Happy Friday everyone, the good news is it’s time for the first series post of the year. The bad news is that I’m going to have to find another book to read for Ohio in next year’s 50 States Challenge – if I do it again next year, which is never a given despite the fact that 2024 is year five!
Anyway, today I’m talking about Emilie Richards’s Ministry is Murder series, about Aggie Sloan Wilcox, a minister’s wife in the small town of Emerald Springs, Ohio. Aggie isn’t a traditional minister’s wife – not just because she keeps stumbling across murders (although she does do that) but because she’s not going to make her husband’s job her full time job, no matter what the parishioners think – she’s got children to raise and being a minister doesn’t pay that well. But being a minister’s wife does mean than when she stumbles across bodies she has reason to be some what involved – especially if they’re parishioners!
They’re cozy mysteries – so relatively blood and gore-less, and the murdered person is usually someone you don’t like (or like less the more you know about them) and although the church and the church community is the setting for them, they’re not overly religious or preachy – I mean there’s no bible quotes popping up left right and centre. They’re really easy to read and very soothing in their way – despite the murders!
There are five books in there series and I wish there were more, because I think there could have been more plots – the house flipping strand, kid schools, rival churches all could have been exploited more. But as the last one came out in 2010, clearly I’m hoping in vain! Still Emilie Richards has written a lot of other books, so hopefully there’s something else in her catalogue that I’ll enjoy.
I bought the four I have secondhand – because that seemed to be the only way to get them. I read the first one as an ebook, but I can’t find them anywhere to buy anymore so not quite sure what the deal with that is. But if you spot them out and about they’re worth a look.
Happy Reading!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
Verity, you should write to Emily Richards, thanking her, and encouraging her to write more!!