"The 16th Joe Grey book [Cat Coming Home] is sure to please veteran fans of the series. All the favorites are back -- Joe, Dulcie, and Kit -- and the heartwarming stories of an orphaned child and a stray cat at Christmas will tug on more than a few heartstrings." --Romantic Times, November 2010
"Deeply moving. . . . Yuletide cheer appear in the enchanting form of Misto, a wise old yellow tomcat who returns form a long sojourn in Soledad Prison, Calif., where he's thrilled to connect with cat sleuths Joe Grey, Dulcie, and Kit. . . . [A] marvelous gift of a holiday tale. --Publishers Weekly, October 18, 2010
"Because Murphy succeeds in weaving the holiday elements into her mystery plot seemlessly, this novel is every bit as strong as the other entries in the series -- a rarity for so many holiday mysteries. A heartwarming and saitisfying tale that shows, yet again, why the Joe Grey novels have won the Book of the Year award from the Cat Writers Association eight times." --Booklist, November 1, 2010
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A belated Happy New Year, folks. This last year in Molena Point has swept by in a furor of house fire, murder, deception, and most heartbreaking of all, the many abandoned cats who were left to the mercies of a downed economy, when folks moved out of their homes and left their cats behind to fend for themselves.
It might surprise some folks, but many of those little housecats, fed all their lives on canned cat food, have no more skill at hunting for themselves than I have at changing the tires on Ryan’s king cab. But as you know, if you’ve already read Cat Telling Tales, our human friends came to the rescue, and they’re still working on their volunteer shelter project. More power to them--as long as they don’t forget to put on the filet and kippers for yours truly.
We cats and Murphy are still celebrating our two awards in 2011. At the national Cat Writers Association conference at White Plains, New York, Cat Coming Home won two top awards! That’s two, count them on your paws: CWA’s best novel of the year award, and the World’s Best Cat Litter-ary Award, sponsored by World’s Best Cat Litter. You may smile at a literary award from a litter company, but believe me, those folks make litter that’s welcome to the paws, easy on the nose, and an elegant addition to any cat’s private retreat. We thank all the folks there who made the award possible. We thank our friends at CWA, and most of all we thank those astute judges for such discerning taste.
As you know, Cat Telling Tales is now on the shelves, and so is the paperback of Cat Coming Home, both with eye-catching covers, both in time for Christmas. The aftermath of Cat Telling Tales has left us cats watching sharply for more abandoned strays in our village, though our human friends have found shelters for a great number of hungry and sick cats. Even here in Molena Point, the economic downturn saw many families abandon their homes when they couldn’t make the payments. People so desperate--and maybe so uncaring--that they packed up, hauled out, and left their little cats behind to starve or to find some stranger to care for them. It might surprise you, folks, that a lot of cats are so dependent on people that they’ve never learned how to hunt, how to survive on their own. But our human friends dealt with that problem, rounding up strays, supplying food and a warm place to sleep and finding new homes for them. In fact, they’re still at it, their effort has become a village-wide project.
But beyond the economic crisis, and the kindness of our friends, the village saw a rash of swindles and murder early this year, brought on by the same financial stress, and we cats were right in the middle, including the foulest kind of murder. And then, to add to all that, here came a sudden drop in our usually mild weather, a February whiteout that amazed the whole village and occurred right at the moment of a grisly murder investigation--and right in the middle of a spectacular life change for our Kit, too, a surprise that has brought new dimension into our tortoiceshell’s already giddy young life, and one we hope will be everlasting.
You’ll find an article by Murphy in the new Mystery Readers Journal, in their fall issue: Animal Mysteries. (Their website is www.mysteryreaders.org.) Murphy talks a bit about writing, and of course she talks about Cat Telling Tales and about us cats and our adventures. Though I have to say she goes to great lengths to make readers believe that we speaking cats are only fiction, that we were born of myth, as she puts it. Well, but she does that only to protect our real existence, and we appreciate that. Of course you and our close Molena Point friends know the real truth of the matter.
Also. Murphy has a guest blog at Barnes & Noble, in which she talks about us, about our lives off-screen, as it were, and a bit about how Murphy begins to shape a story. Murphy has, I must say, some intriguing comments about our unpredictable Kit, in her own off-screen moments.
Happy Christmas, folks! Happy Hanukkah, and let’s all pray together for a great and buoyant upswing from the grim turn that some of our lives have recently taken.
Your pals, always, Joe Grey and Dulcie and Kit, and our fellow felines-in-crime.
PS: A little holdover note from our last message: Besides our own adventures, published in ebook editions by HarperCollins, Murphy has two earlier fantasy series available as ebooks now:
The Dragonbards trilogy: Nightpool, The Ivory Lyre, and The Dragonbards.
A quintet in two new volumes: The Shattered Stone and The Runestone of Eresu.
And she also has brought out an ebook edition of a realistic teen novel, Unsettled, originally titled Poor Jenny Bright as a Penny. All these are published under the imprint Ad Stellae Books.
The reading order of the Joe Grey novels is as follows:
Cat on the Edge Cat Under Fire Cat Raise the Dead Cat in the Dark Cat to the Dogs Cat Spitting Mad **Cat on the Money Cat Laughing Last Cat Seeing Double Cat Fear No Evil Cat Cross Their Graves Cat Breaking Free Cat Pay the Devil Cat Deck the Halls Cat Playing Cupid Cat Striking Back Cat Coming Home Cat Telling Tales
If you've been looking for The Catswold Portal, the 2005 paperback edition is still in print and can be obtained from bookstores. Click on "Fantasy Novels" above for details! (This book is not part of the Joe Grey mystery series.)
**Cat on the Money is a novella available only in ebook form. The first
8 chapters were originally published as a serial in Cats Magazine, which was discontinued before it was complete.
The entire story will remain here at this site; just click on the title. It can be
downloaded as a single printable PDF file, in addition being read online chapter by chapter.
New!
Cat on the Money can now be obtained in the ebook formats EPUB (for the Nook and others), MOBI (for the Kindle), LRF (for Sony readers) and PDB (for Palm readers) at Smashwords , Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, and other retailers.
All of the Joe Grey books, plus The Catswold Portal, are in print. If you can't find them, any bookstore can order them for you--just ask! Independent bookstores in particular are happy to provide this service for their customers.
You can see the jackets and descriptions of all the Joe Grey books in reverse order of publication, with the newest first, by clicking on "Cat Mysteries" in the navigation bar above.
If you have a question about the stories or about Shirley Rousseau Murphy, be sure to look at the FAQ Page to see if it's answered! Click on "Author FAQ" below.
Shirley Rousseau Murphy is not online, but if you send e-mail to her at
murphy@joegrey.com it will be promptly forwarded via fax modem, as will the comments in the Guest Book.
She no longer maintains a mailing list because the ISP for this site no longer lets us send bulk mail. For notifications of book releases, connect with her official Facebook page.
Also, M Is for Mystery in San Mateo, California will take orders for signed copies of the new hardcover Cat Striking Back and unsigned paperbacks of all the Joe Grey books and The Catswold Portal. Toll-free phone 888-405-8077; e-mail info@MforMystery.com.
Shirley Rousseau Murphy does not sell copies of her in-print books personally. She does have signed copies of some of her out-of-print children's books and fantasy novels available at low discount prices -- click on "Children's Books" and "Fantasy Novels" above.
The Joe Grey books have won ten Muse Medallion awards!
For best cat novel of the year from the national Cat Writers' Association,
presented at their annual conferences.
Cat Under Fire
Cat Raise the Dead
Cat in the Dark
Cat Spitting Mad
Cat Laughing Last
Cat Seeing Double
Cat Cross Their Graves
Cat Playing Cupid
Cat Striking Back
Cat Coming Home
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