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'A Batter of Life and Death': Ashland-based foodie mystery due out June 30 Second in Ashland-based foodie mystery series comes out June 30 Comment By Daniel Newberry for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Daniel Newberry for the Mail Tribune Posted Jun. 7, 2015 at 12:01 AM By Daniel Newberry for the Mail Tribune Posted Jun. 7, 2015 at 12:01 AM --> Author plans Rogue Valley readings Author Ellie Alexander will be in the Rogue Valley during the first week of July to give a reading and chat about her new book, "A Batter of Life and... » Read more X Author plans Rogue Valley readings Author Ellie Alexander will be in the Rogue Valley during the first week of July to give a reading and chat about her new book, "A Batter of Life and Death." Her schedule includes: July 3 — 1 to 2 p.m., Rogue River library, 412 E. Main St., Rogue River July 6 — 1 to 3 p.m., Ashland library, 410 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland Learn more about the Bakeshop Mystery series at bakeshopmystery.com. » Social News Lifelong Ashland resident and pastry chef Juliet Montague Capshaw has a habit of stumbling on murders. Capshaw is the protagonist in the Ashland-based foodie mystery series by author Ellie Alexander. The second serving in this series, "A Batter of Life and Death," will be released June 30 by St. Martin’s press. “Baking, mysteries and Shakespeare,” Alexander says, is a bite-sized description of this mystery sub-genre. “It’s known in the industry as a culinary cozy mystery: It takes place in a small town or village, an amateur sleuth and not a lot of gratuitous violence. It’s almost like the murder takes place off-stage. The opposite of CSI.” Alexander is a lifelong Vancouver, Wash., resident who has been a patron of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival since childhood. Her father, an English teacher, drove the family to Ashland every summer for a thespian pilgrimage. It’s a habit she’s never broken. “I love weaving in little bits of Shakespeare,” says Alexander. “You do not have to be an aficionado to read the books or understand them, but there is that kind of deeper layer.” The Black Swan Theatre plays a role in this new mystery, just as the Bowmer Theatre did in the first book, "Meet Your Baker." OSF actors, directors and board members figure into the stories, though they don’t bear any resemblance to actual people. Many of the fictional places do, however, sound vaguely familiar. Capshaw’s family owns a bakery on the downtown plaza, a few doors down from an outdoor store, where she has an apartment. The bakery — named Torte — is the center of the action in the Bakeshop Mystery series. It is here that Juliet and her mother ruminate on clues while baking. "A Batter of Life and Death" starts when Capshaw enters a cooking contest on a reality TV show. The opportunity to earn quick cash ends up being a recipe for disaster when a fellow contestant turns up dead. Baking is central to this mystery sub-genre. Not only does Alexander weave instructions for creating mouth-watering offerings into the text of the novel, she includes several full recipes for readers who would like to make the delectables that the characters eat. In "Meet Your Baker," Alexander serves up recipes for Bavarian chocolate cake, amaretto cookies, banana cream pudding, pumpkin cream latte and more. Alexander has tested all the offerings. “All the recipes are real family recipes so I spend a lot of time in my home kitchen testing recipes,” says Alexander. "Readers have started sending me recipes. … I can spend a lot of time looking at recipes in cookbooks and not writing. It’s dangerous.” Writing is a full-time job for Alexander. She has years of freelance nonfiction publications to her credit, as well as a memoir she wrote about the process of caring for her mother, who eventually succumbed to early-onset Alzheimer’s. “I was pregnant with my first and only child at that same time,” Alexander explains. “As he was gaining skills she was losing the same skills. He was learning to walk, she was forgetting that. So I wrote a memoir about that process about becoming a mom while losing my mom.” That process, she says, opened her to the world of writing, as did the skills she learned majoring in speech therapy in college. “When I write,” says Alexander, “I sit and listen as if I had my speech therapy hat on — for things like dialogue.” Alexander has another mystery series, also set in the Pacific Northwest, which she writes under the name Kate Dyer-Seeley. “The protagonist is fresh out of journalism school and wants to win a Pulitzer, but can’t get a job because newspapers are struggling, so she bills herself as an adventure lover in order to get a job writing for an outdoor magazine,” says Alexander. “But she does not have an athletic bone in her body and is terrified of heights. They’re almost like travel guides, they have scenic tours.” The “Baker” mystery series will have at least six offerings. Book No. 3, scheduled for a December release, takes place at Lake of the Woods. Says Alexander, “I’ll keep writing as long as I can come up with recipes and ways to kill people off.” Daniel Newberry is a freelance writer living in Portland. Email him at [email protected]. By Daniel Newberry for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Daniel Newberry for the Mail Tribune Posted Jun. 7, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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