Risky Relics


E.Z. Pennington - 2017
    The strange thing is that Pauline had been gone for years, simply disappearing from the face of the earth. Then one day, Becky received a letter via her aunt's lawyer, telling her she'd inherited an antique shop. She wasn't a very impulsive person, but Becky took up the offer, packed up her life and moved to Rose Hollow. Rose Hollow was a tiny town in Maine, wildly wealthy and full of strange residents: there was always something going on. An uncomfortable chill runs just below the surface, belying a community that plays for keeps but plays it closer to the chest. The residents are nice, but nosy and Becky feels sort of out of place after she moves in and re-opens the store that that been closed for years. Then, after one late night, a dead body turns up in Becky's store, and it is up to her to find out who did it or risk losing her store and the new life she's just begun! This Cozy Mystery Novel is packed with quirky characters, rousing romps and a whodunnit that wraps up cleanly. No cliffhangers, no curse words and no obscenity.

The Aura


Carrie Bedford - 2014
    SHE KNOWS WHO'S GOING TO DIE! BUT NO ONE WILL BELIEVE HER... Life spins out of control for London architect Kate Benedict when she sees a dancing aura above certain people’s heads that seems to signal death. Suddenly she’s psychic. But that can't be! Psychic’s not acceptable in her circle, where the supernatural is strictly for the superstitious. And yet…people are dying. People close to her. Kate's tentative attempts to talk about her new-found metaphysical gift are met with eye rolls, so much so that she can’t even tell the nice Scotland Yard detective who's investigating the death of a close friend, Rebecca Williams. And now Rebecca’s neighbor has an aura. So what's Kate to do but try to save him by turning detective herself? A break-in and attack on her boyfriend confirm that the murderer’s catching on that Kate knows too much. But he (or maybe she) has no idea that what Kate knows is a little on the paranormal side.

The Gossiping Gourmet


Martin Brown - 2014
    But for love of his caramel chicken and cherry fudge brownies, everyone has a story to share regarding their fellow citizens—Stories that too often find their way into his weekly gossip-filled newspaper column, "Heard About Town." When the great chef and his admirers, the Sausalito Ladies of Liberty, take offense to a newly arrived Manhattan power couple, their insular world of tasty sauces and stinging insults leads to deadly results.Everyone has their own theory about who killed Warren. But it takes the combined efforts of Rob Timmons, the local newspaper publisher, and Eddie Austin, his childhood friend and Marin County’s top detective, to unravel this tale of delicious dishes and malicious deception.

Bennett Sisters Mysteries Volume 1 & 2


Lise McClendon - 2017
     5 ★ "This is a charming series of the adventures of 5 sisters. Merle the middle sister is the predominant focus of the books and one falls in love with her! Then we meet the rest of the clan. It is impossible to put the books down (my kind of books)! Merle's adventures alone and with her sisters are simply wonderful. There is just enough intrigue to keep one interested and to move on to the next book. I hope you find the books to be as grand as I did." "Enjoyed getting to know the Bennet sisters and their relationships. It was nice reading about some women who have a variety of life experiences. These characters are beyond the age of 30. I think any woman would enjoy reading this but the narrator is in her 50's and I enjoyed her perspective." A sprawling, exuberant, generous-spirited cozy mystery series with a yummy side of international adventure. A little bit chick lit, a touch of cozy mystery, a whole lot of humor, romance, suspense—all in one box set! BLACKBIRD FLY – Book One A dead husband might be sadder except that once Harry dies, his widow, Merle Bennett realizes almost immediately it was no wonder she didn't know anything about him. They’d pretty much been leading separate lives—several of them, as it turns out. Still, the will’s quite a shock. And so is an intriguing surprise—Harry left her a family home in a tiny French village. Or maybe a family home. Because who was Harry’s family? Finding out is half the fun. Merle sets out to claim her inheritance, adolescent son in tow, and thus begins a sojourn reminiscent of A Year in Provence mixed up with something by Carolyn Hart, maybe, or M.C. Beaton. Because Malcouziac, Merle’s tiny Dordogne town, is the quintessential village—just perfect for a murder. And a rollicking good time. THE GIRL IN THE EMPTY DRESS – Book Two Law practice is in the Bennett sisters' blood—along with designer suits and stilettos. But they've decided to ditch the more predictable Caribbean cruise or spa weekend at a five star hotel to celebrate Merle Bennett's 50th birthday hiking the French countryside of Dordogne. There’s just one catch: Merle’s little sister Francie has decided to bring along a sixth wheel: a work colleague named Gillian Sargent, whose utter aloofness wouldn’t be so bad. Except she seems to be hiding something…

Booking a Killer Vacation


J.R. Ripley - 2020
    Think innkeeper Dick Loudon and mystery writer Jessica Fletcher. Put 'em together, flip 'em around and what do you get? Kelly Green and Harry Leland. One is the new owner of the Beach Lovers Inn in Myrtle Beach, SC. The other is a mystery writer staying at the inn who sees mysteries and murders everywhere.When Kelly’s aunt decides to retire, she jumps at the opportunity to run the inn. But soon after, a guest is murdered and Kelly and Harry are determined to find the killer before any more guests check out for good.First in a new cozy series by critically-acclaimed, bestselling author J.R. Ripley.

How to Bake a Murder


K.J. Emrick - 2016
    Cookie, call for an ambulance.” Definitely not the words you want to hear when a man has just collapsed in the middle of your bakery. A few minutes is all it took for Karen 'Cookie' Williams to be thrust into the center of a nightmare. A customer was dead and she was considered a suspect. Her beloved shop was a crime scene. Things weren't looking so great for her. If you add in the strange figure that was lurking around at night, the prominent businessman who was harassing her to sell up and an unhappy granddaughter who was spending the summer with her you had a recipe for disaster. Can Cookie work out who killed her customer and save her bakery from ruin before she becomes a victim herself?

Sewing Suspicion: A Quilting Cozy Mystery (Quilting Cozy Mysteries Book 1)


Kathryn Mykel - 2021
    

Vanilla Vengeance


Molly Maple - 2021
    She was hoping for a family feel and a fresh start, not a shakedown from local law enforcement and an aunt who keeps disappearing right when danger nears.Sweetwater Falls is filled with loveable characters harboring dark secrets. Even though Charlotte is certain none of her new neighbors could possibly be the killer, she is beginning to learn that no one is above suspicion.Join Charlotte as she moves to Sweetwater Falls, only to discover that not even the sweetest of small towns are without their shadows."Vanilla Vengeance" is filled with layered clues and cozy moments, written by Molly Maple, which is a pen name for a USA Today bestselling author.

Murder & Spice and Everything Nice


Caryn Thomas Mitchell - 2017
    Baby books in the nursery, entertaining books in the dining room and romance reads in the ladies boudoir. It looked like it would work out great right up until the moment that the leader of a local religious cult turned up dead in the driveway. Soon his wife is dead as well.Through no fault of her own, Ivy feels she has to meddle...uh help, investigate. It's not at all because the lead investigator is her high school crush. It's because her livelihood is at stake. After all, who wants to shop at a bookstore where people keep dying? This is a novella, the perfect length to read in an afternoon in your favorite cozy chair.

A Devilish Punishment


Jennifer Bramseth - 2018
    A dead mentor. A new boss. What else could go wrong? Lillian Booth is pushed to her limits when she’s assigned the worst yet most important case of her career. Trying to disbar a lawyer who abused his clients for years behind closed doors.But after a series of sinister events, she’s forced to co-counsel with Henry Alton, a man who detested her beloved and now-deceased mentor.Lillian and Henry have one goal. To win.But Lillian fears failure if she and Henry can’t get along. And to get along requires her to uncover the origin of Henry’s hatred.Then survival becomes more important as a mysterious attacker targets them as the case races toward a possibly deadly conclusion. A Devilish Punishment is the first book in the Devil Springs Cozy Mysteries Series.

Humpty Bumpkin


Sam Cheever - 2018
    But her life is about to get less countrified and more...erm...homicide. Deer Hollow is a small community built in a verdant, rolling countryside. The nearest big city is over an hour away and big city ways are rejected at the Hollow. Unfortunately, the big city isn’t the only place where bad things can happen. Things like murder…which has a funny way of messin’ up a debutante’s day and turning a sunny Sunday in June right over onto its bucolic head.

Bittersweet Betrayal


Stephanie Damore - 2018
    Except one of them is dead. Ever since Nick passed, Claire has been able to see ghosts. Well the grounded ones anyway. When Nick’s not-so-dearly departed grandma makes an untimely exit, Nick relies on his ever-clever wife to track the clues and bring the killer to justice. Claire is more than willing to take the case if only to send Grandma up to the Pearly Gates and get her out of her hair...and bakery. If you love a clean paranormal mystery, heavy on the whodunit, you're going to love these quick reads!

Miss Sylvia's Stolen Bible


Harper Harris - 2018
    You’ll have a dog gone good time… and some delicious Southern treats! Kari Jacobs has driven cross country from San Francisco and is one hour away from starting a new life and job at a law firm in Appleton, North Carolina, when her car breaks down near the Red Rivers Plantation. She was only looking for a tow, but found a mystery. Ms. Sylvia, her sister-in-law Delilah and her butler Henry live at Red Rivers Plantation and they all seem to be stuck in the past. Kari can get their help, as long as she walks their two Great Danes and solves the mystery of the stolen Winters’ family bible. But theirs is a world of polite etiquette and stately manners, and Kari has a hard time getting them to talk so that she can figure out the answers they so desperately seek. But at least their cooking is scrumptious! Sylvia thinks the Bible was stolen by her bitter rival who owns the next plantation over, but she isn’t even sure when, and no one can explain why. Questions multiply and Kari can’t help but be drawn into a feud that reaches back into the last century. It's Kari's first introduction to the South, their customs are strange, and she has far more questions than answers. Such as, will she ever get her car fixed so she can get to Appleton, and will she be rewarded for her patience by being able to meet the Great Danes’ litter of puppies before leaving town? * INCLUDES MISS DELILAH’S SUCCULENT SOUTHERN PEACH PIE RECIPE! *

Hardback Homicide


S.E. Babin - 2021
    I inherited a grumpy Persian cat named Poppy who loves to make her displeasure known around the store … loudly.Things are good until I deliver a special order only to stumble over a body. Suddenly all eyes are on me. Now I have a handsome detective and an annoying reporter on my tail, hounding me about the case.All I want to do is crack open my favorite paperback, grab a cup of coffee, and chill, but with a murderer out there and suspicion falling on me, I have to do a lot more than read.I have to find out whodunnit and quick before I become the next subject of a murder mystery…

Craks in a Marriage


Barbara Barrett - 2018
    A few days later, the husband is found dead, his head bashed in. Fearing she’ll be considered the most likely suspect, the widow prevails upon Sydney and her three friends—Marianne, Kat and Micki—to find out who really killed him. Though none of these four fun-loving, take-charge retirees has any training as detectives, the women agree to launch a secret investigation. As they dig under the happy veneer of their community’s social life, they find more than enough suspects, from shady ladies to resentful golf buddies, to keep them looking over their shoulders. Could the murderer be lurking among the talent in a chaotic production put on by Sydney’s husband, who will do anything to keep busy in retirement? Could the sheriff, who may have more than a professional interest in chanteuse Kat, end up pinning the crime on the women instead? Each discovery during their investigations and their weekly mah jongg game keeps them running as they close in on the killer—but the killer may also be closing in on them. This cozy mystery, the first in the Mah Jongg Mystery series, features four retired amateur sleuths who live in the small Florida town of Serendipity Springs, all female and all friends who play the game of mah jongg together. Though they don't set out to investigate murder, after their first experience in this story, others start looking to them to help investigate subsequent homicides and questionable accidents. In this first book, Sydney Bonner takes the lead, although she turns to her three friends for help. Though this series features four protagonists, the others will take the lead in subsequent stories. Two are married, one is divorced and the fourth, who has been single all her life while she tended to her ailing mother, now finds herself the object of the sheriff's attention in this series. The four don't seek out murder; somehow the circumstances and those affected drag them in. Meanwhile, as they attempt to gather information, life goes on in their community in such activities as a women's club, a social group for those over 50, real estate transactions, numerous stops at the local coffeehouse, and even a shopping trip to Naples. Sydney's husband, Trip, and her friend Marianne Putnam's husband, Beau, are golf buddies who spend many a day on the course. When not there, Trip is busy seeking to build a new post retirement life, and Beau is often prevailed upon to join in Trip's latest activity, which in this first book is a town follies. Kat Faulkner has lived a frugal life until winning big in a lottery shortly after her mother's death; suddenly, Kat has money and doesn't know how to spend it. But her divorced friend and freelance writer, Micki Demetrius, does, even if it's to guide Kat through a makeover and wardrobe change for her lounge act. This cozy mystery is the first book in the Mah Jongg Mystery series. Barbara Barrett is already published in contemporary romance. She is a member of the Mystery/Romantic Suspense chapter of Romance Writers of America. Like her protagonists, she is retired and is a resident of Florida, although she spends her summers in her home state of Iowa. She spent over three decades as a human resource management analyst with Iowa state government. She can be contacted at barbarabarrett747@gmail.com. Check her website at barbarabarrettbooks.com.