Demeter West and the Ghost Town Glitch by Marta Ferguson

The Mystic Match Mysteries are a cozy series about Casper, a college town haunted by ghostly apparitions that its scientists and psychics agree are manifestations of parallel universes.

In this first book, Demeter West and the Ghost Town Glitch, local matchmaker and PI Demeter West gets called in to investigate some interdimensional turbulence in the basement of the local library. Over the course of the investigation, Demeter learns some new approaches to tarot work, some local history, some new information about Casper's situation within the multiverse, and some things she didn't know about her husband and daughter. The first book also holds a barbeque scene that will make your mouth water (see the blog for vegan and traditional recipes), dogs who will entertain you with their antics, and teenagers with their own agendas where you least expect them.

Regarding the rest of the series, the local culture is progressively pagan, the narrative tone colorful and upbeat. Each book features a romance between a couple of Demeter's clients and each one focuses on some new unfolding of the great mystery that is life in Casper. For more information, check out the Mystic Match Messenger blog (http://www.demeterwest.com/). Meanwhile, here's a taste...

From the prologue of Mystic Match Mysteries #1 Demeter West and the Ghost Town Glitch:

" Casper's not a ghost town in the conventional sense. No desert landscape of rotting wooden shacks, no tumbleweeds. No feeling of desolation and neglect. Quite the opposite. Casper bustles, in our actual world and, apparently, in all its actual quantum cousins, many of which are visible here on any given day as faint outlines, apparitions. At Yule, on the winter solstice, a giant cathedral-like structure, nicknamed Notre Dada by one of our many art history professors, towers over the downtown area. It seems almost solid, though it's less substantial than the particles of light from a film projector, as it contains no detectable heat or other radiation. The experts, of all kinds, have checked.

I'm not exactly one of those experts, but I know them. I'm Demeter West, sole proprietor of Mystic Match, LLC, and homeschool Mom to Starlight Rhiannon West-Ward, future CEO of my husband Darrin Ward's software sideline, Ghost Code. Darrin, along with his three brothers, is from here. I'm an import. Came for my Ph.D. in English, stayed for the man with the more reliable IT career than the string of visiting professorships I'd have been looking at if I'd ventured onto the academic job market. Instead, I settled in to start my own business, as a matchmaker. In the course of things, it became advantageous to pick up my private investigator's license, too, so I do a bit of that as well. Especially when the cases are, as you can imagine they might be here, somewhat unusual. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you a bit more about Casper..."