Cozy Comedy

Franki Amato is in Venice to celebrate her best friend’s Christmas Eve nuptials. She’s looking forward to a relaxing break from the PI grind and a romantic gondola ride with her Casanova. But when a chef goes belly-up after making violet risotto for the reception, her holiday plans start sinking like La Serenissima. Dead set on finding the killer and saving her BFF’s wedding, Franki navigates the city’s streets and canals, which are darker and more twisted than catacomb tunnels, and all while the ghosts of past and present are quite literally haunting her.

This Christmas, the sweetest temptations might just lead to the perfect holiday surprise. Lemon Frost never thought she’d be spending the holidays single and unemployed, but fate had other plans. When her boyfriend decides to upgrade his holiday plans—without her—Lemon retreats to her hometown of Harper, Colorado. There, she hopes the warmth of family and the comfort of her childhood bakery, Frosted, will help rekindle her Christmas spirit. But Frosted, famous for its gooey cinnamon rolls and mouth-watering sticky buns, isn't as bustling as it once was. As Lemon steps in to help her ...

Meg has been roped into participating in a weaponsmithing competition, a Forged in Fire wannabe organized by a blacksmith friend. Meg originally turned down an invitation to participate, but the night before the filming starts, someone attacks Faulk, her blacksmithing mentor, breaking his arm and eliminating him from the contest before it begins. Meg agrees to step in as his replacement to keep the project from failing. She's not thrilled that the filming will take place during December—Christmas is already a crazy time for her.

Former musician Juliet Langley has barely had a day off since taking over management of the coffeehouse owned by her best friend, Pete Bennett. But there's always more to be done - such as prepping for the annual 5K Race organized by Pete's snobby socialite girlfriend, Cecilia Hollingsworth. This year, Java Jive has a booth right at the finish line, and since Juliet and Cecilia don't always see eye to eye, everything has to be perfect. Nothing can go wrong.

Cece Cash figures there's no harm in using a dash of witchcraft to help her private detective work. She might just change her mind though when one of her spells works a little too well. Cece's not in this alone. Derek North is her handsome partner. He likes to remind her daily that they're both partners now. The detective agency is equal. That means the good with the bad. When a client asks Cece to prove that a suicide was actually murder, Cece must use her witchy skills to keep from being the killer’s next victim. Will her luck run out in Vegas this time?

She’s settling into a new life. But when a fishing trip totally capsizes, can she get a friend off the hook for murder? Elizabeth Trout still feels awkward living back home. Discovering a BFF from her raucous high-school days has become the perfect mom is as weird as staying with her mother while awaiting construction of her new home. But she’s shaken to her core when her newlywed husband and beloved dog are nearly blown out of the water in a dockside explosion which leaves another woman dead … and her bestie is arrested for the crime. To clear her friend, Elizabeth and her spouse set...

Meg's husband has decided to escalate his one-man show of Dickens's A Christmas Carol into a full-scale production with a large cast including their sons Jamie and Josh as Tiny Tim and young Scrooge and Meg helping as stage manager. When a famous, although slightly over-the-hill, actor comes to town to play the starring role of Scrooge, no one expects that he's bringing a lot of baggage and enemies with him.

Sheriff Bo Tully is the kind of western lawman who's as good with the ladies as he is with his guns, and he never lets a death threat get in the way of a good barbecue. He's a man with a sense of humor, which comes in handy when trying to establish order in Blight County. In this latest tale, Tully pursues a 75-year-old missing persons case in which a pair of gold miners (a two-man drilling team known as a double-jack) mysteriously disappeared just as they hit the mother lode in a remote part of Blight County.

I like to live my life with no regrets. The only exception? Levi Carter. Five years ago we met on vacation and fell into an innocent flirtationship. And like all the women in cliche romance novels—I’d know since I read them obsessively—I fell in love. Then I promptly chickened out of admitting my way-too-soon-red-flag-feelings and left Levi behind, with nothing but his first name to remember him by. I thought I’d never see him again, but then I walk into my new job as a police department therapist and… there he is.

Great characters and story setting. Interesting Mystery to solve with lots of clues and twists that kept me guessing and turning the pages until the end. I can't wait for the next book. I highly recommend this book. 5 STAR BookSprout review. Welcome to Bramble Dale—where book club drama is just the warm-up, and murder is the main event. Picking the book of the month used to be my toughest challenge, but that was before a shady paralegal was booked into jail…and then found dead. Now, with an old friend knocked out during the crime and the clues pointing to corruption and conspiracy, ...

This time, nobody died at Moonstruck Manor, but there was still a murder. And Kyla’s sworn enemy is begging her to use her sleuthing skills in the investigation. A rogue genie who kidnapped Kyla less than a month ago desperately pleads for her help. Can she forgive him? But when he claims an enchanted knife murdered someone right in the middle of the dinner rush at his bistro, and a long line of suspects pile up, Kyla’s intrigued. Not only that, but her friend's fiancé was the man holding the knife. Can she clear the bistro’s reputation and save an innocent man without getting hurt ...

Nora, the owner of a diner, is happy serving up apple cider donuts. But her life is soon shaken when she discovers she and her younger sister Kit stand to inherit the home and land of the town's beloved cake lady, Peggy Johnson. Kit, an aspiring - and broke - filmmaker thinks her problems are solved when she and Nora find out Peggy was in the process of selling the land to a big-box developer.

Halliday resumes the story of Maddie Springer, shoe designer and amateur sleuth, a week before her marriage to hunky Los Angeles police detective Jack Ramirez. When she finds her wedding planner face down in frosting with a knife sticking out of her back, she knows that to leave on time for their honeymoon, she needs to help Jack solve the case. Her two best friends step in, not only to help find the killer, but also to serve as her new wedding planners.

When Ben Watson, the popular leader of a live action role play event company, is murdered at the local library, Felicity Griffith refuses to believe that her best friend Amy is somehow involved. With the event well under way, Felicity learns there are many who stand to benefit from Ben’s death and soon finds herself interviewing a line-up of suspects who could have been extras from the Lord of the Rings. While managing her grandmother’s advice column and having to dress up as a priestess in order to blend in, Felicity and her thirteen-year-old sidekick, Simon, will do whatever it takes ...

During an early morning feeding for her four-month-old twins, Meg Langslow hears an odd noise and goes downstairs to find her living room filled with dozens of animals. She soon learns that financial woes have caused the local animal shelter to repeal its no-kill policy. Her kind-hearted father, her zoologist grandfather, and other like-minded citizens have stolen all the shelter animals, both as a gesture of protest and to protect them until the hated policy can be repealed. But the volunteer who was transporting animals to new homes has been murdered.

“Oh, Nolan, Nolan, Nolan. You great big hunk of man. This was a good story just like her other books. I was trying to read it slowly because I didn’t want it to end. But, you will enjoy this quickie. I sure did.” -ARC reviewer Welcome to Ashwood, New Hampshire, where stubborn single dads and smitten nannies are a match made in the mountains. Kass I know I shouldn’t be in love with my boss. I’ve told my heart that a million times. The age gap alone, never mind that he’s my best friend’s older brother. Nolan’s the one for me. In this town of mountain men, he’s the one that ...

Molly is terrified that she may lose her farm because her idle husband has left her for a rich hobby winemaker and is demanding his half of the land. Meg enlists Mother's help to find Molly a divorce lawyer, which Mother is all the more willing to do because the unfaithful husband's new girlfriend is the bete noire of the wine pavilion. She is so universally disliked that Meg begins to worry about her safety. But it's the unfaithful husband whose murdered body she and Michael find that night.

"I'm Lexi Carmichael, geek extraordinaire. I spend my days stopping computer hackers at the National Security Agency. My nights? Those I spend avoiding my mother and eating cereal for dinner. Even though I work for a top-secret agency, I've never been in an exciting car chase, sipped a stirred (not shaken) martini, or shot a poison dart from an umbrella. Until today, that is, when two gun-toting thugs popped up in my life and my best friend disappeared."

Even after their breakup, Ellie Davis can’t seem to shake her ex-fiancé. First it was the cheating, then it was the rumors, and now she finds out Jason’s been trying to get his greedy hands on her parents’ property. Where does it end? With revenge, Ellie decides. But she might just need a little help first. Enter Fernley Island’s OddJobs app. When the local boat mechanic she hires sends his nephew instead, Ellie has to readjust her plans to account for Hugh Hartford, who’s handsome, brooding, and only in town for a few days.

Working Mom Davis Way Cole's secrets for fostering positive relationships with school administrators at her twin daughters' preschool.