Culinary Fiction

With small town New Bison’s Spring Festival just around the corner, the pressure is on Maddy to continue her late great-aunt Octavia’s legacy. That means scoring the top prize and transforming Baby Cakes into Southwest Michigan’s must-visit bakery, even though her inexperience in the kitchen brings nightmares of humiliating tagged photos and scathing reviews.

Spiritual medium Emma Whitecastle knows a good ghost when she feels one - like her own sweet Granny Apples, long gone but still as famous for her apple pies as she is for helping her great-great-great-granddaughter get to the core of the most baffling mysteries...When Emma gets word of a sticky spirit problem in Las Vegas, she and the ghost of Granny Apples hit the road for Sin City. The spooked one is Dolly, a former showgirl. Dolly is haunted by Lenny, a dead Vegas hood worried about an aging mobster named Nemo coming after the leggy old bombshell.

Discover how Meghan Truman, Sandy Bay's latest resident and new bakery owner, navigates her way through three murder mysteries as she gets to know the quirky characters in her adopted hometown after failing to make a career as an actress in Hollywood. She's finally started a relationship with Jack Irvin, a detective, but will she find time to build a romance while she has to deal with betrayals, ungrateful staff, culture clashes, and murder? Three complete best-selling cozy mystery stories in one boxset!

Allison Sweet, 34, a sous chef in Los Angeles, has had it up to here with demeaning customers, her demanding boss, and her failed love life. After a shocking incident, she realizes the time has come to start life fresh and follow her lifelong dream of moving to a small town and opening a bakery of her own. After a popular food critic trashes Allison’s bakery, he ends up dead - and suspicion falls on her. With business failing, Allison’s only hope is to solve the crime and clear her name.

The Brook Ridge Falls Retirement Center is still reeling over the death of one of their own, when Lexy and her senior detective friends are asked to investigate another murder. Muriel Maguire insists that her grandson Henry has been framed for the murder of his wife, but the clues all point to Henry, and the police already have him in custody.

As local merchants unite to attract tourists for a much anticipated weekend quilting event, business is sure to spill over into eateries like Daisy's Tea Garden. Reese Masemer had been dating one of Daisy's employees, Tessa, an artist, though their last interaction was as strained as a cup of loose leaf tea. Now Reese has been found dead near a covered bridge where Tessa's been practicing her sketches.

Jake and Ellie are taking a break from perfecting their chocolate-pizza recipe to cater a housewarming party hosted by Ingrid Merryfield. Miss Merryfield is famous for her old-Hollywood glamour. Her new home, Cliff House, has a reputation too - for being haunted. But she isn’t concerned, and some of her guests even try to summon a spirit during the party. What arrives instead is a freak autumn storm that downs an ancient tree, traps everyone on the property, and leads them to stumble upon a hidden room - where they find film critic Audrey Dalton, apparently frightened to death.

Between developing her food blog, Hope at Home, and choosing low-cal recipes for a feature in Cooking Now! magazine, Hope has a full plate. Still, she's never too busy to compete in a Jefferson, Connecticut, tradition - the town's annual scavenger hunt. But as she races with her team to check off the next item, Hope discovers a grisly surprise - the body of shady real estate developer Lionel Whitcomb, shot in a parking lot. His wife Elaine, who's also in the hunt, gasps and nearly faints. But two other women on the scene cry out that their husband is dead.

A brand new bakery has opened in Sun Valley. Cue a frenzy of excitement among the locals as they snap up the much heralded baker’s marshmallow muffins, terrific treacle tarts and berry spectacular Bakewells. Toby, our beloved spellbound hound, is first in the queue to taste test the freshly prepared sammiches! But when a spate of fatal poisonings shakes the local community to its core, it transpires Devon splits and Dorset knobs might be deadlier on the waistline than first thought.

Ever since Thanksgiving, when an engagement ring in a velvet box—and no gift tag—was left behind, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery. But at least this mystery isn't the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex's restaurant—and he's frozen, not fresh. For once, it's not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can't escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn't labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her.

Allison Sweet, 34, a sous chef in Los Angeles, has had it up to here with demeaning customers, her demanding boss, and her failed love life. After a shocking incident, she realizes the time has come to start life fresh and follow her lifelong dream of moving to a small town and opening a bakery of her own.

Chef Charlie Hunter's arrival in the beautiful Chilterns is the fulfillment of a long-held dream: to open her own restaurant in an idyllic countryside location. The Old Forge sits on the village green (complete with duck pond and flint-faced houses) and seems just the place for the high-quality cooking she wants to be known for. But instead of rural peace and a chance to lick her wounds, Charlie finds something ugly stirring under the chocolate box perfection. When a prominent local builder is found dead in suspicious circumstances, Charlie the outsider becomes a suspect.

Food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell usually reserves judgement for local cuisine, not the people who serve it. But staying neutral isn't so easy when caught between the biggest seafood rivals in town—her BFF Mona Barnes and the successful Leighton clan. Adding to a bitter decades-old surf-turf war between family businesses, a modern Romeo and Juliet story unfolds as Mona's son gets engaged to the daughter of her sworn enemy.

When famous TV chef Matteo McLeish turns up at the Old Forge Café and offers chef Charlie Hunter a place in his kitchen for the duration of Hampden Green's local opera festival, she thinks it's because he rates her cooking skills. In fact it's because he's heard she's good in a crisis. The wholesome star of Nonna's Kitchen is being blackmailed by one of his team.

Sophie Winston is busy handling the first ever convention of the Association of Ghost Kitchens—restaurants that do delivery only—but she's taking a little time out for a lunch meeting organized by A Healthy Meal. The group is dedicated to providing meals for children in need, and as a bonus, it'll give Sophie the perfect opportunity to ogle the lavish Old Town home of socialite Geraldine Stansfield. Gerrie's dining room is impeccably furnished, the table laden with gleaming crystal and prized china. If it weren't for the dead man lying on the floor, everything would be perfect.

A month before Christmas, I saw a ghost... Goldy Schulz is thrilled to be catering a holiday breakfast feast for the staff of the Aspen Meadow Library. But little does she know that on the menu is a large helping of murder. While setting up at the library, Goldy spots a woman who bears a...

Marygene Brown always figured she'd marry her childhood sweetheart, Alex Myers, not cater his wedding. But the Peach Diner could use the exposure. Most of the island is showing up - although more for the role-playing murder game at the reception than for the widely loathed bridezilla, Lucy Carmichael. Marygene may have to smile through the festivities, but Mama doesn't have to hold her peace - especially since only Marygene can hear her mother's ghost. Mama says she sees an aura of darkness around the wedding.

The first time Daisy Ellery killed a man with a pie, it was an accident. Now, it’s her calling. Daisy bakes sweet vengeance into her pastries, which she and her dog, Zoe, deliver to the men who’ve done dirty deeds to the town’s women. But if she can’t solve the one crime that’s not of her own baking, she’ll be out of the pie pan and into the oven. Parking her mobile bakery van outside the local diner, Daisy is informed that someone’s been prowling around the van. She finds a letter on her door, threatening to reveal her unsavory secret sideline of pie à la murder.

It may not be front page news, but Island Times food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell is now happily married. Before she can set sail on her honeymoon cruise, however, Hayley's mom, Sheila, pays an impromptu visit - and promptly becomes the prime suspect in a murder. The victim is Sheila's old high school rival, Caskie Lemon-Hogg, known for her homemade blueberry pies and her home-wrecking flirtations. As Hayley teams up with her BFFs Liddy and Mona to clear her mother's name, Sheila reunites with Liddy's mom Celeste and Mona's mom Jane for their own amateur sleuthing.

While Robbie scrambles through breakfast orders for her expanding clientele at Pans 'N Pancakes, tempers run as high as the sticky August heat in South Lick, Indiana. Real estate developer Fiona Closs plans to build a towering luxury resort at one of the most scenic hilltops in Brown County, and not everyone can see the sunny side of the imposing proposition - including Robbie's furious Aunt Adele, who doesn't waste a minute concocting protests and road blockades. When a vocal protester is silenced forever at the resort site, Robbie ditches the griddle to catch the killer.