Aug 18 2016

The Black Thumb by Frankie Bow – Guest Post + Giveaway @Frankie_Bow

Posted by Brooke in Book Giveaway, Book Tour, Guest Post, Uncategorized / 1 Comment

The Black Thumb by Frankie Bow
Professor Molly Mysteries #3
Hawaiian Heritage Press
Publication Date: April 18, 2016

When a violent death disrupts the monthly meeting of the Pua Kala Garden society, Professor Molly Barda has no intention of playing amateur detective. But Molly’s not just a witness-the victim is Molly’s house guest and grad-school frenemy. And Molly quickly finds to her dismay that her interest in the murder of the stylish and self-centered Melanie Polewski is more than just…academic.

The Black Thumb is for:

mystery lovers
Hawaii expatriates
frustrated gardeners
disillusioned academics

Praise for the Professor Molly Mysteries:
A “smart and welcome addition to the teaching-college-is-murder genre.”
― Kirkus

A “fun read from beginning to end.”
― Christa Nardi, author of the Cold Creek Mysteries

a “winning first mystery”
― Publishers Weekly

“Certain to appeal to readers who love well-drawn settings or academic cozies”
― Library Journal

“I was caught laughing out loud. The sarcasm and humor are superbly written. I was hooked from the start and dare say forgot all about the time while reading.”
― Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Where everyone has a green thumb

I really did have a lot to learn about gardening. I was not one of those persons gifted with a green thumb. In fact, I seemed to have the opposite of a green thumb, whatever that would be. A red thumb? That didn’t sound right, although green and red opposed each other on the color wheel. A brown thumb? A black thumb? Was that racist? Maybe a skeleton thumb, like the Grim Reaper.

—The Black Thumb, a Professor Molly Mystery

I have the proverbial black thumb. I am the worst gardener in the world.

I incapable of coaxing a living thing out of the ground; worse I’ve had actual cactus perish in my care.

I am death, destroyer of flora.

Or so I thought, before I moved from Southern California to the rainy side of one of the Hawaiian Islands.

It turns out that I am not the plant kingdom’s answer to the Grim Reaper. In fact, now that I’m here, I’m surrounded by thriving, vigorous verdure. How do I do it?

Simple: sun plus rain. Hawaii generally has the highest ultraviolet index in the United States (13.2 today, on a scale I’d always assumed only went up to 10). And the eastern, or windward, sides of the Hawaiian islands get soaked, with up to 10,271 mm or over 400 inches of rainfall per year. Notoriously damp Seattle, by comparison, gets barely 50 inches.

image source: University of Hawaii

I live in one of the blue spots. Herem the landscape defaults to jungle, and gardening mostly involves beating back nature with gallons of herbicide and powerful weed torches (basically flamethrowers for your garden).