In this newsletter:
- The Husband makes a sausage
- Books of 2025 part I + Flight attendants love books!
The Husband: “On Saturday, I’m going to make a sausage.”
The Daughter: “Is that a euphemism?”
No. He actually did go to Journeyman Meats in Healdsburg California and make sausage. I was the official photographer. You can view the video on DaughterofMontague.com.
The experience was absolutely entertaining and educational for me because, of course, sausages of all kinds are some of the oldest ways of preserving meats, usually pork and beef but also lamb, rabbit, venison through grinding, fermentation, ripening, and drying. Specifically, think Verona and Renaissance Italy. The combinations of flavors are endless and one of the things that makes a charcuterie plate so much fun to explore. Along with the cheeses, olives, honeys, breads, fresh and dried fruits…
Yes, the Montagues and the Capulets would have enjoyed many and varied charcuterie plates, and fought over whose was best.😁
I’d gladly be a judge. Here’s my “recipe:” Montague vs. Capulet: The Battle for Charcuterie Supremacy.
Reprints of 2025
I’m having a dickens of a time realizing that 2025 is coming to a close. It’s been a daunting year for almost everyone for so many reasons and, because I’ve been working hard at my writing (what can I tell you? I love my job,) I found myself dealing with a lot of book releases. Seven book releases!
This is good for my readers and my career. I really do know it. But wow, it was a lot. In this letter, let’s do a quick review of the three re-releases in new formats.
- After being in hardcover, eBook and audiobook, EVERY SINGLE SECRET was in February released in mass market paperback.
Mr. Bandara, Helen Lamb’s first and dearest client, puttered in his kitchen, cleaning up their snack of coffee and biscotti. “I need a gardener to plant my spring flowers, the toilet is leaking, and I need an assassin to kill me.”
😳
Helen Lamb (real name Rowan Winterbourne,) owns The Fixer, a firm that specializes in helping her clients connect with someone to do the jobs they needed done. Most of her work involves repairs: gardeners, plumbers, housekeepers, construction workers, handymen. But she prides herself on always matching her clients with the proper laborers, people who will fix, clean, plant, repair, and most of all listen. For special clients, for an elevated fee, she also finds travel agents, nannies, doctors, and bankers. But never has she been asked to find an assassin.
But…Rowan can. Because of her shadowy past, she has connections. And because she finds an assassin for the dying Mr. Bandara, she’s distracted by grief and guilt…
Joe Grantham appears on Rowen’s doorstep, and for the first time, she gets it wrong. Horrifically, passionately wrong. She lets him in, reveals too much, and he blackmails Rowan to go with him to Raptor Island where she’s flung into a dangerous maelstrom of secrets, intrigue—and if she dares grasp the terrible challenge, the chance to reclaim the life and family she lost so many years before.
EVERY SINGLE SECRET…what are your secrets?
I don’t usually write glittering stories set in dangerous, glamorous surroundings. This worked because of the twisted, in-depth family revelations. Available in paperback, eBook, audiobook and yes, still in hardcover!
- After being an audiobook exclusive for three long years, I was so pleased that the Gothic novella, WELCOME TO GOTHIC, was in March released in eBook.
WELCOME TO THE PAST
At the glittering heart of Hollywood’s golden era in mysterious Gothic, California stands the regal Palace Theater—the pinnacle of thrilling shows, opulent décor, and the biggest stars of stage and screen. Here, drama unfolds on and off the stage.
WELCOME TO THE PRESENT
Today, in the abandoned backstage, fitness guru Wendy Giordano is knocked unconscious and wakes to find herself performing a daredevil stunt in the Gothic Palace Theater…in glamorous 1940.
During the COVID epidemic and on impulse, I wrote WELCOME TO GOTHIC, a time-travel novella set in magical Gothic California where, “On stormy nights, Gothic is said to disappear, and on its return it brings lost souls back from the dead.” I love this story. I hope you do, too. In eBook and audiobook.
- In 2024, A DAUGHTER OF FAIR VERONA launched the Daughter of Montague series in hardcover, eBook and audiobook, and in May 2025 it came out in trade paperback and struck the book club market right in its beating heart.
Once upon a time a young couple met and fell in love. You probably know that story, and how it ended (hint: badly). Only here’s the thing: That’s not how it ended at all.
Romeo and Juliet are alive and well and the parents of seven kids. I’m the oldest, with the emphasis on ‘old’—a certified spinster at twenty, and happy to stay that way. It’s not easy to keep your taste for romance with parents like mine. Picture it—constant monologues, passionate declarations, fighting, making up, making out . . . it’s exhausting.
Each time they’ve presented me with a betrothal, I’ve set out to find the groom-to-be a more suitable bride. After all, someone sensible needs to stay home and manage this household. But their latest match, Duke Stephano, isn’t so easy to palm off on anyone else. The debaucher has had three previous wives—all of whom met unfortunate ends. Conscience forbids me from consigning another woman to that fate. As it turns out, I don’t have to . . .
At our betrothal ball—where, quite by accident, I meet a beautiful young man who makes me wonder if perhaps there is something to love at first sight—I stumble upon Duke Stephano with a dagger in his chest. But who killed him? His late wives’ families, his relatives, his mistress, his servants—half of Verona has motive. And Escalus, prince of Verona, lingered close at hand. When everyone around the Duke begins dying, disappearing, or descending into madness, I know I must uncover the killer . . . before death lies on me like an untimely frost.
If you haven’t encountered the Daughter of Montague series yet, it’s well worth your time to read the excerpt. You’ll know immediately by the humorous retelling of Romeo and Juliet’s fates (they’re alive!) if the story sings for you.
The Husband and I flew to California on Thanksgiving Day, and our Alaska Airlines flight attendants Gertie and Tatyana were lovely, as usual. I signed copies of A DAUGHTER OF FAIR VERONA to them with our thanks, and thank you to everyone who worked on the holiday.
Finally…
May December be good to you, filled with friends, food and family and lots of time to read. Next I’ll be back with a review of the remaining releases of 2025 (7 releases, minus 3 in this letter, leaves 4 TK.) Until next time, happy reading!
Christina Dodd
New York Times bestselling author and 2025 King County Library Literary Lion of two beloved Christmas novellas:
Printable/downloadable booklist sorted by genre, series and in order.
Books by Series with covers and links.
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they handle three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. —Maya Angelou
