The Game Is Afoot (Mavis Miller Mysteries) - Softcover

Bryant, Elise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593640802 ISBN 13: 9780593640807

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S 10 BEST MYSTERY NOVELS OF 2025

A clever and hilarious new mystery about a mother who thinks she has to do it all—even solve a murder—from the author of It's Elementary

After rage quitting her job, Mavis finally has time to get all the rest she’s been putting off. Or she should have the time. Hypothetically. Except she’s taken on a new role: Supermom. Her hours are filled with chauffeuring her daughter, Pearl, around to her extracurricular activities, somehow ending up class mom, and…investigating another mystery?

When Coach Cole, the director of the kids’ soccer program, drops dead on a sunny Saturday morning, no one suspects foul play. However, the police soon discover something suspicious left on the field, making it clear that someone had it in for the coach. But who? Sure, parents got mad when he made their precious star athletes sit on the bench, but not that mad.

Mavis is determined to find out, even if it takes her into the dark, dangerous underbelly of gentle parents and MLM girlbosses. Plus, it’s an easy distraction from everything else going on. Like the panic attacks she keeps brushing off. Or the fact that she’s unemployed and totally lost as to what her purpose and path in life should be. And then there’s her ex-husband who’s back in town and doing everything she’s ever wanted, just as she’s beginning a new relationship. Mavis knows a murder investigation probably isn’t the self-care she needs right now. But how exactly are you supposed to take care of yourself when you don’t even know who you are anymore?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elise Bryant is the NAACP Image Award-nominated author of Happily Ever Afters, One True Loves, Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling, and It’s Elementary. For many years, Elise had the joy of working as a special education teacher, and now she spends her days reading, writing, and eating dessert. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Long Beach, California. You can visit her online at www.elisebryant.com.

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One

Pearl and I stare at our reflections in the smudged, toothpaste-splattered bathroom mirror that I really should clean one of these days.

"You've got this."

"I've got this."

"You are beautiful and wonderful and special."

"I am beautiful and wonderful and special."

"You can do hard things!"

"I can do hard things!"

"Or you can at least do, um . . . medium things. I'm pretty sure you can do those."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm just being realistic, Mommy. No offense."

My jaw drops and my eyes go wide. "Pearl!"

But she just smirks, arms crossed over her unicorn-printed sweatshirt, all I said what I said. I try to give her a look right back, because I'm the one who taught her everything she knows about looks, but it's almost immediately undermined by a laugh that bubbles up all on its own. This isn't the pep talk I would have given myself, but maybe it's the one I deserve.

"I can do medium things," I repeat finally, and Pearl nods in approval. She leans closer to the mirror, her eyebrows furrowing into a fierce stare.

"You are going to get a raise."

"I am going to get a raise."

"And if that Rose lady doesn't give you the raise, then you're going to stomp on her foot and run out the door because she's a meanie-head and you don't work for meanie-heads!"

I shoot her a side-eye at that, and she smiles her sweet one-dimpled smile, like she said I should hold my boss Rose's hand and go skipping under a rainbow in a field of flowers.

"I don't know about all that, Pearl."

She lets out a long, weary sigh that would be right at home at a Sunday service and gently pats my shoulder. "You just have to believe in yourself, Mommy."

She says it with the confidence of an almost-eight-year-old-her birthday is in a little over a week. It's the same confidence that gave her the audacity to clear her throat and correct the urgent care doctor last month when he called her seven and not almost eight. And then, after he prescribed her antibiotics for her ear infection and asked us if we had any more questions, her only one was whether or not he updated her chart with almost eight, not seven, so he wouldn't make the same mistake again.

That kinda confidence.

I wish I could bottle up that confidence and spray myself down, like a middle schooler who just discovered Axe body spray, before my annual performance review with Rose today. It's not my first time around the performance review block. I started working at Project Window, a teen mentoring nonprofit, just a few months after Pearl was born, so my time there is almost eight, too. And I've done this whole song and dance so many times that I could recite Rose's long, gushing love bomb of a speech about how I'm indispensable to the organization and how they're so lucky to have me. I could probably time it down to the millisecond when her eyes will start welling with tears, to emphasize that her gratitude is so authentic, so real, that it just overwhelms her with emotion. (Even though she must have those things on lease, with how quickly she trots them out and then puts them back away.) I could also call the exact moment when those same eyes, suddenly dry, will begin to drift to the door behind me as I'm making my case for a promotion, searching for any excuse to hit the emergency eject button and launch herself right on out of this conversation.

And I already know what Rose's excuses will be, because I hear them in the middle of the night when I'm staring at the ceiling and questioning all my life choices. "I would pay you a million dollars if I could, but that's the nonprofit life!" And: "Knowing you're changing the world is its own kind of compensation, isn't it?"

So, yeah. I shouldn't be nervous, because I know exactly what's coming for me today. But I'm hoping to switch it up this year-with bathroom mirror pep talks from my almost-eight-year-old and a sense of unending possibility that's seeming more and more delusional as 9:00 a.m. approaches.

God, maybe I should just stomp on Rose's foot and be done with it.

I can tell Pearl is thinking the same thing. She squints her dark brown eyes at the mirror, wiggly fingers pressed into a steeple. But before she can further tempt me into choosing violence, there's a clatter of something falling down in the living room, and then the clicking of our puppy's nails across the hardwood floor. That's the most notice Polly, our Shar-Pei-pit bull mix, will give us when someone's at the door. She's the worst guard dog. She only barks at old people and babies. Well, except for one other time, which was the most inconvenient time . . .

"Mavis? Pearl? Y'all all right in there?" Yeah, definitely not an old person or a baby.

Pearl's face quickly transforms from seeking vengeance to unbridled joy as she leaps off the step stool and sprints out of the bathroom.

"Daddy!"

I follow after her with considerably less joy. My thoughts have transformed from Am I wasting my life away at a job that's never going to see my true worth? to Why is this man just letting himself into our house? He has a key, but that key is for emergencies. And taking Pearl to school on his regularly scheduled morning when we're not even late-hell, we're early, thanks to this new routine I've got us on-that's not an emergency.

But I fix my face into something neutral because it's still so new for Pearl, seeing us interact with each other almost every day, and I'm not going to be the reason why there's tension.

"We're fine, Corey!" I call as I grab my blazer off my bed. "Just a little startled with the front door opening like that. No warning from the doorbell . . . or even one knock."

Okay, well, I'm not immune to just a pinch of petty. It's basically my right after years of solo parenting while he got to travel the world, putting his work first.

As I turn the corner, though, slipping on a couple of gold bangles, my eyes lock on that one-dimpled smile, identical to Pearl's. Polly runs around him in circles like this is the best day of her life and Pearl has launched herself onto his side, her striped-socked feet dangling off the ground, but Corey's flashing that smile right at me, his eyebrow playfully arched.

"Now imagine how startled you'd be if it wasn't me but some axe murderer off the street walking on in here."

"Axe murderer?" Pearl asks, an edge of worry in her voice. Which makes sense-axe murderers aren't some far-off scare when only a few months ago, your friends' mom locked you in a room to escape kidnapping and assault charges.

I arch my eyebrow right back at him and let out a long, weary sigh to rival Pearl's for good measure. But when he holds up his hands in apology, my cheeks instantly burn with embarrassment.

In one hand is a brown wicker basket with shiny lemons and something green peeking over the top-probably the latest bounty from his new apartment complex's community garden. But it's what's in his other hand that makes me want to dig a hole right here in the floor and fling myself into oblivion. It's my keys, with a black fob for my Prius and a keychain Pearl made me for Christmas that says "Mom of the Year" in sparkly beads. I swear the words are taunting me as they dangle back and forth from Corey's fingers.

"Did you know your keys were in the door?" he asks, reaching out to hand them to me.

"Uh, yeah. Of course." I mumble as I snatch them back. "I was just . . . getting them ready to go."

"Getting your keys . . . ready to go?" He flashes another infuriating dimple that makes me want to ban all dimples even though Pearl's is up there on my list of things that make life worth living.

"Yeah, Mommy is so silly! She does that all the time." Pearl's feet are back on the ground, and she starts digging around in Corey's basket....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593640802
• ISBN 13: 9780593640807
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 369
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: BERKLEY; https://www.penguin.com/?s=BERKLEY; ; Unit 2 Limavady Business Park; Limavady; County Londonderry; BT49 0HR; Vereinigtes Königreich
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland