Don't Cross Mo Ellery (Birdie Horne)

A laugh-out-loud mystery following the indomitable hot mess Mo Ellery, whose job as a school crossing guard pulls her into an unhinged murder investigation.

Mo Ellery's 29th birthday is a disaster. After one small accident-the exposure of her boyfriend's genitals (well, maybe not that small) on a work video call-she manages to get fired, dumped, and kicked out of their overpriced Chicago apartment. Luckily, a sign appears to guide Mo to her new life: "Looking for flexible part-time work? Become a school crossing guard!" It's everything Mo has been looking for: health insurance. How hard can it be?

A few weeks later, Mo is adjusting to her new low-paying job, her bisexual reawakening, and her new neighborhood's wacky characters. There's Claudia, an old woman who refuses to let Mo help her cross the street, and Marlowe, a tween cell phone prodigy whose antics terrify her. But Mo's greatest nemesis is Poodle Dude, a guy with an SUV full of poodles who speeds through her intersection each morning. . . until the day he speeds into a sinkhole. Mo tries and fails to shield innocent eyes from his bloody corpse, but succeeds in accidentally becoming the guardian to his three poodles.

And that's not the worst of it: some of the locals are convinced that Poodle Dude was murdered. Their allegations are obviously ridiculous, but Mo, desperate for distractions-and for several hot neighbor-suspects-reluctantly agrees to help. But Mo the detective is just as chaotic as Mo the underemployed adult, and the three entitled poodles are not helping. When a second local dies under mysterious circumstances, it's going to take all of Mo's broadly applicable and transferrable skills to find the killer.

Murderers beware. . . DON'T CROSS MO ELLERY!

Birdie Horne is the combined pen name of former enemies Eden Robins and MW Garguilo. Over the years, they have been love rivals, co-godmothers, and neighbors across an alley in Chicago. Separately, they have published over twenty books, and together they have a resume full of the kinds of jobs that genuinely worry their parents. One of them was nominated for-and lost-Chicago Crossing Guard of the Year. This is their first outing as Birdie Horne.