Christmastide in Glasgow: Home for the Holidays -, #3

By Kate Darroch

Fresh from their hair-raising adventures in Paris, on the Istanbul Express, in Rome, and in Istanbul (when they eventually get there!) Màiri and Lianna are looking forward to spending a relaxing couple of weeks at home with family. Can they quietly enjoy their Christmas holidays? Or is something unexpected about to happen?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ad Astra Press
• Release date: Dec 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781944690304

Kate Darroch

Enjoying a placid life in coastal Devon, Kate brings her love of reading Cozy Sleuths, her 30 years writing experience, and her knowledge of foreign climes, to writing her quirky Travel Cozies. Kate hopes her readers will find as much joy in Màiri Maguire Cozies as she finds in reading Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Ellery Queen Magazine, and Steve Higgs’ Patricia Fisher. The colossal sense of community in the hamlets of Devon took Kate back in spirit to the Glasgow of her childhood, and that's how Màiri was born. Màiri is a Scots Irish teacher whose hometown is Glasgow as it was in the 1970s, an era Kate fondly remembers. In Britain, the Seventies ushered in a time of huge ideological change. The world opened up and class barriers were vanishing. It was an exciting time to be a woman. Kate hopes to bring a sense of that excitement to you now, with a soupcon of women's lives during that epoch of upheaval, together with a little of the culture of Europe; all wrapped up in fun, frothy, fast paced Cozy Mysteries, with just enough clues and twists to keep you guessing until the end.  Kate believes that Reading should be a pleasure available to all, and so she is passionate about Accessibility. All her fiction is published in Large Print and Dyslexia Friendly editions, standard print, eBooks and audiobooks.

Book preview

Dedicated with love and gratitude to my darling Matt, without whose selfless love, caring and generosity I would not be alive to write this book, or any other

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: A million thanks to my wonderful reader teams, both Beta Readers and Typo Finders, without whom this book would be a poorer opus.

Chapter One: At The Barrows

I’m having a lovely lazy Sunday with Lianna. We met up at the 10 o’clock Mass and went into town for brunch at Dino’s – cappuccino and bruschetta. To Lianna’s disgust, as we left I bought a morning roll with double fried eggs, to savour as we head out to The Barrows.

Honestly, Màiri, you eat far too much! No wonder you’re fat.

I think that’s a little unkind. I’m not exactly fat. A little plumper than I’d ideally like, yes, but we can’t all have Lianna’s gorgeous figure. It depends what kind of body your genes are set for. All the Maguire women are small and plump with milky skin and masses of curly auburn hair. You can’t fight your genes.

Brenda’s a little taller and slimmer than me (not much). Morag’s about 3 inches shorter. Katriona and I were as like as two peas in a pod until she met Iain, but mysteriously true love and an early pregnancy caused her to lose weight – after she’d had Niall, I mean. Obviously she put on weight whilst she was carrying him.

Then when she lost Iain in that awful mining disaster, my poor sister grew frighteningly thin. Morag’s still not convinced that our Kat’s a healthy weight even now, three years after the funeral, but she fusses too much. Although Kat’s not just as plump as Morag and me, she’s got more flesh on her bones than Lianna has, but I mean, who hasn’t?

I’m not exactly fat, Lianna, I murmur defensively All the Maguire women –

Lianna doesn’t let me get any further. She honestly thinks I could look like her if I tried. That’s nonsense of course – no-one’s as lovely as Lianna. Especially not a plump wee Maguire lassie. But Lianna doesn’t agree. She’s tossing her long glossy black hair and glaring at me out of huge curly-lashed eyes which are usually a melting blue, but right now they’re more like a furnace-flame blue.

Don’t give me that genes rigmarole, Màiri, she sniffs, It’s just an excuse. You eat far too much and you don’t exercise enough, and now with Christmas coming you’ll stuff yourself silly and put on another 10 lbs, don’t tell me you won’t.

She gives me that stern you’ll-do-this-my-way look she sometimes gets, and I can guess what’s coming next.

So I hastily take as large a bite of my fried egg roll as I can, side-stepping away from Lianna dead fast. We’re just passing