Join us on Thursday, June 27 from 7-8:30 p.m. at the Hazel Park District Library (123 E 9 Mile Rd, Hazel Park, MI 48030).
Local award-winning author, actor, and playwright Frank Anthony Polito will speak about his debut cozy mystery series (Renovated to Death; Rehearsed to Death) featuring a gay couple who solve crimes while renovating houses as part of their hit reality show Domestic Partners. Set in suburban Detroit, it’s Hart to Hart via HGTV! The perfect combination for fans of home repair and cozy mysteries.
Frank is a Hazel Park native and will be talking about his books and experience growing up in Hazel Park as a teenager and a gay man.
Renovated to Death
Kensington Publishing Corporation
Real-life domestic partners and stars and producers of the new hit reality home renovation show Domestic Partners, bestselling mystery author Peter “PJ” Penwell and actor JP Broadway are enjoying work and life in their sleepy Detroit suburb of Pleasant Woods—until a suspicious death makes an unscripted appearance…
After a successful first season of Domestic Partners chronicling the renovation of their historic Craftsman Colonial, Peter and JP are taking on a renovation of a local Tudor Revival inherited by identical twin brothers Terry and Tom Cash. But linoleum floors and a pink-tiled bathroom aren’t the only unwelcome surprises awaiting inside the house…
Just as the show is set to start filming, Peter and JP discover Tom Cash dead at the foot of the house’s staircase. And when the police ruling changes from accidental death to homicide, the list of suspects grows fast. Could the killer be the crabby next-door-neighbor, the Realtor ex-boyfriend, the bartender ex-boyfriend, the other, much younger, ex-boyfriend, or even renovation-reluctant brother, Terry? And what’s that awful smell coming from the basement? Now Peter’s mystery writer skills, and JP’s experience as the former star of a cop show, will be put to the test–as will their relationship while they uncover the secrets of the house and its owners. With a killer on the loose, this is one fixer upper that may prove deadly…
“Playwright and novelist Polito’s new series is built on a solid foundation that consists of an eclectic cast of characters (including a police detective whose professional cluelessness rivals that of Sheriff Amos Tupper from Murder She Wrote), a close-knit community setting in the form of a posh suburb of Detroit, and a leisurely paced plot with a killer twist…Not since Sarah Graves’s Jake Tiptree mysteries has home remodeling been so deadly entertaining.”—Library Journal
“[A] sprightly cozy from Lambda Award winner Polito…Some crackerjack renovation tips, including the proper procedure for refinishing woodwork, will appeal to DIY enthusiasts.”—Publishers Weekly
Rehearsed to Death
Kensington Cozies
Peter’s first play is having its world premiere at Pleasant Woods’s community theater. His handsome one and only, JP, has the lead. Rehearsals have begun. And New York City’s award-winning, hotshot helmer, Xander Sherwood Deva, is directing. Unfortunately the controlling, arrogant, poison-barbed, egomaniacal diva has everyone on edge. No wonder he finally pushes someone over it…
Xander is found strangled to death in the same extra-long, imported cashmere scarf he’s been brandishing like a boa ever since he arrived. In the name of making art he’s burned a lot of bridges and made a lot of enemies but which one wanted to bring down the curtain on him?
As they say in the theater: the show must go on. But not before amateur sleuths Peter and JP become Domestic Partners in Crime and try to solve this deadly real-life drama ahead of opening night.
Haunted to Death
Kensington Cozies
FORTHCOMING AUGUST 20, 2024
It’s Hart to Hart via HGTV on All Hallows’ Eve, as partners and home renovation hosts Peter Penwell and JP Broadway try not to flip when their newest fixer-upper is rumored to be a haunted house…
Kicking off season three of their hit reality TV show Domestic Partners is a home renovation project with an irresistible hook. Woods Hall is a lavish 1913 manor home in the Detroit suburb of Pleasant Woods, once belonging to the town’s founding family. It also comes with its own ghost.
Twenty-five years ago during a Halloween night party, automotive heiress and beauty queen Emma Wheeler-Woods, wearing a white Princess Diana wedding gown as a costume, fell from a third-floor balcony to her death. Or was she pushed?
Fiona Forrest recently inherited the home after learning she was Emma’s daughter, and she and her fiancé have hired the Domestic Partners to restore the family property to its original splendor. But ghostly sightings, injured crew, secret passageways, locked rooms, and sabotage beg the question: Is the place actually haunted? And perhaps more practically, was Fiona’s mother murdered?
Hustling to have work finished in time to shoot the finale on Halloween–the anniversary of Emma’s mysterious death—do Peter and JP have a ghost of a chance of also solving a cold case from a quarter of a century ago before someone else takes a fall?
Frank Anthony Polito is an award-winning author and playwright. His novels include the Lambda Award-winning Drama Queers!, Lost in the ’90s, The Spirit of Detroit, and Band Fags!, among many others, and his plays have been produced around the country. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Carnegie Mellon and a BFA in Theatre from Wayne State. After growing up in the Detroit suburbs, Polito lived in New York City for 18 years before moving to Pleasant Ridge, Michigan with his partner Craig Bentley and their two dogs. They live in a 1924 Craftsman Colonial that they purchased on HGTV’s House Hunters and have been renovating together since 2013. He can be found online at facebook.com/frankanthonypolito.