Leslie Budewitz

Pepper Reece, owner of the Seattle Spice Shop, thinks she can handle any kind of salty customer - until a murderer ends up in the mix....

Business is cooking - until one of Pepper's potential clients, a young chef named Tamara Langston, is found dead, her life extinguished by the dangerously hot ghost chili....

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, wants nothing more than to live a quiet life for a change. But when she finds an envelope stuffed with cash in a ratty old wingback left on the curb, she sets out to track down the owner.

The town of Jewel Bay, Montana - known as a Food Lovers' Village - is obsessed with homegrown and homemade Montana fare....

Discord erupts when jazz guitarist Gerry Martin plummets to his death from the rocks above the Jewel River....

In an attempt to woo tourists to Jewel Bay and, Erin Murphy, manager of the specialty local foods market known as the Merc, is organizing the First Annual Food Lovers' Film Festival....

As the holiday season lights up Seattle's famed Pike Place Market, Pepper Reece's beloved Spice Shop is brimming with cinnamon, nutmeg, and shoppers eager to stuff their stockings....

In Seattle's Pike Place Market, Spice Shop owner Pepper Reece is savoring her business success, but soon finds her plans disrupted by a killer....

Gourmet food market owner Erin Murphy is determined to get Jewel Bay, Montana's, scrumptious local fare some national attention....

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man's body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out....

When her life fell apart at 40, after she stumbled over her husband, a Seattle police officer on the downtown bike beat, and the law firm where she worked as an HR manager imploded in scandal, taking her job with it, Pepper never expected to find solace in bay leaves....

Seattle Spice Shop owner Pepper Reece probes murder while juggling a troubled employee, her mother's house hunt, and a fisherman who's set his hook for her....

In Jewel Bay, all is merry and bright. At Murphy's Mercantile, AKA the Merc, manager Erin Murphy is ringing in the holiday season with food, drink, and a new friend: Merrily Thornton. A local girl gone wrong, Merrily's turned her life around....

In this delicious new collection of five short stories and one novella, she takes us further into the heart of Jewel Bay-from the playhouse to the Merc, from funerals to food festivals-with equal parts humor, suspense, and compassion, and no shortage of murder to spice up the menu . . .