of the Furrever Friends cat café when you sign up for Kris Bock’s Romance and Mystery newsletter. You’ll also get a printable copy of “22 recipes from the cat café” and a free Accidental Detective mystery short story with bonus material. 

In the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series, a Texas ranching family wins a billion-dollar lottery. Can they build new dreams and find love amidst the chaos? In the Reluctantly Psychic Mystery series, a quirky loner who can read the history of any object with her touch gets drawn into mysteries at the museum of oddities where she works. In the Accidental Detective humorous mystery series, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty. Learn more at KrisBock.com.  

 Kris also writes a series with her brother, scriptwriter Douglas J Eboch, who wrote the original screenplay for the movie Sweet Home Alabama. The Felony Melanie series follows the crazy antics of Melanie, Jake, and their friends a decade before the events of the movie. Find the books on Amazon US or All E-book retailers. 

Website 
Universal Amazon link 
GoodReads Author Page 
BookBub 
Kris on BlueSky  

 

A Stone Cold Murder by Kris Bock

A Stone Cold Murder

by Kris Bock

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The Reluctant Psychic Mystery series by Kris Bock launches April 28 with A Stone-Cold Murder! 
 
Petra Cloch has the psychic ability of psychometry – she can glimpse the history of an object by touching it. If Petra touches a watch or ring someone has worn for years, she can sense the wearer’s personality and what they care about most. If she touches an object used as a murder weapon, she might sense the emotions of the killer and the killed – but that doesn’t mean she can identify them.  
 
To save her sanity, Petra avoids close relationships except with her many pets. She studied geology, because rocks rarely speak to her. Her new job is supposed to focus on the rocks and minerals wing of a peculiar private museum in a small southwestern town. But she can’t avoid the echoes of violence all around her. If she doesn’t want murderers to go free, she’ll have to find evidence beyond her psychic senses.  
 

A Stone Cold Murder 

 
Everyone says her predecessor died in a car crash, but when Petra picks up a jagged crystal in her new office, flashes of rage, fear and death hit hard. What if Reggie Heap was actually murdered? Under normal circumstances, Petra would never become involved, but if the previous curator died because of something he did on the job, she could be next. Can she trust her chatty colleagues who invite her to lunch and to join a book club? And what about the far too watchful Sheriff who keeps showing up unexpectedly… 
 
“I really enjoyed the intro to all the people in this small community. So many interesting characters – so many ways this could go further.” – Reader review on BookBub 

Excerpt:

It’s no fun sorting through the belongings of a dead man. I assume that’s true for most people, except maybe antique dealers or historians. But I think it’s worse for me.  

That’s not because I’m a narcissist. (As far as I know. I admit I’ve never been tested.) It’s because of my psychometry. It might sound cool to pick up vibrations left behind on objects, giving me glimpses of the items’ histories.  

But I didn’t want to know more about the man who’d had my job before me. Everything so far suggested Reggie Heap was an ordinary man who had more chest pains and heart palpitations than he let on. I might have warned him to get that checked out, if he hadn’t already died of a massive heart attack that killed him even before his car ran off a mountain road. 

It was my office now, and I needed to scrub away all traces of the former occupant. Does that sound harsh? Think about it like this: It might sound cool to have telepathy, if you assume you could choose when and where to use it. But imagine if you had to hear every thought of every person nearby.  

Yeah, you’d probably just stay home. 

I was about as far from a people person as one could be, so I needed a job that paid well enough that I could live alone, just me and my pets (ten at the current count). Ideally, the job wouldn’t bring me into contact with a lot of other people or their stuff. I hoped I had that job now, working in a small museum in a tiny town in a state with something like twenty people per square mile.  

…  

I looked around the office. Besides the desk and file cabinets, it had wooden shelves along one wall. They held some rather nice geologic samples, though presumably not quite nice enough to make the main collection. I picked up a piece of smoky quartz. A prism, longer than my hand, thrust up like an obelisk from a cluster of smaller crystals at the base. A little label on the bottom confirmed my identification, while a clean spot on the shelf showed how much dust had piled up around the samples. 

I might as well clean the shelf and its displays. My boss had given me boxes for packing up Reggie Heap’s stuff. I grabbed an empty one and started loading rocks and minerals into it. I’d definitely keep the frothy, seafoam-green Smithsonite. Maybe not the stringy bit of copper, which was interesting but not all that pretty.  

A sample as big as two fists together was made up of cubic crystals in a lovely shade of lilac. Some marks showed where small pieces had broken off, which might be why it was in the office instead of on display. Fluorite, with some impurities to give it the purple shade? Tests could confirm that, but I wouldn’t need them if it was properly labeled. 

I picked it up with both hands. 

Rage. The desire to hurt. 

Fear. An explosion of pain. Panic dissolving into darkness. 

I staggered and dropped the mineral. When my vision cleared, I was leaning against the desk with both hands pressing down on it. Fortunately, I’d dropped the crystal cluster on the desk and not my foot. It would have been hard to explain breaking my foot in that manner.  

But not as difficult as explaining why I thought these crystals had been used as a weapon. 

  

Readers say:  

“Kris Bock has crafted a story that’s equal parts murder mystery, psychological deep-dive, and small-town gothic horror (in the best way).”  

“This story is a winner and a great start to the series. The mystery is captivating, with enough puzzlement to keep you on your toes, the characters are interesting and engaging (I love Petra and Liberty), and the worldbuilding is excellent. A must-read!”  

“A good old-fashioned murder mystery with a twist. The supernatural elements make this book interesting. I empathized with the main character, and she was genuine and reluctant as the title implies… it was suspenseful and kept you guessing until the end.”  

Author Bio:

Kris Bock writes mystery, suspense, and romance novels, many with outdoor adventures and Southwestern landscapes. In the Accidental Detective series, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty. This humorous series starts with Something Shady at Sunshine Haven, which made Barnes & Noble's list of “Handpicked Favorites You'll Love!” Her Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café. Watch as they fall in love with each other and shelter cats. In the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series, a Texas ranching family wins a billion-dollar lottery. Can they build new dreams and find love amidst the chaos? Kris’s romantic suspense novels include stories of treasure hunting, archaeology, and intrigue. Readers have called these novels “Smart romance with an Indiana Jones feel.” She also writes sweet romance. Learn more at www.krisbock.com. 

 

Kris has over 100 books for children published under the names Chris Eboch and M. M. Eboch. Her novels for ages nine and up include The Eyes of Pharaoh, a mystery in ancient Egypt; The Well of Sacrifice, a Mayan adventure used in many schools; and The Genie’s Gift, a middle eastern fantasy. Kris also writes a series with her brother, scriptwriter Douglas J Eboch, who wrote the original screenplay for the movie Sweet Home Alabama. The Felony Melanie series follows the crazy antics of Melanie, Jake, and their friends a decade before the events of the movie.