Wisteria Tearoom Mysteries

Cops drink coffee. They don't belong in Ellen Rosings's Victorian tearoom. But when her opening day thank-you tea ends in the murder of the president of the Santa Fe Preservation Trust, the police invade her haven. Enter Detective Tony Aragon: attractive and unsympathetic, with a chip on his shoulder that goes beyond the murder investigation, and Ellen's delicate bone china cup is full. Is the murderer one of her honored guests, or the ghost rumored to haunt the building? Will Ellen solve the mystery, or will the Wisteria Tearoom's premiere turn out to be its - and Ellen's - finale?

Notorious for failed relationships. Ellen Rosings knows that's true of cops. Detective Tony Aragon has even said it about himself, or something like it. Despite her misgivings, she is drawn to him, but can he reach past a cop's cynicism to trust her? As summer surrounds her Wisteria Tearoom in the beauty of a lush rose garden, death overshadows the tearoom a second time. Maria Garcia - a venerable member of the Santa Fe Rose Guild - breathes her last in the tearoom's front parlor, throwing Ellen into a morass of doubt and conjecture. Was it murder, or merely misfortune?

A cop at the opera.... Wisteria Tearoom owner Ellen Rosings coaxes Detective Tony Aragón to go with her to the Santa Fe Opera, but the magnificent performance of Tosca ends in disaster. In bizarre counterpoint to the opera's plot, the leading man is murdered in his dressing room, and Tony must rush to secure the crime scene. Ellen is left to comfort Vi Benning, a former server at the tearoom who is now an apprentice at the opera and a protégée of the slain singer.

It's autumn in Santa Fe, and Ellen Rosings is planning her Aunt Nat’s wedding at the Wisteria Tearoom. Her progress is derailed by a dead body - yes, another one - that she finds in her aunt’s driveway. The corpse is an artist Ellen saw that morning selling gem-handled knives at the Tesuque Pueblo Flea Market. The detective assigned to the case - not, alas, the handsome, sympathetic Tony Aragón - is looking to Ellen to explain why the body ended up in Nat’s driveway.