{"id":40512,"date":"2026-06-04T05:05:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T05:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesbianfunworld.com\/books\/?p=40512"},"modified":"2026-06-04T05:05:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T05:05:31","slug":"mayberry-murders-by-kate-merrill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesbianfunworld.com\/books\/mayberry-murders-by-kate-merrill\/","title":{"rendered":"Mayberry Murders by Kate Merrill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div style=\"font-size: 17px;\">\r\n\r\nAmanda Rittenhouse&#8217;s grandmother dies. The death doesn&#8217;t quite track right, and the will makes it worse. Hidden inside the legal language is a sixty-year-old scandal: the grandmother, as a teenager, loved someone across a racial line that was supposed to be absolute. She had a son. She buried the whole thing. She never spoke about Andrew again.\n\n\n\n\n\nNow Amanda has an extended family she never knew existed and two hundred acres of North Carolina land that developers want badly. The wanting is violent. The land is worth killing for.\n\n\n\n\n\nAmanda and Sara Orlando\u2014her psychiatrist lover\u2014follow the inheritance trail to a small town that markets itself as the real-life Mayberry. Wholesome. Safe. The fictional town from television made actual.\n\n\n\n\n\nIt&#8217;s not that.\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat they find instead is a body count. A staged suicide. A sniper working through the heir list with systematic patience. Each death moves the inheritance closer to someone else. Each death has the appearance of accident or despair, just credible enough to hold up to initial scrutiny.\n\n\n\n\n\nThe grandmother&#8217;s secret\u2014the son born from forbidden love\u2014becomes the emotional center rather than a shock twist. Amanda absorbing a new family, learning their names and histories, building connection with people she&#8217;s related to but never met, runs parallel to the murders. Neither thread cancels the other out. The warmth doesn&#8217;t make the killings feel less real. The body count doesn&#8217;t make the family moments feel less true.\n\n\n\n\n\nMerrill gives the cozy mystery format actual stakes. The comfort of small-town life reveals its underside: the way communities protect their own secrets, the way murder can hide in plain sight when everyone agrees to look away.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<div>\r\n<h2><\/h2>\r\n<h2>Details<\/h2>\r\n<style type=\"text\/css\">\r\n .TFtable<br \/> .TFtable td<br \/> \/*  Define the text for all the 2nd columns  *\/<br \/> .TFtable td:nth-child(2)<br \/><\/style>\r\n<table class=\"TFtable\">\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>ISBN: <\/strong>9781959929161<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Subtitle: <\/strong><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Genre: <\/strong>Mystery; Romance<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Subject(s): <\/strong>Amateur Sleuths; Crime; LGBTQ+ Books; LGBTQ+ Romance; Literature &#038; Fiction; Mysteries &#038; Thrillers; Mystery; Mystery, Thriller &#038; Suspense; Romance; Suspense; Thrillers; Thrillers &#038; Suspense<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Publication Date: <\/strong>2024-04-08<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Original Publication Date: <\/strong><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Publisher: <\/strong>Sapphire Books Publishing<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Language: <\/strong>English<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Format: <\/strong>Paperback<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Pages: <\/strong>314<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Rating: <\/strong> <\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Notes: <\/strong><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td><strong>Book_ID: <\/strong>106047<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lesbian mystery set in small-town North Carolina, where a sculptor&#8217;s grandmother leaves behind two hundred acres, a hidden family, and at least one killer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":40513,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4324,4329],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mystery","category-romance"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.6.1 (Yoast SEO v27.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Mayberry Murders<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A lesbian mystery set in small-town North Carolina, where a sculptor&#039;s grandmother leaves behind two hundred acres, a hidden family, and at least one killer.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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