Title: HAVE YOURSELF A DEADLY LITTLE CHRISTMAS
Author: Leslie Langtry
Genre: Dark Comedy
Book Blurb:
From USA Today Bestselling author, Leslie Langtry comes a holiday short story featuring the Bombay Family of Assassins. It’s Christmas Eve, and huddled around the fireplace with pet Dodo in her lap, Missi Bombay tells the story about the time she and her cousins, Gin, Liv, Paris, and Cy carried out a holiday assignment on the family’s private island—Agatha Christie style.
There are no Christmas stockings for the wicked. All five of the nasty targets are on Santa’s naughty list, and this year the only present they’re getting is murder. One-by-one they start dying off under mysterious and often hilarious circumstances as everyone wonders—Who Will Be Next?
Excerpt:
“Tell us that story, Aunt Missi!” Theo Bombay wailed at me. His father, Coney Island Bombay, lunged for his son, but even with his amazing reflexes, the six-year old danced out of the way and took up a whining position on the other side of my chair. Too bad we weren’t assassins anymore. The kid had some talent at evasion.
I tried to ignore the request. It was Christmas at Santa Muerta, and this year I’d invited all of my cousins and their families to join us. The island belonged to the whole Bombay family, but my husband, Lex, and my sons, Monty and Jack, and myself were the only ones who lived here year round.
Theo was the youngest and the first Bombay in four millennia to have a name that wasn’t the pronoun for a location. For four thousand years the Bombays were the first name in assassination worldwide. That creates some quirky traditions, and one of ours was to saddle every child with a place name. Which was great if you were Virginia Bombay, but not so great when you’re named Liverpool. Which is why Liverpool became Liv, Mississippi became Missi, and Coney Island very fortunately became Cy. Why Virginia, with her name being a real one, changed to Gin is anybody’s guess. But if you ask Uncle York, he’d say she’s a drinker.
“Knock it off, Theo.” Coney chuckled. “You’ve made her tell it twice already this weekend.”
“Don’t care, Dad.” Theo crossed his arms over his chest and scowled, looking very much like his father. “I wanna hear it again.”
Gin Bombay downed a cup of eggnog and chided, “Oh, do it, Missi. I love that story.”
“Because you’re in it!” Her brother Dakota (who went by Dak) scowled. “I’m not in that story.” His wife, Leonie, shook her head. She was tired of hearing about it.
“I don’t know…” I said. “It was a long time ago. I might not remember everything.”
Paris Bombay (who never felt the need to shorten his name) laughed. “You remember every single word. Go ahead. Tell it.” He shot a look at Dak. “After all, I am in it.”
“Maybe we should wait for everyone else,” I said.
Veronica, Theo’s mom, spoke up as she grabbed another ninjabread cookie, “The teenagers are all at the pool—they’ll never come back. Besides, I haven’t heard it yet.”
I looked around the room and sighed. “Fine.” I sat down, and Liv Bombay handed me a large glass of wine. Which, at that moment, made her my favorite cousin.
“Several years ago, back when the Bombays still killed bad people,” I began, “five little Bombays were each given one assignment and an ultimatum to get the jobs done by the day after Christmas…
"Myself, Paris, Cy, Liv, and Gin had each received from the Council that special manila envelope with the Bombay Family crest in red wax sealing it shut. We each found out about the others when we got together at a sports bar in Gin, Liv, and Paris’ hometown to basically complain about spending the holidays taking out Vics.”
Dak interrupted with a pout. “I still don’t get why I wasn’t involved. It would make more sense for Gin, Liv, Paris, and I to get these assignments. We all lived in the same place!”
The rest of the Bombays ignored him. We’d all heard this complaint every time I told the story.
“As I was saying,” I said, shooting Dak a look. “We were eating burgers and drinking beer and complaining that we didn’t want to do it, when Cy came up with a great idea. What if we did all the hits at once? At the same place? It was a stroke of genius.”
Theo puffed up proudly. He loved this part because he agreed—his dad was a genius. Cy suppressed a smile.
“Anyway, Liv came up with the idea that we do it on Santa Muerta. Her favorite book was Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. So she suggested we invite each of our victims to the island for a Christmas party and take them out, one by one.”
Buy Links:
Nook - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/have-yourself-a-deadly-little-christmas-leslie-langtry/1121836756
Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/538780
What I love most about the holiday season:
I love traditions. My family has done matching Christmas jammies since 1987 and we still do it today – which means I have two bins full of four decades worth of flannel pajamas. You know how people say you can’t have too many pairs of pajamas? Well, they’re wrong. You can.
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Open internationally
Runs July 1 – 31
Drawing will be held on August 1.
Author Biography:
Leslie Langtry grew up in a small town in Iowa and now lives in Western Illinois with her husband and two kids, who don’t technically live there because they are both in college, where they are majoring in spending money and not calling said parents until they need money.
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