Culinary Mystery

Life is smooth as buttercream at the Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery, and newlyweds Mel and Joe are stopping to smell the flours. But things start to crumble one night when an unknown gunman takes a shot at Mel. Even though the bullets miss their mark, the cupcake crew goes on high alert to figure out who would want to kill a small-town baker—and why.

Melanie and Angie are determined to win the Challenge to the Chef cooking competition to promote their Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery. Mel's mentor from culinary school, Vic Mazzotta, may be one of the judges, but Mel and Angie will have to bake their best to win fair and square. But when Vic's dead body is found inside a freezer truck, Mel and Angie will need to use their best judgment to find the cold-blooded killer or they may lose more than the contest; they may lose their lives.

It's autumn in Ashland, Oregon, - 'tis the season for a spiced hot apple cider with a serving (or two) of Torte's famous peach cobbler. It's also the perfect time for Jules Capshaw to promote her family's beloved bake shop by competing in The Pastry Channel's reality show, Take the Cake. The prize is $25,000. But as Jules quickly learns, some people would kill for that kind of dough. Literally.

This is the third set of books in Eryn Scott’s popular Stoneybrook Mystery series. Follow jam maker Hadley James and her friends as they solve crimes in their usually peaceful town. Each book features a different cat and two recipes.

Charlie Cooke loves many things, like the Bear Claw Diner, the heated steering wheel of her car, and her orange tabby cat, Eggs Benedict. Something she has never loved is the state fair. So when her best friend, Annie Jensen, begs her for a fair day, she’s reluctant. But Annie isn’t the only one who wants her to spend a day among farm animals and deep-fried food. A vendor has been murdered, and Trooper Graham needs his favorite part-time sleuth to dig up the truth, and Charlie is happy to oblige.

Charlotte McKay is new to Sweetwater Falls, but that doesn’t mean she's about to look the other way when everyone’s least favorite miser goes missing. Following her dream of selling her cupcakes at a bakery is put on hold as she follows a trail of clues, each stranger than the last. Nearly every person in Sweetwater Falls has a grudge against Amos, who was known more for his penny-pinching than his benevolence.

Food critic Hayley Snow and her pal Miss Gloria are overjoyed to welcome Violet and Bettina Booth, aka the Scottish Scone Sisters, to Key West. The sisters will host The UK Bakes!—Key West Edition. But the same day they arrive, the bed-and-breakfast the sisters are staying in gets torched. The contest begins the next morning featuring three local bakers. One is the inn owner’s wife, Rayna, who is not only the most talented chef of the group but now a person of interest in the fire. The next night, a dogwalker discovers a body near the bed-and-breakfast.

After solving a murder and getting her organic farm ready to overwinter, Shiloh Bellamy still expects the next few months to be busy with repairs, spring planning, and networking with local businesses. She might even be able to broker a new partnership with Fields Brewery and its organic brewer's association. Well, she could've if the owner wasn't found murdered at the county Ice Fishing Derby. Once again, Shiloh gets tangled up in the investigation when the police ignore an entire crop of suspects to blame one of her friends.

While Geneva Bay’s upper crust gets ready to party down at a Prohibition-themed fundraiser, pizza chef Delilah O’Leary is focused on seeing her struggling restaurant through the winter slow season. The temperature outside is plummeting, but Delilah’s love life might finally be heating up, as hunky police detective Calvin Capone seems poised to (finally) make a move. But Delilah’s hopes of perfecting a new “free-from” pizza recipe for a charity bash are dashed when a dead body crashes the party.

Dead bodies are expected in cemeteries, but not simply thrown into an open grave. The newspaper’s notorious food reviewer had plenty of enemies in the small town of Oak Hill, Georgia. Unfortunately, it’s Emily Buchanan’s good friend Trish who is the prime suspect, since the biscuits that killed him came from her bakery. As Emily tries to balance running Eternal Rest Bed and Breakfast and working to bring her late husband’s spirit home, she also has to help clear Trish’s name. After all, someone Emily knows and trusts could never be a killer…could she?

The Chipmunk Chronicles, the local newspaper, has a new gossip column—and gossip is great for the Cozy Corgi Bookshop and Bakery. Though infuriated by the way people are treated by the column’s author, Winifred Page can’t help wondering about the outrageous revelations. Fred’s grumpy corgi, Watson, however, is more concerned with an endless search for treats than the rumors flying around town. When Gerald Jackson, a less-than-brilliant local lawyer, is featured in the column, people begin to suspect he’s working the town over in a quest for wealth rather than fighting for justice.

In a quiet small town in New Brunswick, old Agatha Treadway makes one last cranky complaint to her niece before dying on her kitchen floor. The cause seems to be a jar of contaminated string beans, which sat on Agatha's basement shelf for years before becoming her final meal. The town doctor calls it a tragic accident - and a warning to all who can their own vegetables - but Agatha's neighbor, the intrepid Janet Wadman, knows better. Agatha was an expert canner, which means the beans must have been placed there by someone else. This was murder.

Caitlyn's world changes when she learns that she was found as an abandoned baby and adopted by her American family. Now, her search for answers takes her to a tiny English village where a man has been murdered - and where a mysterious shop selling enchanted chocolates is home to the "local witch".... Soon Caitlyn finds herself fending off a toothless old vampire, rescuing an adorable kitten and meeting handsome aristocrat Lord James Fitzroy...not to mention discovering that she herself might have magical blood in her veins!

When Sadie Hoffmiller receives a threatening, anonymous text message just days before her wedding, she's determined not to let it interfere with the celebration she has carefully planned for months. But when the threat changes from a distant fear to a frightening reality, Sadie realizes just how much she's underestimated the situation. Desperate to put an end to the game she's been forced to play, Sadie, her fiancé, Pete, and her children pull out all the stops.

Mia Carina has steered her Italian-American family's Astoria, Queens catering hall into becoming the borough's premiere party site, and nothing could make her happier—except her boyfriend proposing. There's just one presumed-dead obstacle in the way.

Little Caribbean, Brooklyn, New York: Lyndsay Murray is opening Spice Isle Bakery with her family, and it’s everything she’s ever wanted. The only thing getting a rise out of Lyndsay is Claudio Fabrizi, a disgruntled fellow bakery owner who does not want any competition. On opening day, he comes into the bakery threatening to shut them down. Fed up, Lyndsay takes him to task in front of what seems to be the whole neighborhood. So when Claudio turns up dead a day later—murdered—Lyndsay is unfortunately the prime suspect.

Maggie Crozat, proprietor of a historic Cajun Country B&B, prefers to let the good times roll. But hard times rock her hostelry when a new cell phone app makes it easy for locals to rent their spare rooms to tourists. With October-and Halloween-approaching, she conjures up a witch-crafty marketing scheme to draw visitors to Pelican, Louisiana.

When Lucy Berberian quits her Philadelphia law firm and heads home to Ocean Crest, she knows what she's getting - the scent of funnel cake, the sight of the wooden roller coaster, and the tastes of her family's Mediterranean restaurant. Lucy could do without Heather Banks, though. The Gucci-toting ex-cheerleader is still as nasty as she was back in high school...and she's just taken over as the local health inspector. Just minutes after eating at the Kebab Kitchen - where she's tallied up a whole list of bogus violations - she falls down dead in the street.

When Sloan Krause walks in on her husband, Mac, screwing the barmaid, she gives him the boot. Sloan has spent her life in Leavenworth, Washington becoming an expert in brewing craft beer, and she doesn't have time to be held back by her soon-to-be ex-husband. She decides to strike out on her own, breaking away from the Krause family brewery, and goes to work for Nitro, the hip new nano-brewery in the Bavarian-themed town. But then she finds one of Nitro's competitors dead in the fermenting tub, clutching the secret recipe for the IPA.

After a cupcake-flinging fiasco at a photo shoot for a local magazine, Melanie Cooper and Angie DeLaura agree to make amends by hosting a week-long corporate boot camp at Fairy Tale Cupcakes. The idea is the brainchild of billionaire Ian Hannigan, new owner of SWS, a lifestyle magazine that chronicles the lives of Scottsdale's rich and famous. He's assigned his staff to a team-building week of making cupcakes for charity. It's clear that the staff would rather be doing just about anything other than frosting baked goods.