1--What is the title of your latest release?
WELCOME TO MURDER WEEK
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
An American woman travels to the English countryside when she discovers tickets her estranged, late mother had purchased for a murder mystery simulation in a small British town. While there, she teams up with two other solo travelers to solve the fake mystery and also solve the real mystery of why her mother wanted to take her there.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The novel was inspired by a trip with my sister to the Peak District in England. By the time I came home, I knew I would set my next novel there.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Yes, but preferably as she is at the end of the book when she’s fallen in love for the first time and has come to terms with her past and started to enjoy life more!
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Cautious, unsentimental, wary (at first)
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned that Britain has 91,000 miles of footpaths, often crossing private land, on which the public has the legally protected right to walk and stop briefly to admire the view. You can walk everywhere!
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I wish that I waited, but I edit, edit, edit constantly. It slows things down a lot!
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Sticky toffee pudding! Had it in England and it’s the best dessert in the world.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I have two writing spaces – a tiny, cluttered room in my house that long ago was a baby nursery and a tiny completely bare, internet-free space in an old Post Office building that I sub-let from a local artist.
10--Who is an author you admire?
My friend Annabel Monaghan, author of Nora Goes Off Script and many other novels, including this summer’s It’s a Love Story. Annabel is the hardest working author I know. She writes a novel a year, which I can’t imagine doing, and her novels are funny, smart, romantic, and wise. They always make me swoon and laugh – a great combination.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
There isn’t one book that changed my life but all the books I’ve read since childhood together changed my life because they turned me into a writer.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
The most exciting “call” for me was when my agent told me he loved the book. I’d sent him a draft initially that he liked but didn’t think was done (because it wasn’t)!. He offered to meet with me to discuss what he thought the novel needed. He didn’t offer representation at that time, but we were totally in synch on how to revise it. I spent the next six weeks finishing the novel. I sent it back to him on a Friday and on Saturday afternoon he emailed me to say he “devoured it” and could we talk Monday. Less than two weeks later, the book sold at auction. It was a dream come true. He’s still my agent and it’s a great match.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I read very eclectically but usually gravitate toward plot-driven literary fiction.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Rebecca, the Alfred Hitchcock version. Based on Daphne Du Maurier’s novel.
15--What is your favorite season?
Autumn. I love the chill in the air, the crisp leaves, the coziness.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
With two celebrations – one with my husband and sons and one with my closest female friends.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Ludwig, a BBC series about a reclusive puzzle designer who takes on his twin brother’s identity as a detective on Cambridge’s major crimes squad. It’s fun and quirky.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Italian. Carbonara equals bliss.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I love to be outside, hiking or biking, and I love to be in a hammock or on my front porch reading a good book.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
Another mystery, not a sequel per se, but following one of the characters (who shall remain unnamed) from Welcome to Murder Week. I also contributed a short story to Ladies in Waiting: Jane Austen’s Unsung Characters, which comes out in November 2025 to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth.
In this delightfully funny and heartfelt new novel from the author of the “bittersweet page-turner” (The New York Times) The Last Book Party, an American woman travels to the English countryside when she discovers tickets her late mother had purchased for a murder mystery simulation in a small British town.
When thirty-four-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak District: a whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet. Baffled but helplessly intrigued by her mother’s secret purchase, Cath decides to go on the trip herself—and begins a journey she never could have anticipated.
Teaming up with her two cottage-mates, both ardent mystery lovers—Wyatt Green, forty, who works unhappily in his husband’s birding store, and Amity Clark, fifty, a divorced romance writer struggling with her novels—Cath sets about solving the “crime” and begins to unravel shocking truths about her mother along the way. Amidst a fling—or something more—with the handsome local maker of artisanal gin, Cath and her irresistibly charming fellow sleuths will find this week of fake murder may help them face up to a very real crossroads in their own lives.
Witty, wise, and deliciously escapist, Welcome to Murder Week is a fresh, inventive twist on the murder mystery and a touching portrayal of one daughter’s reckoning with her grief, her past—and her own budding sense of adventure.
Mystery Woman Sleuth | Mystery [Gallery/Scout Press, On Sale: June 10, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book , ISBN: 9781668079775 / eISBN: 9781668079799]
Karen Dukess is the author of The Last Book Party and Welcome to Murder Week. Karen has been a newspaper reporter in Florida, a magazine publisher in Russia, and a speechwriter on gender equality for the United Nations. She has a degree in Russian studies from Brown University and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. She lives outside of New York City and in Truro on Cape Cod, where she interviews some of today’s most acclaimed writers as host of the Castle Hill Author Talks for the Truro Center for the Arts.
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