Culinary Mystery

It's a beautiful day in the small town of Devil's Orchard when Bobbi's grandmother informs her she's actually a witch. Not just any old witch, either. Bobbi is part of a long line of demon-slayers. Bobbi, who can't step on a cockroach without squealing, is a demon-slayer? Yeah right. She's tempted to write the whole thing off as a stress-induced hallucination. Especially when the dumpster-diving fox starts talking....

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.

It’s time for the annual Cheese Festival in Providence, Ohio, and Charlotte Bessette’s cheese shop is packed with homemade specialties. Meanwhile, her friend Erin is prepping her dairy farm and inn for cheese makers, marketers, journalists, and one surprise guest—Lara Berry, pretentious cheese whiz, pompous bestselling author, and pungent critic whose extra sharp tongue can crumble a reputation. Even though any love for Lara by her friends curdled long ago, Charlotte is surprised when the foodie is smothered to death in her room at Erin’s inn.

Beneath the gloss of star chefs and crystal-laden tables, the truffle supply chain is touched by theft, secrecy, sabotage, and fraud. Farmers patrol their fields with rifles and fear losing trade secrets to spies. Hunters plant poisoned meatballs to eliminate rival truffle-hunting dogs. Naive buyers and even experts are duped by liars and counterfeits. Deeply reported and elegantly written, this exposé documents the dark, sometimes deadly crimes at each level of the truffle’s path from ground to plate, making sense of an industry that traffics in scarcity, seduction, and cash.

Summer is in full bloom, and so is Sammy’s baking with her new experiment of hummingbird cakes. But the quiet town of Sunny Cove is thrown into chaos once again when the clerk at the Gas ‘n’ Guzzle is found dead behind the building. Sammy wants to help, as usual, but the situation is made even more complicated by the fact that her ex-husband has suddenly shown up in town, and he’s the prime suspect!

Charlotte Bessette—owner of Fromagerie Bessette, known by locals as The Cheese Shop—has a lot on her plate: setting a date with her fiancé, feeding the actors in her grandmother’s production of Hamlet, and planning the menu for her best friend and cousin’s upcoming wedding. At least her new creation—sinfully delicious Brie blueberry ice cream—has turned out perfectly. Just days before the wedding, a stranger turns up dead in the Igloo Ice Cream Parlor's freezer, his head bashed with a container of Charlotte's signature ice cream. But this stranger turns out to be more than he seems.

Satisfying her hunger for epicurean adventure in the French provinces, small-town caterer and minister’s wife Faith Fairchild decides to throw the perfect dinner party. But during cleanup, after the last guest has departed her gastronomical triumph, she encounters something neither expected nor welcome: a dead body lying in her vestibule. Unfortunately it doesn’t help la belle americaine’s credibility when the corpse vanishes before the local gendarmes arrive. But Faith realizes that, though the police refuse to take her seriously, a killer just might.

Ruby Steele, 30, beautiful, fit, seems just like any other ex-pat hiding out in the Bahamas and playing local bartender. But unruly patrons find out the hard way: Ruby is a mixed-martial-arts pro, and not one you’d want to cross. A 40-something female tourist seeks out Ruby, desperate for her help. She was out partying all night with her friend, both of them drinking way too much and doing things they don’t want their husbands to know about. The problem is, as of 12 hours ago, her friend is missing.

Antonia Bingham, a renowned chef and the new owner of East Hampton's Windmill Inn, escaped to the Hamptons to get away from a harrowing past. Yet she finds herself in more danger than ever when she learns about a curse that haunts the inn - all previous owners have died suspiciously. When she's not cooking sumptuous meals for her guests, Antonia digs into the investigation to uncover who's behind the curse. But the closer she gets to the truth, the closer she gets to being the next victim - will she solve the case in time to save herself?

"Verärgere niemals den Koch. Er könnte dir dein letztes Gericht servieren!" Sechs Gourmets, drei Gänge, ein Toter. So ruhig hatte sich der Lehrer Klaus Busch seinen Ruhestand nicht vorgestellt: Nach einem gemeinsamen Essen im Kreise befreundeter Feinschmecker bricht er tot vor seiner Haustür zusammen. Schnell ist klar, dass er vergiftet wurde. Hauptkommissar Tischler ermittelt. Die Herausforderung könnte nicht größer sein. Denn unter den sechs Personen befinden sich zwei Herren, die der Kommissar nur allzu gut kennt, Polizeioberrat Schwenk und der Bürgermeister von Brunngries.

A Christmas charity contest leads to murder! Amateur baker Poppy Wilkinson agrees to be a celebrity contestant in a charity gingerbread house competition in Bath, England. She can support a good cause while promoting the long running TV reality show in which she’s a contestant — The Great British Baking Contest. However, beneath the gingerbread walls and behind the lollipop trees swirl bad feelings, jealousy, and murder. Good thing Poppy is also a witch and a talented amateur sleuth.

Instantly plunged into a mystery that threatens to test their limits, Rex and Albert must stay one step ahead of the killer. However, it seems that everyone around them had a motive for wanting the TV chef to meet an untimely end. With no end of suspects, who can they turn to for help? Everyone around them could be the killer, and it quickly becomes clear that someone does not want this mystery solved.

When Amy Ridley decided to compete in the Kellerton Summer Festival Pie Contest, the last thing she expected was to find the reigning pie queen, Mandy Jo, dead - a raspberry pie smashed on her face! Mandy Jo made fantastic pies, but she accumulated more enemies than baking trophies. But when Amy receives a note threatening her own life, she decides to do some investigating herself.

Daisy bakes a little murder into every pie she creates, and she and her dog, Zoe, deliver them to the town’s worst cads. Now, Daisy’s entered a televised, elimination-style competition and has a shot at $100k in prize money—but she still has a murder pie to deliver between filming. In a completely unexpected turn of events, she discovers that her intended victim is one of the competition judges, and he turns up dead before the pie even arrives. Now, Daisy has to solve the murder before someone calls foul play and exposes her murderous secret.

Food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell doesn't know what to believe when Lydia Partridge, the put-together owner of gourmet Bar Harbor Ice Cream, suddenly reveals fears that her husband may be having an affair. There's no other way to explain why Jamie, a respected professor, was spotted in a remote part of town with a much younger woman. But instead of learning the truth about the secret meeting, Lydia opens her freezer truck to find another surprise—the dead body of a summer employee . . .

Hayley Powell, food and cocktails columnist for Bar Harbor's Island Times, is...well, kind of broke. So when she's selected for that extreme coupon-clipping reality game show coming to town...she's thrilled, especially when her competition is nasty nurse Candace Culpepper. But when Haley stumbles across a face-down-in-the-snow Candace - scissors gleaming between her shoulders - she knows the next thing she'll be selected for will probably be a police line-up.

When Ivy Sinclare, Washington state’s most notorious convicted murderer, asks Judy Pine to tell her story, Judy jumps at the chance. As she unravels accounts of Ivy’s past, Judy begins to believe in the prisoner’s innocence, but Judy’s determination to find the truth may jeopardize her own future. This opportunity proves to be more than Judy bargained for.

Abigail Beanblossom is finally getting into the groove of her new Tea and Tarot room. And in Abigail’s mind, when things are going right, that’s exactly when they’re about to go wrong. But she never could have guessed the mother who abandoned her as a child would suddenly return, looking for tea and sympathy. Now, all Abigail wants is to escape. So, when her grandfather’s quirky friend, Archer, asks Abigail and her partner Hyperion to investigate the murder of his neighbor, the two amateur sleuths leap at the opportunity.

The Fourth of July is coming, and for professional food lover Samantha Barnes, it’s all about the picnic. Okay, and the fireworks. And the parade. But mostly the picnic. What could be better than a DIY clambake followed by the best blueberry buckle in the world? Sam has finally found the perfect recipe in the kitchen of Clara Foster, famed cookbook author and retired restaurateur, and she’s thrilled when Clara agrees to a buckle baking lesson. But when Clara dies in a house fire blamed on carelessness in the kitchen, Sam doesn’t believe it.

For Julia Snowden, the Founder's Day summer celebration in Busman's Harbor, Maine, means helping her family's clambake company to prepare an authentic taste of New England seafood. Any Mainer will tell you that a real clambake needs wood for the fire...so why is there a foot sticking out of the oven?