BLOG TOUR - A MOST PUZZLING MURDER BY BIANCA MARAIS

  

Interspersed with riddles and puzzles that both Destiny and the reader must solve, A Most Puzzling Murder is a one-of-a-kind mystery that will leave you guessing and gasping until the very last page!

Title: A Most Puzzling Murder
Author: Bianca Marais
Genre: Mystery, Detective
Publisher: MIRA, Harlequin Books
Release Date: 10th June 2025

 
BLURB
Destiny Whip is a former child prodigy, world-renowned enigmatologist and very, very alone. A life filled with loss has made her a recluse, an existence she’s content to endure until a letter arrives inviting her to interview for the position of Scruffmore family historian. Not only does an internet search for the name yield almost nothing, it’s a role she never applied to in the first place!

She decodes the invitation's hidden message with ease, and its promise to reveal her family secrets proves too powerful a draw for the orphaned Destiny, who soon finds herself on Eerie Island. It’s a place whose inhabitants are almost as inhospitable as the tempestuous weather. The Scruffmores themselves turn out to be not much better, a snarled mess of secrets and motives connected by their mistrust for one another.

Their newly arrived guest proves to be just as much an enigma to them as they are to her. While Destiny slowly works to unravel the mysteries hidden throughout the ominous castle, she struggles to interpret disturbing nightly visions of what is to come. In the midst of cryptic ciphers, hidden passages, and the family’s magical line of succession, Destiny is certain of two things: one of the Scruffmores is going to die and she’s running out of time to stop it.

PURCHASE LINKS
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Bookshop
Books-A-Million
Kobo
AppleBooks
Google Play
Libro.FM
Indigo
Target
Walmart 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

BIANCA MARAIS cohosts the popular podcast The Shit No One Tells You About Writing, which is aimed at helping emerging writers get published. She teaches creative writing through the podcast and was named a winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She lives in Toronto, where she loves playing escape-room games and writing about strong female protagonists. 

AUTHOR LINKS
Author website: https://www.biancamarais.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biancamaraisauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/biancam_author/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biancamarais_author/

 

EXCERPT 

CHAPTER 1

Destiny

Sunday, 9:57 a.m.

Destiny Whip warily eyes her bedside table, thinking how it could easily be mistaken for a miniature graveyard, what with all the little pills neatly lined in staggered rows, positioned upright like tiny headstones. It certainly feels as though she’s regarding the burial ground of her hopes and dreams, haunted by the spec­ter of the enormous potential she’s so dismally failed to live up to.

When you’re declared a child prodigy, everyone expects you to go far in life, but all Destiny has managed today is a slow shuffle to and from the bathroom. Even that required Hercu­lean reserves of energy.

Balancing her laptop on her knees, she reaches to the far­thest side of the bed for her emotional-support urn, pulling it close and tucking it into her armpit as though cuddling a teddy bear. She kisses the top of the teardrop shape, the metal cold against her chapped lips.

Bex appears in Destiny’s doorway, leaning her head against the frame. “Good morning.”

Her best friend is still too scrawny, but not nearly as emaci­ated as she was a year ago when all she feasted on was beauty magazines and models’ Instagram pages rather than anything resembling food. Bex looks mostly healthy again, her long chestnut hair gleaming, the hollows of her cheeks no longer reminiscent of sinkholes.

“You okay?” Bex asks, the corners of her mouth turned down.

It’s the anniversary of the accident today, one year somehow crawling by on scraped knees.

Some people act like severe depression is a tarnish, one that can be polished off with the application of enough elbow grease. Luckily, Bex isn’t one of them.

Destiny tries to speak, but a knot of regret is so tangled up in her throat that the words don’t stand a chance.

Her laptop suddenly squawks with an incoming video call. In the months that Destiny has been seeing Dr. Shepherd, they’ve never once had a virtual consultation over a weekend. But today is going to be a tough one, which is why the psychiatrist in­sisted on the appointment.

As the ringing continues, Destiny gently places the urn be­side her and instinctively reaches for her notebook before pag­ing to the list of tasks the doctor assigned last month.

Bex sidles up next to her, reading over her shoulder.

1. Leave the apartment once a day to go for a walk or grab a coffee.

2. Reach out to an old friend or colleague to suggest a meetup.

3. Replace all the dead plants.

4. Keep a dream journal about the white-haired ghost woman.

5. Email the council expressing your wish to return.

6. Accept one of the consultancies that you’ve been offered (one that doesn’t require travel).

7. Work on forgiving Nate.

8. Limit your interactions with Bex.

Bex side-eyes the last item on the list. “Rude,” she huffs. “You’d think I was a bad inf luence or something.”

Rather than answering Bex or the incoming call, Destiny thinks of how she’s never f lunked an assignment in her entire life. Always top of her class, and despite being admitted to uni­versity as a twelve-year-old, Destiny cannot fathom this de­gree of failure.

She’s ticked nothing off the list, not even throwing away the plants whose shriveled corpses goad her, their untimely deaths undoubtedly due to the curtains constantly being drawn tight. That, and Destiny forgetting to water them.

The laptop’s ringing grates on Destiny’s nerves, but she can’t force herself to answer and face Dr. Shepherd’s disappointment. It will be carefully concealed, of course, with the psychiatrist gently pointing out there’s always next week, or the week after that, to achieve these seemingly simple goals. But it doesn’t mat­ter how much of an extension Destiny is given.

It’s no use.

For how can she possibly cut ties with Bex, who’s her dear­est, not to mention only, friend?

Plus, there’s no way the Council of Enigmatologists will take her back after she’s been AWOL for so long. Each time an envelope drops through the mail slot, Destiny fully expects it to be a letter informing her that they’ve completely revoked her membership. It hurts to remember how thrilled she was to be appointed president of the prestigious group just thirteen months ago, and how she, Bex, and Nate all splurged on a fancy dinner to celebrate.

When the call finally drops, Bex exhales, a long whoosh of defeat. “I know I shouldn’t enable you with all the talking, but it’s not like I can call anyone on your behalf.”

They both look down at the wallpaper on the home screen of Destiny’s laptop.

It’s a photo that was taken thirteen years ago when Destiny was eight. In it, her mother’s arm is f lung across Annie’s shoul­ders, happiness radiating from the two best friends in waves. Destiny’s eyes fill with tears as she studies her mother’s straight black hair and pale skin, and those enormous glasses obscur­ing most of her face.

Jutting her chin at Destiny’s mother, Bex murmurs, “I wish I’d known Liz.”

Destiny nods before turning her attention to Annie, with her striking Afro and beaded shoulder-duster earrings, and her smile as bright as the sun.

The image was captured two weeks before Liz died. A year later, the paperwork went through to officially make Annie Destiny’s second adoptive mother. Their deaths were a wrench­ing loss, a tearing in the fabric of Destiny’s being that she never quite stitched back together.

There were times in the before when Destiny experienced the sting of loneliness, that awful yearning of the one forever stuck outside, nose and palms pressed against the cold glass, gaz­ing in at what belonging looked like: foreheads bent together, raucous laughter elicited by inside jokes, sentences finished by those who knew you best.

But this is not loneliness, in the same way that a drop of water is not a deluge, the way a sigh is not a hurricane.

“I’m so sorry that you’re having such a rough time of it,” Bex says, reaching out to tuck a f laming red curl behind Destiny’s ear. She freezes upon seeing Destiny’s expression, her hand hov­ering like a ghost between them. “A year is a long time, though, and Dr. Shepherd is right despite the fact that she clearly has it in for me. You need to move on.”

God, that Bex is apologizing to her, of all people, when ev­erything that happened was Destiny’s fault.

“No, I’m sorry,” Destiny says, her voice pulled so taut that it snaps. Seeing the pills all standing to attention—no longer a cemetery full of headstones, but rather an army ready to fight the last battle—Destiny reaches for the urn again, stroking it like a security blanket. “If you stop talking to me, Bex, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Not gonna happen,” Bex replies breezily. And then more firmly she says, “Okay, it’s tough love time. You seriously need to shower because you’re stinking up the place. Plus, the kitchen needs cleaning. Those take-out containers have grown thumbs. I swear I caught them trying to hitch a ride to the nearest pri­mordial swamp.”

Destiny laughs at how incredibly bossy Bex is.

Especially for a dead person.

Still, it’s reassuring that no matter how much has changed, some things stay exactly the same.

Excerpted from A Most Puzzling Murder by Bianca Marais, Copyright © 2025 by Bianca Marais. Published by MIRA Books. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLOG TOUR - THE EXPAT AFFAIR BY KIMBERLY BELLE

 

USA Today bestselling author Kimberly Belle returns with an exhilarating new thriller about an American expat whose startling discovery plunges her into the glamorous but deadly world of Amsterdam’s diamond industry, and the one woman who may hold the answer. 

Title: The Expat Affair
Author: Kimberly Belle
Publisher: Harlequin Books
Release Date: 3rd June 2025

 
BLURB
Rayna Dumont is getting a fresh start in Amsterdam. Following a nasty divorce, she takes a jet-setting new job and embraces the single life. All seems to be going well until she wakes up in the bed of Xander van der Vos, her one-night stand from the night before, only to find him brutally murdered in the room next door. To make matters worse, millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds are missing from his safe. Quickly, Rayna becomes the prime suspect and is thrown into a deadly game of cat and mouse with forces beyond her wildest imagination.

From her lavish home in the heart of the city, Willow Prins is enraptured by the case. The wife of Thomas Prins, CEO of the House of Prins and Xander’s former boss, Willow is too familiar with what it’s like to be the outsider in the elite world of luxury goods. But as the House comes under scrutiny, tensions rise in her already strained marriage and Willow starts to wonder if Rayna might be the solution she’s been looking for.

As both women dive into the dark underbelly of the diamond industry, their hope for survival hinges on navigating a web of power and revenge. And as Rayna fights to clear her name, will she unravel the truth or find herself another victim? 

 

PURCHASE LINKS
Bookshop.org
B&N
Books A Million
Amazon

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Kimberly Belle worked in marketing and nonprofit fundraising before turning to writing fiction. A graduate of Agnes Scott College, Kimberly lived for over a decade in the Netherlands and currently divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam. She is the bestselling author of over eight novels, including The Marriage Lie, Dear Wife, The Personal Assistant, and The Paris Widow. 

AUTHOR LINKS
Author website: https://www.kimberlybellebooks.com/
Facebook: @KimberlyBelleBooks
Twitter: @KimberlySBelle
Instagram: @kimberlybellebooks

 

EXCERPT 

Part One


“A diamond is forever.”

—Francis Gerety of N.W. Ayer & Son for De Beers


RAYNA

My eyes snap open on a jolt, and I blink into a room that’s as dark as a cave. For the first few blissful seconds, my body relaxes into a scene that feels all too familiar. The spicy scent of male on thousand-count sheets. The cushion of a criminally expensive mattress cradling my bones. A down-filled comforter skimming my naked skin like a lover.

And then I remember.

Not my bed. Not my home. Where the sheets were criminally soft but the bed cold and lonely, even though there were two people in it.

Correction: there were three people, though you better believe I didn’t know it at the time.

Stop. Abort. This is not the time to be thinking such things, when you find yourself in another man’s bed and when there’s definitely another woman in your old one. Fourteen months and a whole ocean between me and the ashes of my old life, and that man can still muscle his way into my head when I least want him there. Despite everything that brought me here, to a new life on the other side of the planet, Barry still holds that power, dammit.

I shove him from my mind and swipe my limbs across the rumpled cotton, making an angel on the feather and foam. On the other side of the bedroom wall, water clatters onto slick marble tiles. Xander, owner of this fine bed and plush penthouse apartment, taking a shower.

Snippets of last night flash in my head, lighting up some of the darkness that’s lived there since the divorce. The bar, the restaurant, the fish washed down with a bottle of perfectly chilled Chablis, champagne bubbles tickling the back of my throat, making out with Xander on the freezing terrace, our bodies tangled under his thick duvet, the sky and the stars and the glittering lights stretching into the darkness like a carpet of diamonds. My head rolls on the pillow to face the far wall, where the tiniest strip of daylight pushes through the floor-to-ceiling drapes. The fabulous but freezing terrace on the other side of that wall of windows where I stood, pressed against the glass railing, staring out at the view.

I push up onto an elbow and blink around the dim bedroom, wondering how long Xander’s showers typically run. My gaze drifts to the open bedroom door, and a strip of lit-up runner in the hallway. Puffs of steam waft across the plush burgundy carpet like a nightclub fog machine. Apparently, pretty long.

“Does this hookup come with coffee? Oat milk if you’ve got some, and I wouldn’t say no to a croissant.”

This new Rayna, she’s cheeky. The kind of girl who wakes up the morning after a drunken one-night stand with no regrets. Zero. Not a single one.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, and I roll onto a hip and pluck it from the charger. My roommate, Ingrid, the gorgeous, lanky blonde I met on craigslist when I answered her ad for a spare room. Ingrid works in the city center, at a shop that doesn’t open until late morning. In the few months we’ve lived under the same roof, I’ve never seen her conscious before ten.

I frown, swiping with a thumb to answer. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, seeing as I’m here and you’re there, I’m guessing nothing.” She yawns, loud and breathy into the phone. “I take it the date was a success.”

Ingrid knows all about the date because she was there, eating breakfast in the kitchen when the notification hit my phone that Xander had swiped right. She plucked my cell out of my hand to study his profile picture, a close-up of his face bathed in late-afternoon sun.

“Cute,” she said, handing my phone back. “If you don’t swipe right, I will. Though I’m not sure about that bio. 73% gentleman. 27% rogue. What does that even mean?”

I took in Xander’s sharp jawline, wide-set eyes, crooked, close-lipped smile that made him look like he was holding on to a secret.

“I don’t know, but I’m intrigued.”

He was handsome enough that I swiped right, too. Almost immediately, another notification pinged my phone: It’s a match! And two seconds after that, a message.

Hello, Rayna with the red hair. How is your day so far?

Perhaps a bit overeager but friendly enough, and not the least bit icky. The perfect first message as far as I was concerned.

After that, the day was a blur of back and forth. First via Tinder, then on WhatsApp, then through comments on my Instagram.

Nice wings, he left under a shot of me last summer in Nashville, standing against a wall with a painted mural of a butterfly. Next time you go to Music City, #ImIn.

I smile into the phone. “Yes, Ingrid. The date went very well.”

“Are you still there?” she says, her voice perkier now. “Are you with him right now?”

I wriggle higher on the pillow, listening to the water on the other side of the wall. I hadn’t heard him slip out of bed, hadn’t so much as stirred when the shower started up, which says a little something about the state I was in last night.

“No.” There’s a soft whirring and the wall to my left shifts, the blackout shades working on what I assume is a timer. They travel up a wall of steel-and-glass windows, letting in a mauve, early morning light. “He’s currently in the shower.”

Ingrid squeals, and the sound does something to me. My old life was filled with moments like these, early morning gossip fests about the night before, trading anecdotes about our lives and families and men. Since moving to Amsterdam, my address book has become a lot slimmer, but whoever said women in Amsterdam are notoriously difficult to befriend has never met Ingrid. From the moment I wheeled my suitcase into her apartment, she’s been nothing but friendly—and Lord knows I could use a friend.

“Why did you answer the phone?” she says now. “Get your ass in there. What is it you Americans say? Do it for the team.”

She hangs up before I can correct her.

I toss my phone to the bed, telling myself that Ingrid is right. I should get in there, mostly because it’s the opposite of what the old Rayna would do. The old Rayna would be chastising herself for spending a night with a man she just met and slinking out of here in shame. The new and improved Rayna, though—Rayna 2.0—she knows how to have a good time.

On the other side of the wall, the shower is still going, the steam still creeping along the hallway runner. New city, new life, new me.

I push back the covers and slide out of bed. “Hey, lover. You got

room in that fancy shower of yours for me?”


LIKE THE REST of this place, Xander’s bathroom is a work of art. A great wash of veiny brown and cream marble stretched across the floors, climbing the walls, plopped onto floating cabinets and molded into sinks. LED lights blaze down from sleek spotlights in the ceiling, a light so bright it stops me in the doorway. I stand there for a minute, blinking into the steamy space.

A towel is tossed carelessly on the floor next to a bath mat. A tube of toothpaste lies on the edge of the sink on the left wall. The shower is still going, tucked behind a marble wall and a door of steamed-up glass, a steady clattering that echoes in the room. A tiny frisson of electricity crackles under my skin. He’s been in there an awfully long time.

“Xander?”

No answer.

I take a tentative step forward, and my bare foot lands in a tepid puddle. That’s when I notice the rest of the floor is wet, too, big pools of water like someone sprayed the marble with a garden hose. Next to the big square tub, a dented shampoo bottle lies on its side, burping up a purple-tinged goo, thick and slimy. A good ten feet from the shower door.

“Everything okay in there?”

Everything is not okay. Of this I am certain. I know it with every ounce of my being even if I can’t quite name what’s wrong. An instinctual kind of alarm bell, like running up to the edge of a cliff. I know it long before I step onto the drenched bath mat and tug open the shower door.

The first thing I see is a foot, male and knobby. Don’t look don’t look don’t look. It’s like an out-of-body experience—me screaming the instruction at myself from above, but it’s too late because I’ve already seen the foot and the angle is all wrong. Xander’s toes are pointed to the sky. Like he fell, maybe, whacked his head on the way down. Knocked himself unconscious and landed flat on his back.

Except no. This is more than unconscious. This is utterly, horrifyingly still. Despite the steaming water beating down on his motionless body. Despite me nudging his bare foot with mine.

My gaze wanders up his body. His long, lean legs, his athletic torso. One hand is curled in a loose fist on his chest, the other arm, his right, is stretched across the floor as if he’s reaching for something. For a full five seconds, I watch swirls of pretty pink spiral toward the drain before I realize what it is: blood, leaking from the stump where his pointer finger used to be.

But the finger isn’t the worst, not by a long shot. Xander’s eyes are open, but they’re wide and red and empty. His mouth hangs in a yawn or maybe a deep breath he can’t catch because his neck . . .

Oh my God. His neck. A thin band of opaque plastic is wrapped around it like a tourniquet.

It’s a zip tie. A fucking zip tie.

I scream and lurch backward, one foot catching in the mat, the other skidding across the water-slick floor. My arms flail, and my feet fly upward. I land on a hip, hitting the marble hard enough to rattle my teeth.

Holy shit.

I scrabble forward on my hands and knees, and maybe it’s all the booze, but last night’s dinner comes up in a sudden and sour wave, a perfectly cooked piece of halibut on a bed of creamy peas and haricots verts. It lands on the marble with the water and the blood

and the purple-tinged shampoo, splashing on my knees and thighs.

I stagger to a stand and stumble back toward the hall, but the floor is wet and the bathroom is spinning and this is really happening. Xander is really dead. Someone really killed him while I was sleeping in the next room.

Not dead. Murdered.