Summer in Busman’s Harbor, Maine

By: Julia Snowden

From: The Maine Clambake Mysteries

Author: Barbara Ross

Book 2 Title: Boiled Over

How exciting that I get to be the last poster for the Killer Characters June-July giveaway. Comment by midnight to win copies of both Clammed Up and Boiled Over, the first two books in the Maine Clambake Mystery series. If you already own both books, say that in the comment and you could win an Advance Reader Copy of Musseled Out, the third book. Fair warning, you’ll find out if you won right away, but you may have to wait until February to get delivery.

Summer is high season in coastal Maine. In our tourist-based economy, the citizens of Busman’s Harbor have four short months to make our money. My name is Julia Snowden and this spring, I took a leave of absence from my job in venture capital to return to save my family’s clambake business from the brink of bankruptcy. In the five years since my father’s death, the economy, and my sister’s husband Sonny, had run it practically into the ground.

Every day over the summer, we load two hundred tourists onto the Jacquie II and give them a tour of

Busman’s Harbor complete with islands, lighthouses, whales, seals and puffins. Then we take them to Morrow Island, the private island my mother owns, for a real Maine clambake. After we’ve filled them up on chowder, steamed clams, twin lobsters, corn, a potato, an onion and an egg, all cooked over stones heated by a roaring hardwood fire, we give them blueberry grunt for dessert. Then we load them, stuffed and sunburned, onto the boat for the ride back to town, where we pick up two hundred more and do it all over again.

It’s exhausting, backbreaking work, but when I see the happy groups of friends and family, enjoying themselves and our island, it’s all worthwhile.

As if all this busyness isn’t busy enough, my sister Livvie signed me up for the Busman’s Harbor Founder’s Day committee. In a couple of weeks, we’ll offer a weekend of fun, including a parade of windjammers, an art show, a codfish relay race, pancake breakfast and fireworks over the harbor. The Snowden Family Clambake Company will serve lunch on the town pier. Sonny’s figuring out how to do that without burning the town down.

Fingers crossed it goes well and brings in lots of tourists to help out the local merchants. Honestly, if we get good weather and can manage the crowds, I don’t see what could go wrong.

Barbara Ross is the author of the Maine Clambake Mystery series. The first book, Clammed Up, was nominated for an Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel and the RT Book Reviews, Reviewer's Choice Best Book Award for Amateur Sleuth, and was a finalist for the Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Barbara blogs with a wonderful group of Maine mystery authors at Maine Crime Writers and with a group of writers of New England-based cozy mysteries at Wicked Cozy Authors. Barbara and her husband own the former Seafarer Inn at the head of the harbor in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Her website is www.maineclambakemysteries.com