Homemaker Book Tour and Author Interview
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Homemaker book tour includes a giveaway Rafflecopter at the end of this post, along with an exciting author interview. Comment for the author, share on social, and subscribe to Sarandipity’s for more entries.
Book Details
Homemaker (Prairie Nightingale)
Mystery/Amateur Sleuth/Romantic Elements
1st in Series
Setting – Green Bay, Wisconsin
Publisher : Thomas & Mercer (June 1, 2025)
Paperback Print length : 300 pages
ISBN-10 : 1662530900
ISBN-13 : 978-1662530906
Digital ASIN : B0DKK5TWT5
When a former friend and devoted mother vanishes, a confident homemaker turned
amateur sleuth follows an unexpected trail of scandals and secrets to find her.
Prairie Nightingale is both the midlife mother of two teenage girls and a canny entrepreneur who
has turned homemaking into a salaried profession. She’s also fascinated with the gritty details of
other people’s lives. So when seemingly perfect Lisa Radcliffe, a member of her former mom-
friends circle, suddenly disappears, it’s in Prairie’s nature to find out why.
Given her innate talent for vital pattern recognition, Prairie is out to catch a few clues by taking a
long, hard look at everyone in Lisa’s life—and uncovering their secrets. Including Lisa’s.
Prairie’s dogged curiosity is especially irritating to FBI agent Foster Rosemare, the first
interesting man Prairie has met since her divorce. His square jaw and sharp suits don’t hurt.
But even as the investigation begins to wreak havoc on Prairie’s carefully tended homelife, she’s
resolved to use her multivalent homemaking skills to solve the mystery of a missing mom—and
along the way discover the thrill of her new sleuthing ambitions.
About Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare
Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare write critically acclaimed, bestselling mystery and romance,
usually (but not always) together. They are the authors of the Prairie Nightingale mysteries and
the TV Detectives mystery series. If you want more of their stories, check out their queer
romances co-written as Mae Marvel, as well as solo work by Ruthie Knox (het romance), Annie
Mare (grounded queer paranormal romance), and Robin York (Ruthie’s pen name for New Adult
romance). Ruthie and Annie are married and live with two teenagers, two dogs, multiple fish,
two glorious cats, four hermit crabs, and a bazillion plants in a very old house with a garden.
Author Links:
Webpage: https://ruthieknoxandanniemare.com
Facebook:
http://facebook.com/ruthieknox and https://www.facebook.com/anniemareromanceauthor
Instagram: @ruthieknoxromance and @spinsterpress
Purchase Links – Amazon – Bookshop.org – Barnes & Noble
Author Interview with Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare
What is your favorite part of this book and why?
Ruthie: Homemaker is the first book in a series about Prairie Nightingale, and it’s a book that’s
preoccupied with motherhood. But this isn’t “tradwife” motherhood—this is divorced Gen X
motherhood in the Midwest, with a splash of punk defiance. Prairie loves being a mom. She loves
people. But she’s hungry for the kind of fulfilment that’s hard to find in that role, and we meet her at a
moment when she’s ready for her life to change. I think that’s my favorite part—watching Prairie take
that journey, with help from the people who will join her in her new venture. Homemaker is a mystery
that’s much more interested in thinking about every possible way a homemaker’s life can look than it is
in validating conservative roles of mother and family. That’s a fascinating subject to me and Annie. Both
of us have been engrossed by motherhood, have learned so much from parenting, at the same time that
we’ve been challenged to figure out how to define and redefine who we are in this role. And we’re
married and raising kids together, so we have lots of opportunities to talk about this stuff!
If you could spend time with a character from your book whom would it be? And what would you do during that day?
Annie: We both love Prairie very much, but I do like to say that Foster Rosemare, the FBI agent who just
happens to be the first interesting man Prairie has met since her divorce, is my (imaginary) best friend.
Foster surprised us by being a quiet, focused man with a lot of layers. We really enjoy peeling him back
as his relationship with Prairie develops book by book. I would love to spend the day shadowing Foster
as he did his work. I think I would learn a lot from him about investigation and interview technique, but
he would make sure we had time for reading and thinking, too, so we didn’t get too overwhelmed. And
I’d spend the whole day trying to think of something perfect to say to make him laugh.
What books/authors have most inspired you?
Annie: One of the biggest inspirations for Homemaker is the V. I. Warshawski novels by Sara Paretsky.
Like so many mystery readers and writers, we’ve been fans of V. I. for a very long time! While there are
a lot of differences between our Prairie Nightingale and V. I., we do try to speak through Prairie to
important issues, decisions, and values for women at midlife in the middle of America, and we see
Prairie as a character who’s very much grounded in the realities of her daily life in her neighborhood as
V. I. has always been.
Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
Ruthie: All of our characters come from our joint imagination as co-authors. But while Homemaker is the
first to be published, we have written nine manuscripts in the Prairie Nightingale world, so by this point
it’s rare that we disagree about how one of our characters would behave or what they would say in a
situation. We know them as well as real people!
What made you want to become a writer?
Annie: I have wanted to be a writer for nearly as long as I can remember. The book that really did me in
was Where the Red Fern Grows. I got it from my elementary school librarian, read it in one big, thirsty
gulp, and cried and cried at the ending. I had never read a book before that made me feel so deeply. I
remember thinking, This is what I want to do. I want to write books like this.
Excerpt – Chapter 1
Prairie Nightingale stood on her tiptoes, ignoring the incessant buzz of her phone in the
back pocket of her jeans and craning for a better look at Amber Jenkins.
“What do you think of Mrs. Jenkins’s handbag?” she asked her daughter Anabel.
Prairie and Anabel were part of a loose congregation of parents and family members
milling around on the paved playground of the K–8 gifted school, waiting for the final
release bell. Prairie hated moments like these, when there was a measurable stretch of
time but nothing happening and no way to get anything done. An article she’d once read
called it “garbage time.” When she was going through her divorce, she’d found a lot of
articles like that—about how women’s time was wasted and their labor undervalued—as
she tried to understand why the world believed she’d spent her seventeen years as a
wife and mother doing essentially nothing.
“I don’t think of Mrs. Jenkins’s handbag.” Anabel looked away from her phone long
enough to flick her eyes over to the purse in question. “But if you’re asking me how
much it cost, that’s a seven-hundred-dollar bag. Nine, if it’s from this year.”
“Huh.” Prairie watched Amber, whose gaze was fixed in the middle distance as she
arranged her ripple of blond hair over one shoulder. Bearing up under her own garbage
time. Amber had two kids, like Prairie. She was sharp and irreverent, with a slightly
faded tattoo of koi circling a lotus blossom on her shoulder. Once, she’d been Prairie’s
favorite among a group of women who went for coffee after school drop-off and got
together to make swag bags for the teachers. Prairie had always thought she and
Amber had a genuine connection as the two moms in the group without a prestigious
education. Both of them knew how to keep track of the drink orders from a ten top.
“Remember a couple of weeks ago when Mrs. Jenkins backed into that Dodge Ram and
smashed her taillight?” Prairie asked Anabel.
“No. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her daughter’s dry tone failed to disguise
a hint of interest. She was not immune to what some called Prairie’s nosiness and what
Prairie called her talent at vital pattern recognition.
“Well, that happened. And look.” Prairie angled her head at a dirty black Escalade
illegally parked across from the school. “The taillight is still busted.”
“So?”
“Who spends nine hundred dollars on a new handbag and doesn’t get their taillight
fixed?”
“I don’t know. Why would I know that?” Anabel squinted in Amber’s direction. “Didn’t she
used to carry a Kitty Blue purse?”
“That’s right! The metallic blue crossbody bag with the cat ears. And Kitty Blue is not
high dollar.” Prairie had never bought anything from the faddish direct-to-consumer
brand, but she was familiar from seeing it hyped on the social media channels of
practically every woman she’d ever met. “An upgrade like that begs a lot of questions.”
“Not really. Lots of things could explain it. Maybe someone bought her this new purse
because her Kitty Blue one started getting ratty. Or the people who fix cars are too busy.
Why do you even care?”
“It’s just something to keep me occupied while we wait for your sister,” Prairie said. “I
don’t really care.”
This was a lie. Prairie did care, in the way that you couldn’t help caring about people
you’d known for your children’s entire lives who didn’t talk to you anymore and had
blocked you from the group chat for reasons you understood but didn’t agree with.
It wasn’t Prairie’s fault. At least, she didn’t think so. She blamed Dr. Carmichael. Nathan
Carmichael had been a popular local ob-gyn until Prairie found out—via an investigation
that began when he failed to deliver an anticipated donation to the PTO the year she
was fundraising chair—that the doctor was serially abusing his patients. She couldn’t let
it go, and didn’t let it go, until there was nowhere for Nathan Carmichael to go but
prison.
It caused a scandal. Green Bay was not a big town, in population or in generosity of
spirit. The doctor’s wife, who had been part of Prairie’s friend group, had to resign her
seat as a state senator and move away with her kids to weather the gossip. Prairie’s
role in the unpleasantness did not go unnoticed.
She was shunned. Cast out. Politely, Midwest-nice ghosted.
Although, in truth, she had never been completely clear on whether she lost almost all
her friends because she was a dog with a bone about Nathan Carmichael or because
she’d pulled the trigger on her divorce. Everyone liked Greg, her ex. In fact, Prairie liked
Greg, her ex. He was, as the women in her life had never failed to remind her, one of
the good ones.
But she could have approval, or she could live free and do as she liked. When Prairie
felt sad about the friends she’d lost getting to the bottom of the mystery, she looked at
the picture she’d saved on her phone of Nathan Carmichael crying in a courtroom.
When she felt sad about the friends she’d lost because of her divorce, she let herself
feel sad.
Her conscience was clear.
“Will you deal with your phone already, Mom? The sound of your notifications literally
gives me nausea.”
“I’m going to go talk to her.” Prairie adjusted the well-worn messenger bag on her hip
and grabbed her daughter’s forearm. “Come with me.”
“Oh my God.” Anabel squared her shoulders and bent her knees. “Please don’t make
your nemesis talk to you.”
Prairie ignored the inaccurate label. “Nemesis” was a rarefied and mutual relationship of
jealous hostility, whereas Prairie had nothing against Amber Jenkins. If she did have a
nemesis, it would be her US congressional representative, who’d once called her
“hysterical” in response to a letter she sent him about his abysmal comments on gay
marriage.
“It will only take a minute,” she told Anabel. “We can’t just stand here waiting for your
sister. Maelynn’s always the last one out.”
“If you make me do this, you have to drive us through Firetta’s for breakfast tomorrow.”
Prairie narrowed her eyes at Anabel. “Deal.”
“And you’ll turn off the monitoring app on my socials.”
“Never.”
Now Anabel narrowed her eyes. “One day a week, you let me wear slippers as shoes to
school.”
Prairie sighed. “Fine. But you have to participate in the conversation.”
With Anabel close behind her, Prairie dodged and wove her way through the other
school-pickup parents—the lone dads and grandmothers with their heads bent over
their phones, the clumps of moms complaining about the parking situation and enjoying
the anemic sunlight of a forty-five-degree afternoon that everyone could agree was
“pretty good for April in Wisconsin.”
“It’s not too late to not do this,” Anabel said as they drew close. “I’ll even take our deal
off the table. I do love you, and I’m invested in your long-term survival.”
Prairie lifted an arm in a friendly wave. “Amber!”
The other woman mostly succeeded in hiding her surprise at Prairie’s approach. It was
a social convention that every mom had to at least pretend to be friends with all the
other moms, and Prairie was using that convention to her advantage. Amber seemed to
know this, given how she was frozen in place and her smile was close lipped.
TOUR PARTICIPANTS
June 17 – Jody’s Bookish Haven – SPOTLIGHT
June 18 – The Avid Reader – SPOTLIGHT
June 18 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
June 19 – Ruff Drafts – SPOTLIGHT
June 20 – Boys’ Mom Reads! – REVIEW
June 20 – MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT
June 21 – Sarandipity’s – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
June 22 – Angel’s Book Nook – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
June 23 – Read Your Writes Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
June 24 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – SPOTLIGHT
June 25 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT
June 26 – Ascroft. eh? – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
June 27 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – REVIEW
June 28 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT
June 29 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
June 30 – Sarah Can’t Stop Reading Books – REVIEW