{
    "id": 497796,
    "slug": "crouching-buzzard-leaping-loon-donna-andrews",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "Crouching Buzzard Leaping Loon ",
    "subtitle": null,
    "collection_title": "Meg Langslow",
    "collection_part_number": "4",
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "Poor Meg Langslow. She\u2019s blessed in so many ways. Michael, her boyfriend, is a handsome, delightful heartthrob who adores her. She\u2019s a successful blacksmith, known for her artistic wrought-iron creations. But somehow Meg\u2019s road to contentment is more rutted and filled with potholes than seems fair.\n\nThere are Michael\u2019s and Meg\u2019s doting but demanding mothers, for a start. And then there\u2019s the fruitless hunt for a place big enough for the couple to live together. And a succession of crises brought on by the well-meaning but utterly wacky demands of her friends and family. Demands that Meg has a hard time refusing \u2014 which is why she\u2019s tending the switchboard of Mutant Wizards, where her brother\u2019s computer games are created, and handling all the office management problems that no one else bothers with. For companionship, besides a crew of eccentric techies, she has a buzzard with one wing \u2014 who she must feed frozen mice thawed in the office microwave \u2014 and Michael\u2019s mother\u2019s nightmare dog. Not to mention the psychotherapists who refuse to give up their lease on half of the office space, and whose conflicting therapies cause continuing dissension. This is not what Meg had in mind when she agreed to help her brother move his staff to new offices.\n\nIn fact, the atmosphere is so consistently loony that the office mail cart makes several passes through the reception room, with the office practical joker lying on top of it pretending to be dead, before Meg realizes that he\u2019s become the victim of someone who wasn\u2019t joking at all. He\u2019s been murdered for real.",
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 297,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2003-01-01",
    "publication_date_latest": "2003-01-01",
    "cover_url": null,
    "editions": [],
    "ratings_count": 0,
    "read_count": 0,
    "review_count": 0,
    "favorite_count": 0,
    "reading_status_read_count": 0,
    "reading_status_reading_count": 0,
    "reading_status_want_to_read_count": 0,
    "rating_average": null,
    "ratings_distribution": {
        "1": 0,
        "2": 0,
        "3": 0,
        "4": 0,
        "5": 0
    },
    "created_at": "2025-09-19T14:35:23+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-10-30T00:42:25+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 4695,
        "slug": "st-martins-press-2",
        "name": "St. Martin's Press",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:11:52+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:10:34+00:00"
    },
    "contributors": [],
    "genres": [],
    "subjects": [],
    "campaigns": []
}