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Look out London - eccentric antiques dealer Vivian Borne and her daughter Brandy are bringing their own brand of mayhem and mischief to the British capital, in the fifteenth installment of the award-winning Trash 'n' Treasures cozy mystery series.

Vivian Borne - true-crime author, antiques dealer and ex-sheriff of Serenity, Iowa - is looking forward to meeting her new editor in London. Flying first class, rooms at the Savoy . . . Her long-suffering co-author, daughter Brandy, worries the trip will bankrupt them both, but the alternative - Mother travelling alone - is unthinkable. Brandy's almost tempted to make her fiance, Tony - Serenity's Chief of Police - call Scotland Yard and warn them Vivian's coming.

But even Brandy doesn't predict their vacation will end in murder . . . or that she and Mother will be unceremoniously ejected from the country, with an order to leave things well alone.

Vivian and Brandy need a case to write about, and Mother doesn't care which one. But as the intrepid sleuths - ably supported by doggy detective Sushi - investigate a promising local prospect, they're plunged into a complex mystery that stretches right back to London . . . with no choice but to carry on.

Looking for a laugh-out-loud, quirky mystery to brighten your mood? Trash 'n' Treasures is one of the funniest cozy series going (Ellery Queen Magazine) - and if you're new to the series, it's safe to jump right in.

207 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 1, 2021

14 people are currently reading
97 people want to read

About the author

Barbara Allan

57 books187 followers
Barbara Allan is a pseudonym used by Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins is a writer of mystery novels, screenplays, comics and historical fiction. Collins has collaborated on numerous short stories with his wife writer Barbara Collins. Together they also write the successful “Trash ‘n’ Treasures” mysteries – their Antiques Flee Market (2008) won the Romantic Times Best Humorous Mystery Novel award in 2009.

There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.


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5 stars
63 (35%)
4 stars
70 (39%)
3 stars
32 (17%)
2 stars
12 (6%)
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1 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
Profile Image for 8stitches 9lives.
2,853 reviews1,727 followers
July 6, 2021
The fifteenth instalment in the Trash n Treasures series is as compelling and entertaining as its predecessors and complete with farcical humour, quirky characters and a solid and absorbing mystery. A fun, lighthearted, surrealist story with plenty of twisty reveals to get your teeth into. The ideal book to escape the negativity of the world for a few hours.
2,939 reviews38 followers
August 2, 2021
This book is confusing and rather silly but still fun.
6,341 reviews81 followers
June 9, 2021
Another great entry in the Trash n' Treasures series. The Borne girls are going to England to meet their new editor, and really have no new books in the hopper. Vivian is desperately hoping to find a murder in town she can investigate, but things seem hopeless in that vein.

They get to England, and after an extraordinarily short visit, find a dead body, and spend the night in jail before being expelled.

Back home, they manage to get involved in solving the mystery anyway, despite the best efforts of the local police and MI-5, and 6.

Pretty good stuff, although to be honest, I was expecting a little more capering in England.
5,986 reviews67 followers
October 19, 2021
Brandy and her mother Vivian travel to London to talk to their new publisher there--they co-write their books, as they do this one--and find a body in an antique shop. They're rushed out of the country when the case turns out to have something to do with military intelligence, but returning home just gets them involved with another murder. Vivian--who is just a teensy-weensy bit unstable, as she'll mention herself--gets the duo into big trouble, which Brandy has to get them out of, but they do find a murderer.
17 reviews
June 9, 2021
For many years, this reader walked quickly past the “Cozy” section of the “Mystery” shelves in the neighborhood big box bookstore. To the usual reader of Stark, Ellroy, Parker, and Lehane, the covers of these, mostly, paperbacks suggest hot chocolate, lap sized pets, and detectives no tougher than Jessica Fletcher.

But I’ve been reading relatively bloodless mysteries for years—Stout, Christie, Stout, and Sayers. Even the Canon—the exploits of Sherlock Holmes offer up little bloodshed, and the comfortable confines of 221B might be described as masculine, smoky, and even on a chilly, foggy night—cozy.

Thus when I learned that the author of the cozy mysteries, Barbara Allan, is a collaboration of a familiar, frequently hardboiled, author and his wife what could I lose?
“Antiques Carry On” is the 19th entry in the “Trash n Treasures” series featuring a mother/ daughter team of antique store owners who have been quite successful in solving crimes, in a small town in Iowa. Not since the crime waves in St Mary Mead or Midsommer, has so much crime seemed to have occurred in such a confined area.

This cosy mystery even contains a map of the unusually dangerous, but safe sounding town of Serenity. The locales in “Antiques Carry On” are clearly marked on this map, recalling the classic mysteries of Christie or the collectible Mapback series of many years ago.

Fortunately, the protagonists are firmly in the 21st century, as they successfully run their store, publish their successes in crime solving, (which they claim as true crime accounts, though the reader knows its really the various series entries) and even are concerned about finances and the opposite sex. Cosy yes, but it’s a mystery which updates, but is true to the traditions of the familiar soft-boiled books I have read for many years.

Readers should find the mother-daughter team of Vivian and Brandy Borne a likable, and at times hilarious duo whose conversations in the book, as well as asides to the reader are often worthy of laugh out loud chuckles. Even the groaners, such as when a character asks Vivian before a confession if she is wired, and Vivian replies, “No, I’m always a little excited like this,” are worthy of remembering and repeating to the screen when one watches a mob story on HBO.

The plot involves a series of murders, one in England, and several back in Iowa, motive unknown, but most certainly involving antiques and frequently very amusing dialog and situations. Cosy, yes-- fun for readers, yes, yes!

Profile Image for Peter Ackerman.
278 reviews9 followers
May 10, 2021
This fifteenth installment in the adventure of Vivian Born and her adult daughter Brandy, the author keeps up the good work - a well crafted fun mystery, with plenty of laughs. The "author," Barbara Allan is really a pseudonym for mystery authors Barbara and Max Allan Collins. With this novel the series begins with a new publisher, which is crafted into the storyline,

Vivian and Brandy own and run an Antique store in Iowa, and always find themselves a part of a good small town mystery. This time though the strangeness begins when a fellow antique dealer is discovered murdered, by the pair, when they visit him on a trip to England to see their new publishers.

That mystery seems connected to a necklace that Vivian was supposed to bring to the dealer. Yet could it be that it is connected somehow to the book that she is asked to bring with her upon her return to the States? Upon said return an already suspicious fall down the stairs by one of Vivian's contemporaries becomes more mysteries as events unfold,.

Written in tradition cozy mystery style, I find these books a delight. As with any (I have read a few in the series) they do not need to be read in any particular order. Past events are, sometimes exhaustingly referred to by their book title, so one can choose which tale to read by these indicators. Additionally, with a nod to a "cozy" this book, like its predecessors includes a recipe, and each chapter is concluded by some piece of advance when shopping for antiques, or from yard sales and the like.

My absolute favorite, and laugh out load, parts of this book is the editorial asides made by and between our dual narrators, with sometimes the editor chiming in!

As with the others in the series, Antiques Carry On is a winner. A fun read, around delightful characters. Cozy fans will enjoy this as with non cozy fans. It has just the right touch for a light and engaging mystery read.

My review is based upon an advanced review e-copy of the book via NetGalley. My review herein is my honest assessment of the work, as I was invited to leave upon completing my reading of the book.
Profile Image for Joanne Hurley.
490 reviews10 followers
April 15, 2021
A great big thank you to #netgalley and the publisher #severnhouse for the opportunity to read and review "Antiques Carry On" by #barbaraallan in return for a fair and honest review.

I only recently started reading the "Trash 'n Treasure' mysteries recently, and I've completed the first two books with plans to read the rest, but when "Antiques Carry On" became available on NetGalley, I couldn't resist jumping ahead to present day with Brandy and Vivian Borne. And I was not disappointed.

One of the things that I like about this series is that it really doesn't take itself too seriously (I have to admit I've been addicted to Max Allan Collins's books for years now, and find his sly humour invigorating). But Max Allan Collins and Barbara Allan do write entertaining 'cozy' mysteries that seem to be just the remedy for today's world of angst and sturm & drang.

Antiques Carry On finds Brandy and VIvian - who take turns narrating the story, each from their own twisted perspective - on their way to London to meet with a new editor (what happened to the previous one is touched upon lightly); and they're also supposed to deliver a necklace to a London antiques dealer and bring back a book as a present. Needless to say, things don't go as planned and they're plunged into a murder investigation and summarily sent back to the US.

Once back, they become involved with a - potential - murder for profit; and then another murder; and then another..... you can see where this is going. The wacky sleuths navigate the twists and turns of the murders and international art thefts that crop up on the way to the conclusion; and a twist that leaves us hanging.

All in all, if you've read and enjoyed the previous books in the series, you will enjoy this one. But I heartily recommend that you don't start with this one - there's too much from previous novels that you may not understand (but it you don't care, go right ahead!).

Recommended
Profile Image for Cheryl Gatling.
1,326 reviews20 followers
Read
February 16, 2024
My husband picked this off the library display more or less at random so we could practice checking out a book on the library’s new mobile app. So, naturally, I read it. This is a fluffy, breezy, cute, and totally unbelievable mystery that I found more entertaining the farther I read.

Vivian and Brandy are a mother-daughter team who run an antique shop together in Iowa. They also solve murders on the side, and then write about them, in a series of books that we pretend are the book we are reading. Vivian, the mom, is the more outrageous personality of the two, always stretching the borders of truth and legality in her snooping. Brandy tries to be the voice of reason, but usually gets swept along by the force of her mother’s personality.

Along the way, a few recipes get thrown in, plus advice about the antiques business. Mother and daughter take turns as narrator, which isn’t hard to follow, since they announce the changes, and the two have different writing styles, but still, I thought a change in font would have made that better. Sometimes the two narrators snipe back and forth at each other. Sometimes the editor snipes at them both.

The cover promises that in this installment, mother and daughter travel to London, which is true. But within a day, they discover a dead body (in an antique shop), get interrogated, and shipped back to the states. The rest of the action proceeds in Iowa, with drop-in visits to people’s houses, shops, an estate sale, and a New-Agey fake funeral where people lay in coffins to make peace with their own future death.

Despite the fact that people were dying, it seemed mostly fun and silly. I couldn’t tell where the story was headed, partly because there were a lot of red herrings thrown in, and partly because the story was pretty far-fetched, almost just an excuse for Vivian to act out.
Profile Image for S.J. Higbee.
Author 15 books42 followers
July 10, 2021
I hadn’t appreciated that this was the fifteenth book in the series, when I started reading it – but as it happened, that really didn’t matter all that much. While I’m sure there are all sorts of issues within this one that I would have appreciated more, had I read the series from the start, the entertaining friction between the characters and the ongoing whodunit meant I didn’t flounder in any way.

Each chapter is written in alternate viewpoints between Vivian and Brandy, with comments aimed directly at the reader at regular intervals. It isn’t to everyone’s taste and is easy to overdo such that it becomes annoying. I think Allan has got the balance right – and I certainly enjoyed the difference between the two characters. It is a structure regularly seen in romances, but less common in other genres and worked well here, where Vivian’s larger-than-life attitude to the world contrasted nicely with Brandy’s weary attempts to keep her mother in check. Needless to say, she mostly failed…

All this could have become irritating if the bones of a good whodunit wasn’t also in place – which it was. In the end, I appreciated the denouement, how well the plot held together and why the murders were committed. While I’m not going to go right back to the start of this series and read the previous fourteen – if I encounter another one of these entertaining stories, I wouldn’t hesitate to immediately pick it up and tuck into it. Recommended for fans of quirky murder mysteries. While I obtained an arc of Antiques Carry On from Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
8/10
Profile Image for Barbara Hackel.
2,939 reviews45 followers
May 17, 2021
Enter the wacky world of Vivian and Brandy Borne where solving murders often follows hilarious paths. I enjoy the author's dual writing style where for the most part, each chapter is written partly in each character's voice. Vivian is definitely the leader in these events, but Brandy knows what's going on and how to help. I find it humorous that Brandy's fiancé is the town's police chief, causing for obvious conflicts along the way.

With purported innocence, Vivian agrees to deliver a necklace to it's purchaser while on a trip to London. When she decides to keep it, the dealer sends a book back to USA with Vivian as proof of "no hard feelings" regarding the original necklace sales. But Vivian later has remorse for not buying anything from the shop, and convinces Brandy to return to make a purchase. But nothing is ever easy or straightforward with these ladies!

I enjoy Vivian's boldness and peculiar take on situations, she keeps me guessing! Brandy, although a willing partner, certainly seems to get the raw end of most deals! What kind of mother gives her daughter's first class airplane seat away? Sometimes I wish Brandy would stomp her foot and tell Vivian 'NO' and mean it!

If you are looking for an interesting and lighthearted book, you have found it. Loads of fun!

I would like to thank Canongate Books, Severn House Publishers and Net Galley for allowing me to read this fun book and express my opinions above.
Profile Image for Jean-Luc.
362 reviews10 followers
April 24, 2021
Antiques go really & fully bonkers in this delightful madcap the latest addition to the "Trash & Treasures" Series involving Vivian Borne & her daughter Brandy, the dysfunctional mother-daughter duo hailing from Iowa and their hilarious ways to create complete mayhem wherever & whenever they are trying to investigate a crime. This time around those two oddballs will manage to stumble upon a muder in London within 24h of their arrival, get deported back to the US the following day and bring back a suitcase full of muderous headaches big enough to shatter the peaceful serenity of the Hawkeye State......Great slapstick, delicious verbal pyrotechnics laced with terrific black humor and very colorful characters make this latest episode from Max Allan and Barbara Collins a highly entertaining ride that everyone should be able to enjoy without moderation.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Severn House for this very funny ARC
2 reviews
September 27, 2021
Just finished reading Barbara Allan's 15th book, Antiques Carry On. Being a LONG time fan of the Trash N' Treasures Mysteries, I expect to be fully entertained...and with no surprise, I was. After 14 other books, you might expect the fun level to go down, or the mystery to lag, etcetera, but these author's really care about their characters, and the story, and do a great job. I absolutely love meeting up with my "friends," Vivian and Brandy, and getting into their newest mystery...and shenanigans. I consider reading this series as time well spent. Thank you "Barbara Allan" for sharing your time, wit, humour, and creative spirit with those of us who need a little break in stressful times.
Profile Image for Nancy Haddock.
Author 8 books421 followers
April 2, 2023
I read a library book.

The Borne ladies are at it again, and I had another great time in the pages of their adventure. The main characters - including Sushi and Tony - are all fun, the plot unfolds at a good pace, and the ending is satisfying ... if surprising.

The narrators, Vivian and Brandy, didn't seem to speak as directly to the reader as they have in past books, and there weren't as many parenthetical asides. Those are always funny, and often instructive, too! Perhaps this is a function of the authors having a new publisher. Whatever the reason, it didn't prevent me from having a blast with book!

Now to get a past book or two (that my library system didn't have), and get the latest installment! I only hope there are many more books to come!
790 reviews6 followers
April 30, 2023
Antiques Carry On is the 15th book in the Trash n' Treasures series by Barbara Allan. You can read this as a standalone book, but I highly recommend reading them all in order. The nice thing about these books is when they reference something in a previous book, they will tell you the name of the book. Normally, these books take place in Iowa, but this time we venture over the pond for a spot of tea and murder. If you like your murders not too gruesome, written in a style where you are encouraged to try to solve the mystery along with the main characters, and a big dose of humor, this is the perfect series. I also really enjoy that these books are written much in the same way I like to write and they use lots of parentheses (a personal favorite of mine). I have also learned quite a bit about antiques which may come in handy when I finally have to sort out my own home.

Bonus points for Sushi, one of my favorite crime-fighting dogs, and for the always adorable covers.
245 reviews6 followers
January 16, 2024
Fun and quick read featuring a mother, daughter team (both quirky) who manage to solve the crime in spite of their many misteps while also running an antiques store and writing published mysteries . This is the 15th of the series and takes the duo across the pond to meet their new publisher and get inspiration for their next mystery. There are references within text to previous titles and while this can be read as a standalone alone recommend finding them to learn how the duo got to where they are. There are tips on antiques and collectibles.
Profile Image for L.M..
Author 4 books24 followers
July 27, 2021
This is one of my favorite series of all time! I love Vivian and the back and forth between her and Brandy is hilarious. This book was published by a different publisher and I was afraid it would be different but it’s the same mother-daughter duo I know and love. This time the pair does a little traveling but the trip is cut short by (what else?) murder. Anyone who loves humorous cozies and hasn’t read this series needs to go check it out “toot sweet”!
Profile Image for Ann.
6,083 reviews85 followers
September 30, 2021
This is book 15 in the Trash and Treasures series. It's another good cozy to solve as the girls, Vivian and Brandy head to London to search for antiques and get background for their next book. This is a great light hearted funny cozy that will have you laughing at their antics. If you're a fan of cozy's but not of blood and gore, this is a series you will enjoy. Can be read as a stand alone but you'll enjoy them all. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Profile Image for Renee Winter.
466 reviews18 followers
May 7, 2021
A long time follower of the 'Trash-n-Treasure series here! The newest delivers another excellent read ti enjoy. There are alot of twists and turns that keep your interest piqued. Love the mother-daughter duo crime fighters! Thanks #netgalley and Severn House Publishing for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Profile Image for Annarella.
14.3k reviews166 followers
July 5, 2021
This series is always very funny and I thoroughly enjoyed this instalment.
i was happy to catch up with the quirk characters, laughed a lot and the story kept me hooked.
The mystery is solid and kept me guessing.
Can't wait to read the next story
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
Profile Image for Jeanne.
1,144 reviews8 followers
June 16, 2021
Although the writing style is interesting there is too much wandering thought processes going on so it isn’t tightly written enough for me. You will enjoy the plot and it’s well thought our conclusion
Thank you netgalley and the publisher for this arc
Profile Image for Crystal Chmielewski.
10 reviews1 follower
June 28, 2021
My favorite series out there and this one did not disappoint. My only complaint is that the book is so short! And I cringe when I see the "filler" recipes added. The characters and dialogue are simply delightful and I am anxiously awaiting the next installment.
262 reviews2 followers
July 31, 2021
Such a truly funny series! I love Brandy and Vivian and little Sushi! I also like the tongue in cheek comments that bring the reader right into the book. The mystery was fun and I loved the super fast trip to London! I hope there will be more of these mysteries to enjoy!
167 reviews1 follower
August 24, 2021
Another one solved by the mother and daughter antiques dealers

These two , Brandy and Vivian, find more trouble and adventure, and keep life so very interesting! A must read
Profile Image for Wanda Callison.
17 reviews1 follower
Read
July 20, 2022
Loved this. Didn't ferret out who the killer was til the reveal. For me that is the earmark of a really good story.
44 reviews
August 15, 2022
I didn't care for the author's writing style -- to many references to other stories she'd written and too many parenthetical clauses.
Profile Image for Rebecca Oerman.
89 reviews2 followers
January 15, 2023
Honestly, I enjoyed the book until what Vivian does at the end. Inexcusable! (I’m not sure if that’s considered a spoiler or not)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Clyde.
496 reviews
March 8, 2024
Clever, funny!!!!! Want to go back and read them in order. This is #15 in series.
Profile Image for Jan.
5,133 reviews84 followers
October 20, 2024
Vivian and Brany head to London, and get involved in finding a body there. Vivian is now the ex-sheriff.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews

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