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Chaos at Carnegie Hall, a Fiona Figg & Kitty Lane Mystery by Kelly Oliver

Author Guest Post + Book & Author Info + Giveaway!

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Chaos at Carnegie Hall

Agatha Christie meets Downton Abbey in the Fiona Figg and Kitty Lane Mystery series opener.

Can Fiona catch a killer and find a decent cup of tea before her mustache wax melts?

1917. New York.

Notorious spy, Fredrick Fredricks, has invited Fiona to Carnegie Hall to hear a famous soprano. It’s an opportunity the War Office can’t turn down. Fiona and Clifford are soon on their way, but not before Fiona is saddled with chaperon duties for Captain Hall’s niece. Is Fiona a spy or a glorified babysitter?

From the minute Fiona meets the soprano aboard the RMS Adriatic it’s treble on the high C’s. Fiona sees something—or someone—thrown overboard, and then she overhears a chemist plotting in German with one of her own countrymen!

And the trouble doesn’t stop when they disembark. Soon Fiona is doing time with a group of suffragettes and investigating America’s most impressive inventor Thomas Edison.

When her number one suspect turns up dead at the opera and Fredrick Fredricks is caught red-handed, it looks like it’s finally curtains for the notorious spy.

But all the evidence points to his innocence. Will Fiona change her tune and clear her nemesis’ name? Or will she do her duty? And just what is she going to do with the pesky Kitty Lane? Not to mention swoon-worthy Archie Somersby…

If Fiona’s going to come out on top, she’s going to have to make the most difficult decision of her life: the choice between her head and her heart.

Genre: Historical Cozy Mystery
Published by: Boldwood Books
Publication Date: November 2022
Number of Pages: 298
ISBN: 9781804831564
Series: The Fiona Figg Mysteries

To purchase Chaos at Carnegie Hall, click on any of the following links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Chaos at Carnegie Hall — Author Guest Post

From Bones to Flesh

On Writing Philosophy and Fiction

By Kelly Oliver

After thirty years writing philosophy books—on such a broad range of topics that some scholars in my field wondered if I was writing philosophy at all—one stormy afternoon in August 2014, I decided to write a novel. I had never written a word of fiction, so the task I set myself was a bit daunting.

Fortunately, I was on sabbatical (shhhh… don’t tell Vanderbilt I spent it writing a novel). By another stroke of luck, that very weekend, there was a mystery writer’s convention in Nashville called Killer Nashville. In three days, I learned just enough to make me dangerous. The next Monday I started writing my first novel.

I joke that if it had been a sci-fi convention, I’d be writing sci-fi. Or, if it had been a romance convention, I’d be writing romance.

Seven years—and fourteen novels—later, I’ve learned a lot.

First, it’s never too late to try something new.

Second, if you’re a woman and you’ve got the guts to get a Ph.D. in philosophy—a field still dominated by men—then you’ve got the grit to write a novel.

Third, research is research, no matter if it is for a book on French philosophy or an historical murder mystery—except with fiction you can make stuff up so it goes a lot faster (for comparison, in thirty years writing philosophy, I’ve only authored sixteen books. Hahaha… For all the nonacademics, I’m joking. Sixteen scholarly books is way more than most professors publish in a lifetime. Yes. I’m a workaholic.)

The most amazing thing I’ve learned writing fiction is that you can change an entire world with just one sentence or one phrase. It’s like a miracle. Perhaps that’s true of philosophy too, only again it happens a lot slower, like the difference between human time and geological time.

Unlike philosophy, where you get right to the point and tell your reader where you’re going from the beginning, in fiction, you meander and hide the destination for as long as possible. Still fiction allows for a certain kind of truth-telling that is difficult to reach in nonfiction. Affective truth.

I was trained in phenomenology, which focuses on lived experience. Writing fiction requires creating a lived experience for the reader. Whereas phenomenology gets to the bones of lived experience, fiction fills out the flesh.

Writing fiction is also an exercise in empathy that forces you to imagine stepping into another person’s shoes and demands taking up views that aren’t your own. You can’t create believable characters if you can’t imagine life from their point of view. Hopefully, you open up your reader to new ways of seeing the world.

In both my scholarly work and my fiction, I’ve been concerned with women’s issues. In fiction, you can bring those issues to life.

What I love most about writing fiction is that you can imagine a world where justice is real.

Kelly Oliver — Author of Chaos at Carnegie Hall

Kelly Oliver is the award-winning and bestselling author of three mystery series: the seven-book suspense series, The Jessica James Mysteries; the three-book middle grade series, Pet Detective Mysteries; and the four-book historical cozy series, The Fiona Figg Mysteries.

Chaos at Carnegie Hall is the latest Fiona Figg mystery, and the first to feature sidekick, Kitty Lane.

When she’s not writing novels, Kelly is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

To learn more about Kelly and her books, visit: www.KellyOliverBooks.com, Goodreads, BookBub – @KellyOliverBook, Instagram – @KellyOliverBook, Twitter – @KellyOliverBook & Facebook – @KellyOliverAuthor

Visit all the Stops on the Tour!

12/05 Review @ Guatemala Paula Loves to Read
12/07 Guest post @ The Book Divas Reads
12/08 Review @ Novels Alive
12/08 Showcase @ Novels Alive
12/09 Showcase @ Books, Ramblings, and Tea
12/10 Guest post @ Mythical Books
12/11 Showcase @ The Mystery Section
12/12 Interview @ Hott Books
12/13 Interview @ Cozy Up With Kathy
12/13 Review @ sunny island breezes
12/14 Showcase @ Im All About Books
12/15 Showcase @ Silvers Reviews
12/16 Guest post @ The Mystery of Writing
12/16 Review @ Cozy Up With Kathy
12/17 Review @ Book Reviews From an Avid Reader
12/18 Review @ Melissa’s Bookshelf
12/19 Review @ Urban Book Reviews
12/20 Review @ 5 Minutes for Books
12/20 Showcase @ Celticladys Reviews
12/21 Review @ nanasbookreviews
12/23 Podcast reading and review @ Books to the Ceiling
12/26 Review @ From the TBR Pile
12/28 Showcase @ 411 ON BOOKS, AUTHORS, AND PUBLISHING NEWS

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