OVERBOARD AND OVERWHELMED: A Trixie Troublefield Paranormal Cruise Ship Cozy Mystery Set Sail for Hawaii, Where the Buffet Is Open and Someone Isn’t (An Emerald Queen Mystery)

Trixie Troublefield thought her twenty-third anniversary cruise to Hawaii would be the trip that helped her remember why she had stayed married so long.

Then she discovered her husband Roger had been cheating with three women at once.

So Trixie did the only reasonable thing a furious fifty-two-year-old woman from Rockport, Maine, could do. She packed her suitcase, boarded the luxury cruise ship Emerald Queen alone, and decided that if her old life had sunk, she might as well enjoy the buffet while going down.

But the Emerald Queen is not just carrying tourists, honeymooners, retirees, and people who take shrimp cocktail far too seriously. It is carrying secrets. It is carrying ghosts. And before Trixie can decide whether solo travel is empowering or just humiliating with better towels, a retired insurance fraud investigator is found dead in the Lido pool.

Victor Holt looks like he drowned after too many cocktails.

He did not.

There is no water in his lungs, his final drink does not add up, and the people around him are suddenly very interested in pretending they barely knew him. Victor spent his career exposing lies, false claims, missing money, and dangerous people who thought old sins stayed buried. On this cruise, several passengers had reason to want him quiet.

Unfortunately for the killer, Trixie has two advantages no one planned for.

The first is Brine, the ship’s silver tabby cat, who treats the Emerald Queen like her private kingdom and has a talent for appearing exactly where trouble starts.

The second is far less convenient.

Trixie can see ghosts.

Her first ghostly guide is a sharp-tongued dead librarian who haunts the ship’s library, speaks in maddening clues, and seems far too interested in Trixie’s grammar. Between a judgmental cat, a furious victim, and a security chief who notices entirely too much, Trixie is dragged into a murder investigation she has no official business touching.

Ransom Baxter, the Emerald Queen’s head of vessel security and former Portland homicide detective, would very much prefer Trixie stop finding bodies, questioning suspects, and wandering into danger with a cat as backup. Trixie would prefer him to stop being competent, observant, and inconveniently attractive.

Neither of them gets what they want.

As the ship sails toward Hawaii, Trixie must untangle a locked circle of suspects, a staged drowning, a poisoned cocktail, and a killer calm enough to hide murder behind cruise ship manners. At the same time, her anonymous travel blog, Suddenly Single! What a Trip, begins attracting readers who see themselves in her messy, funny, brutally honest attempt to start over.

Trixie came aboard the Emerald Queen as a betrayed wife with no plan.

She may leave as a woman with a new life, a dangerous gift, a ship cat, a slow-burn problem named Ransom Baxter, and the uncomfortable knowledge that murder at sea is only the beginning.

Overboard and Overwhelmed is the first book in The Emerald Queen Mysteries, a warm, witty paranormal cozy mystery series featuring a midlife amateur sleuth, a luxury cruise ship setting, ghostly clues, a clever cat, destination recipes, and a sweet slow-burn romance.

Perfect for readers who enjoy cozy mysteries with mature female sleuths, cruise ship mysteries, paranormal twists, smart humor, found family, second chances, and murder investigations with heart.