A big thank you to Mollie Cox Bryan for allowing me to visit her blog today to talk about my new book Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery! Death Drops features Willow McQuade, ND, a naturopathic doctor who specializes in natural cures. When her aunt Claire is murdered, Willow takes over her health food store Nature’s Way Market & Cafe and sets out to solve the crime with a hunky ex-cop. Death Drops also features over two dozen natural remedies you can try at home.
Baths are a great natural remedy. I also find I get my best writing ideas in the tub! Baths can also be a way to rest, renew and heal your body. Here are several baths you can try that will make you feel good!
Baking Soda Bath: This alkalinizing and detoxifying bath can help calm allergic reactions, chicken pox, eczema, hives, itchy skin, insect bites, poison ivy, sunburn, and fungal infections. Baking soda baths also aid weight loss. Use one pound per bath.
Cold and Flu Bath: Try these bath additions when you want to soothe deep muscle aches that often accompany viral infections. Epsom salts, ginger root, marjoram, mustard seed powder, pine needles, and thyme leaves.
Detox Bath: Consider these cleansing herbs in the bath, when you know its time to change your lifestyle to help the body get rid of environmental pollutants, internal toxins and cleanse the lymphatics. Apple cider vinegar, cypress essential oil, Epsom salts, ginger root, grapefruit, juniper, lavender flowers, lemon peel, rosemary leaves, sage leaves, seaweed (Can be bought dried in natural food stores unless you live close to the ocean), and tea tree essential oil.
Dry Skin Bath: Herbs can have a soothing lubricating effect from the outside. Moisturize with calendula flowers, chamomile flowers, comfrey leaves, elder flowers, fennel seed, jasmine flowers, lavender flowers, oatmeal, rose buds, and violet leaves.
Epsom Salts Bath: This method is lymphatic cleansing, relaxing for sore muscles, softening to the skin, and detoxifying after bodywork. Epsom salts help to get drugs, chemicals and pollutants out of body. Those with diabetes, hypertension or heart disease should rinse off after the bath.
Flower Power Bath: Float fresh flowers, orange or lemon peels into the bath water. Flower suggestions include lilac, dandelion, daisies, honeysuckle, jasmine, camellia, or lavender. Trim your aromatic leaves (mint, lemon balm, etc.) and put the excess in to the bath.
If you have any medical conditions and are not sure if you should try any of these baths, please see your health practitioner. This is in no way meant to be medical advice.
About Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery:
Dr. Willow McQuade, N.D., a twenty-eight-year-old naturopathic doctor specializing in natural remedies, has decided to take sabbatical and visit her Aunt Claire, the owner of Nature’s Way Market and Cafe in idyllic Greenport, Long Island. But the idea of rest and relaxation is quickly forgotten when Willow arrives from a morning meditative walk to discover her Aunt Claire dead in the store, a strange almond-like smell emanating from her mouth and a bottle of flower essences by her side.
Despite her Zen nature and penchant for yoga, Aunt Claire had a knack for getting into confrontations with folks. An activist, she held weekly meetings for different causes every week in the store. The police want to believe the death is accidental—but Willow thinks she may have been poisoned.
Things get worse when Aunt Claire’s valuable recipe for a new natural age-defying formula, Fresh Face, is stolen during a store break-in, and an attempt is made on Willow’s life. Desperate for a way out of the mess, she turns to a handsome young cop Jackson Spade. Together the two set about solving the case the natural way—through a combination of hard work, common sense, and a dose of luck.
Praise for Death Drops: A Natural Remedies Mystery
“With a terrific premise and an interesting topic, Fiedler’s debut shows promise.” – Library Journal
Death Drops is a gem! Entertaining, informative, and with a mystery that had me completely baffled! – Gayle Trent, author of Killer Sweet Tooth
“Fiedler’s absorbing mystery is an entertaining debut, featuring a likeable menagerie of characters, filled with natural remedies, with all of it unfolding on Long Island’s idyllic East End.” Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, author of the national bestseller Liberating Paris.
“An engaging investigative thriller…an enjoyable whodunit.” The Mystery Gazette
Chrystle Fiedler is also the author of the non-fiction title THE COMPLETE IDIOT’S GUIDE TO NATURAL REMEDIES (Alpha, 2009), co-author of BEAT SUGAR ADDICTION NOW! (Fairwinds Press, 2010), currently in its fourth printing, the BEAT SUGAR ADDICTION NOW! COOKBOOK (Fairwinds Press, 2012) and THE COUNTRY ALMANAC OF HOME REMEDIES (Fairwinds, 2011). Chrystle’s magazine articles featuring natural remedies have appeared in such national publications as Better Homes and Gardens, Natural Health, Vegetarian Times and Remedy. She is a native of the North Fork on Long Island. Visit www.chrystlefiedler.com.
