Culinary Fiction

Poppy McAllister is happy about opening a Jersey Shore B&B - but working in a professional kitchen has always been her real dream. Now it's coming true, at least briefly, as she teams up during the high-profile Restaurant Week challenge. Poppy's specialty is pastries, and if anyone can make glorious gluten-free goodies, it's Poppy. Things get heated quickly. Relatively harmless pranks soon escalate into real hazards, including an exploding deep fryer. And now one of the judges has died after taking a bite of Poppy's cannoli - making her the chef suspect.

Many residents of South Lick, Indiana, claim the Outhouse Race, in which competitors push old-timey outhouse replicas on wheels at the annual Abe Martin Festival on Memorial Day, is the best thing since indoor plumbing. Just because country store and restaurant owner Robbie Jordan has too much to do managing her new deep fryer as well as an old lover reappearing, she's not going to miss out on the fun. Plus, it's good for business. But when a dead body and a cast-iron skillet tumble out of the Pans 'N Pancakes outhouse entry on the race route, it seems someone is trying to frame Robbie.

With her assistant, Pixie, picking up more responsibility around the shop, Tricia Miles suddenly has a lot more time on her hands. Tricia decides to join the local animal-rescue board and enter the Great Stoneham Bake-Off. Tricia stops by Joyce Whitman's romance bookstore looking for a book to get her fired up. She stumbles on something hot, but it's an argument between Joyce and her neighbor Vera Olson instead of a steamy read. When Vera turns up dead in Joyce's garden hours later, Tricia has to wonder - could Joyce be the killer? Or is the culprit still lurking in town?

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.

Former actress Becca Ransom lived her dream in Hollywood for seven years before returning to her hometown of Larch Haven, known as the Venice of North America. The Vermont town has canals instead of roads, gondolas instead of cars, and charming cottages plucked from the pages of a fairy tale. It’s also where Becca is pursuing her newest passion as a chocolatier at True Confections, the chocolate shop owned by her grandparents, Lolly and Pops.

As it turns out quilting is the deadly new fad people are just dying to try...And here I thought the annual quilt auction would be a boring way to spend an evening! One big murder in my tiny hometown was more than I ever wanted to see, but now the death toll has risen to two. Eek! Hey, at least I've got my favorite 10-pound bundle of mischief at my side for good. My Jack Russell buddy, Pip, and I are experienced amateur detectives now and we're more than ready to put another tough case to bed.

Irish Milkshake Murder: In advance of their St. Patrick's Day wedding, Tara and Danny are off to the Aran Islands. The weekend kicks off with the ferry trip, as the passengers enjoy boozy milkshakes on board. Murder Most Irish: As St. Patrick's Day is drawing near, the folks at Hyler's Luncheonette are getting into the holiday spirit with a festive new green milkshake. Mrs. Claus and the Luckless Leprechaun: To celebrate Spring in Santaland, April Claus's friend, Claire, whips up some minty milkshakes for her bustling ice cream shop, Santaland Scoop.

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.

After a cupcake-flinging fiasco at a photo shoot for a local magazine, Melanie Cooper and Angie DeLaura agree to make amends by hosting a week-long corporate boot camp at Fairy Tale Cupcakes. The idea is the brainchild of billionaire Ian Hannigan, new owner of SWS, a lifestyle magazine that chronicles the lives of Scottsdale's rich and famous. He's assigned his staff to a team-building week of making cupcakes for charity. It's clear that the staff would rather be doing just about anything other than frosting baked goods.

Ella Mae LeFaye's Charmed Pie Shoppe is wildly popular in Havenwood, Georgia, which is not surprising since Ella Mae can lace her baked goods with enchantments. The shop's extraordinary success seems destined to continue when Ella Mae meets an engaged couple who hire her to handle the dessert buffet at their wedding.

Key Zest food critic Hayley Snow and her groom, Police Detective Nathan Bransford, chose Scotland for their long-delayed honeymoon, hoping to sightsee and enjoy some prize-winning scones. But their romantic duo swells to a crowd when they're joined by Nathan's family as well as octogenarian Miss Gloria. Nathan's sister Vera takes the women on a whirlwind tour of some of Scotland's iconic mystic places as research for a looming book project. But the trip takes a deadly tartan turn when a dinner party guest falls ill and claims she was poisoned.

Scottsdale, Arizona, may not be the liveliest place on earth, but it's never been as dead as this. The first annual Old Town Zombie Walk is announced, and Mel, Angie, and the Fairy Tale Cupcake crew are donning their best undead attire to sell some horror-themed desserts to the hungry hordes. But fun turns to fright when Mel finds a real dead body in a prop casket outside of the bakery's truck - and the corpse looks alarmingly like a zombie of their own. Mel worries that someone near and dear was the real target.

1924. Lady Eleanor Swift has been on a grand tour around Italy for a month with her butler Clifford. Finally arriving in Venice, she’s thrilled to be attending the famous carnival: all that’s needed is the perfect bejewelled costume for her faithful bulldog, Gladstone. But on her first gondola ride to take in the sights, a passenger collapses into the canal with a knife sticking out of his back.

During the Mad Hatter Masquerade, a fundraiser hosted by the Friends of the Opera on the grounds of the old Pendleton Grist Mill, Harlan Sadler, husband of Cricket Sadler, the chairwoman, is killed. He’s been hit in the head with a croquet mallet, and his body hung on the chains and paddles of the grist mill.

It's summertime, but sales at their bakery are below zero, so Mel and Angie are willing to try anything to heat things up! When local legend Slim Hazard offers them a chance to sell cupcakes at the annual Juniper Pass rodeo, they're determined to rope in a pretty payday! But not everyone at the Juniper Pass is as sweet for Fairy Tale Cupcakes as Slim - including star bull-rider Ty Stokes.

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. So what could be more fun than a food walk in the city's Chinatown-International District? But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man's body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out. Who was he? What was he doing in the dust-encrusted herbal pharmacy in the hotel's basement? Why was the pharmacy closed up—and why are the owners so reluctant to talk?

Cat has a full plate at her Aspen Hills Warm Springs Resort, as a group of aspiring cozy mystery authors arrives for a writer's retreat. So when baker Dee Dee Meyer stirs up trouble by filing a false complaint with the health inspector against the B&B - all because she insists Cat's best friend Shauna stole her recipes - Cat marches into the shop to confront her.

A Cupcakes-And-Crime Caper When cupcake-loving croupier and private investigator Tiffany Black investigates the death of a food critic, things take an unpalatable turn... Meanwhile, Nanna's meddling in Stone's love life has Tiffany contemplating her own situation. "Winters will have you giggling into your book!"

Writer Catherine Davitt has returned to the Keys to research a book about Hemingway’s wives, but she’s also on the hunt for the truth about her missing friend. Hayley quickly agrees to help investigate and they hit the road to see what clues they might find. Back in the late 1970s, Catherine and her friend Veronica were part of a group of lost souls camping in the mangroves of Big Pine Key, until Veronica vanished, and the sheriff’s office cleared out the camp. Catherine and Hayley begin interviewing Big Pine Key residents who were around at the time of Veronica’s disappearance.

A local hat-maker’s death is ruled an accident by the cops – but Tiffany and Ian are on the case, trying to uncover the truth. The victim’s wife is convinced there’s foul play involved, and soon Tiffany and Ian also believe that to be the case. As the duo uncover secrets about the victim’s life, their list of suspects grows. However, throughout the investigation, the presence of Detective Benson, the LVMPD detective whose job seems to be making Tiffany and Ian’s lives miserable, looms large. First, as the person who signed off on the death as an accident, and then as a shadowy ...