Culinary Fiction

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.

It’s almost spring in Ashland, Oregon, and the town is preparing for the Shakespeare and the annual Chocolate Festival. Business is cookin’ at Torte, and the store is expanding as Jules’ team whips up crèpes filled with mascarpone cheese and dark chocolate. Torte stands a chance of being this year’s confectionery belle of the ball! Life couldn’t be sweeter...unless murder taints the batter.

Lately, Kate has a lot on her dessert plate. She's launching a cookie-of-the-day challenge in the heart of Coral Cay, providing sweet treats for the reception of the town's handsome new veterinarian - not to mention dealing with tourists in town for a pirate festival and the surprise arrival of her former fiance, Evan, who seems determined to win her back. And if that's not enough, a skeleton has been found - in the backyard behind her best friend Maxi's floral shop. Kate knows Maxi could never hurt a fly.

Hazel Bloom likes her life quiet. Tucked away in her little cottage, she spends her days making small-batch jams, walking her fluffy Pomeranian Peaches, and avoiding the competitive theatrics of the local artisan market. But everything changes the morning she finds a rival jam-seller collapsed beside a bubbling vat in the sugar shack — poisoned, with only a dropped tasting spoon and a trail of orchard secrets to hint at what really happened.

Everly will have to go against the tide to crack this case! It all seems to be smooth sailing for Everly Swan. The island of Charm, North Carolina, is hosting tons of fun summer events, her iced tea shop is a hit, and best of all, she’s finally dating the handsome Detective Grady Hays. But their romantic bubble bursts when tragedy strikes: a surf pro is found murdered on the beach, killed with a theater prop.

When Abby, an American archaeologist, arrives in St. Denis on the heels of her divorce, she hopes to make a new life for herself as a specialist guide for visiting tourists. So when a local British couple discover a grave from World War II on their property, Abby is able to put her training to good use. As it turns out, in the grave are the remains of two German women and an Italian submarine office who had a big secret to hide: the women are suspected of having had links to the German garrison in Bordeaux during the war.

For fans of Jenny Han, Jane Austen, and The Great British Baking Show, A Taste for Love, is a delicious rom com about first love, familial expectations, and making the perfect bao. To her friends, high school senior Liza Yang is nearly perfect. Smart, kind, and pretty, she dreams big and never...

It's the dead of winter in the sleepy town of Ashland, which means no tourists - and fewer customers - for Jules Capshaw and her bakery. But when she's asked to cater an off-season retreat for the directors of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, business starts heating up...until Jules finds a dead body in the freezer. Someone at the retreat has apparently iced the bartender, a well-known flirt with a legendary temper - that is, before a killer beat him to the punch. Then, from out of nowhere, Jules' own ex-husband shows up at the shop.

Everly Swan is busy as a bee running her beachside iced tea shop, and the small island of Charm, North Carolina is abuzz - Mitzi Calgon, an iconic Hollywood actress, is in town! Everly's great-aunts are making a documentary about beekeeping and Mira has agreed to help. But when the actress turns up dead, reporters and fans swarm the island, muddying the water and disrupting the peaceful lives of the townspeople.

With Angie and Tate's wedding just around the corner, it's a happy time for Melanie Cooper and the bakery crew. Not only are they finessing the last-minute details of the big day, but their bakery, Fairy Tale Cupcakes, has just been hired to bake cupcakes for the blockbuster book signing of a controversial author who wrote a steamy best seller filled with juicy local gossip. But one by one, the people Angie has hired to work the wedding begin turning up dead. As the body count rises, the best-selling author is the next to bite the dust.

Two best friends have one week to return a lost love letter found in a candy store—and to work up the courage to confess to the deep feelings between them—in this romance novella from the acclaimed author of How To Fail at Flirting. Teagan’s job in an airport candy store pays the bills...

As a single mom, Hayley Powell already has a full plate - she's got deadlines to make and a teenage daughter with eyes for an aspiring singer-songwriter. But when country music superstar Wade Springer rolls into town, Hayley spies an irresistible side gig: personal chef to her all-American idol. After he tries her home cooking, Wade's so impressed that he hires her on the spot - and invites her to dine with him alone.

Krissy Hancock is staying in her adopted hometown of Pine Hills, Ohio, for Christmas this year - and she even has a whole week off from her combination bookstore-cafe. Unfortunately, she's been roped into filling in for a sick elf in the local holiday musical extravaganza. With a demanding director, backstage gossip, and two men in fierce competition for the starring role, it isn't all sweetness and Christmas lights. Then a murder puts a stop to the production, and Krissy is faced with a pageant of suspects.

Today Candy Cane Hollow smells like butter and bravado. I'm helping at the Elvish Culinary Guild's grand induction and tasting, and Gilbert, our house-elf at Claus Cottage, has made the finalists' bench with his prized mince pie. Then the celebrity headliner takes one bite of a showpiece pie and drops. Guild security locks the doors while city police sweep the kitchens. Whispers fly: a rival with a temper, an apprentice with something to prove, a sponsor with money on the line, a producer who prefers ratings to recipes.

When your mother is an astrologist and your dad is a minister, you learn to keep an open mind. Which is just what Mac loves to do - exercise her mind by puzzling out fictional clues in the mystery novels she reads and discusses with her Cozy Capers Book Group. But now Mac's friend Gin has found herself in a sticky situation. After wealthy genealogist Beverly Ruchart is found dead outside Gin's taffy shop, the candy maker becomes a person of interest.

Opening her shop Cashmere Crush and making a new home for herself, her son Brody, Gramps, and their black Scottish terrier Wallace in the beautiful Scottish village of Nairn, is a dream come true. So Paislee is happy to give back by donating a luxurious cashmere sweater for an auction to raise money for the Nairn Food Bank. She's less happy to make the acquaintance of a clique of competitive moms at the charity event, who treat a baking contest like it's life or death. It turns out to be the latter for queen bee Kirsten Buchanan.

Early October is "winding down" time in Busman's Harbor, Maine, but there's nothing relaxing about it for Julia Snowden. Between busloads of weekend leaf peepers at the Snowden Family Clambake and a gut renovation of the old mansion on Morrow Island, she's keeping it all together with a potentially volatile skeleton crew - until one of them turns up dead under the firewood. When the Russian demo team clearing out the mansion discovers a room that's been sealed off, Julia's baffled as to its purpose and it's secrets. When one of the workers is found murdered, things come to a boil.

Iced tea shop proprietor Everly Swan lands in hot water when a wealthy groom-to-be is found dead outside her cafe.

Fed up with dating after a disastrous setup, the only thing Hayley wants to snuggle up to is a box of made-to-order chocolates from plus-sized, plus-mouthed chocolatier Bessie Winthrop. But when Bessie is found dead in her kitchen, only Hayley suspects that Bessie's "heart attack" might actually be a candy-coated murder.

Melanie Cooper and Angie DeLaura's Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery is gearing up for Valentine's Day. Unfortunately, someone has iced Baxter Malloy on his first date with Mel's mother. Now Mom's a suspect, and Mel and Angie need to find time around frosting to dig into the man's shady past and discover who served him his just desserts.