Fake Dating at the Playhouse

About this book:

The Oakridge Playhouse is one bad review away from becoming a luxury parking garage, and opening night of *Shadows in the Parlor* is Clara Brooks's last shot at a breakthrough role. She's battling corset-induced panic, a leading man who treats the stage as his personal mirror, and a critic with a poison pen—until the theater's grumpy, sawdust-covered handyman Luke Vance steadies her with a well-timed insult and a reinforced latch on the French doors. He thinks actors are dramatic liabilities; she thinks he's a brick wall in flannel. They're both wrong.

When a saboteur turns the production deadly—starting with a body in the wings and a crime scene that reads like a cursed script—Clara and Luke are forced into an uneasy alliance. The quickest way to smoke out a killer hiding in the flies? Pretend to be the theater's hottest new power couple. But between rehearsed kisses in the wings, whispered clues in the dusty basement, and a growing list of suspects who all have motive, the line between scripted romance and real feelings blurs faster than a missed cue change.

With the final curtain looming and the playhouse's survival hanging by a frayed rope, Clara and Luke must unmask a villain before the lights go dark for good. *Fake Dating at the Playhouse* delivers a deliciously twisty backstage mystery, slow-burn grumpy/sunshine chemistry, and all the velvet-draped, spotlight-soaked atmosphere of a theater that refuses to die—perfect for fans of Tessa Bailey and Lucy Score who like their romance with a side of murder.