Culinary Fiction

A leisurely morning in the Louvre... What could possibly go wrong? For Ava Sext, an amateur sleuth who sells books from an outdoor stand in Paris overlooking the Seine, a visit to the Louvre ends with the murder of an artist who manages to leave her a clue to his death before he dies. With the help of her fellow book seller, Henri DeAth, a former notary in a country where notaries are a powerful caste, Ava investigates a group of artists and discovers a mythical painting someone is willing to kill for and that includes killing her! Death in the Louvre is a light-hearted cozy mystery set in ...

Easter weekend on the Jersey Shore is hopping. Poppy's Bed and Breakfast is busier than ever, but she needs to leave things in the hopefully capable hands of Aunt Ginny - and paws of Figaro the black smoke Persian. She's selling her paleo muffins and keto cookies at the Health and Beauty Expo in Cape May's Convention Hall. Normally sharing a booth with the love of her life would be a treat, but she's recently discovered secrets that throw her new romance into chaos.

During the week between Christmas and New Year's, the year-round population of Key West, Florida, faces a tsunami of tourists and snowbirds. It doesn't help that outrageously wealthy key-lime-pie aficionado David Sloan has persuaded the city to host his pie-baking contest. Every pie purveyor on the island is out to win the coveted Key Lime Key to the City, and Key Zest food-critic Hayley Snow is on the scene to report it. Meanwhile, Hayley's home life is turning more tart than sweet.

Set in the biggest small town in the country, Susan and Mike travel to St. Louis for their son’s Match Day ceremony. At the reception, the dean of the medical school drops dead under mysterious circumstances. Susan smells foul play. Teaming up with the detective’s mother, it's double trouble as she and her new bestie uncover secrets worthy of murder in Murder is Medical. In Murder is Universal, Susan and Valerie are on a flight when they discover the passenger in the middle seat dead on arrival. The dynamic duo is convinced it was murder. The dead passenger, owner of a successful ...

Welcome to The Kitchen Witch Wars season one finale! Our first season has certainly had its own unique ebb and flow. Thanks for being a fan, and for staying with us through our stickier moments. We do need to disclose a small technical difficulty before we can crown the champion: one of our crew was killed during the filming of this final episode. Foul play is suspected. Yes, it’s just the sort of thing host and aspiring witch Christelle Seabright was worried about all season long. And here she is so close to getting through it alive, too. Now she sees there are still menacing obstacles ...

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?

Tea maven Theodosia Browning and her tea sommelier, Drayton Conneley, are catering a Victorian Christmas party at a swanky mansion in downtown Charleston. Drucilla Heyward, the hostess, is one of the wealthiest women in town. As the champagne flows and the tea steeps, Drucilla is so pleased with the reception by her partygoers that she reveals her secret plan to Theodosia. However, before she can make the announcement, Theodosia finds her crumpled unconscious in the hallway.

Theodosia's Honey Bee Tea was an elegant affair set in Charleston's new Petigru Park amid newly planted native grasses and a community beekeeping project. But when a phony beekeeper shows up and sprays toxic smoke at the guests, the party erupts in chaos. Worse yet, a shot rings out and Osgood Claxton III, candidate for state legislature, falls to the ground—dead.

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.

The Christmas holidays are one of Lilah's favorite times of the year, filled with friends, family, and, of course, tons of food orders for her covered dish clients. But Lilah's Yuletide cheer ends when she sees a most Grinch-like crime: the murder of a Santa in a school parking lot. It turns out the deceased Kris Kringle was a complicated tangle of naughty and nice, with a long list of people who might have wanted him dead.

Is winning a TV show contest worth your very life? Apparently so—just ask novice witch Christelle Seabright, host of the wickedly popular new Kitchen Witch Wars. Two contestants have already been eliminated by “unorthodox” means. When one of those contestants rematerializes and demands to rejoin the cast because, they argue, they were murdered and therefore not technically eliminated, Christelle doesn’t bat an eye. In the paranormal realm you can’t let such things shock you. She is much more concerned about the untimely reappearance of someone from her own past. …And then ...

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.

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.

Maddie is hoping to have some downtime during Daybreak Island's off-season to tackle her to-do list. Her grandfather's house-turned-cat-cafe is under construction, and she's also scoping out places to open a juice bar on the island. On top of that, her relationship with adorable dog groomer Lucas has taken a pawsitive turn. But easy is getting harder every day for Maddie, especially when a big-name writer who's on the island working on a new project winds up floating in the canal.

I'm so excited! We're finally opening our restaurant! It's in Montana, of all places. But I'm okay with that. We'll adjust, and maybe I'll even find a hot guy here. The cowboys are not good, I learned that the hard way. That slimy, handsy guy at Angelo's reception turned me completely off the idea of finding one of those. But maybe I'll still be able to find a good man in Billings, they're not all cowboys. I really hope I find him soon, before I run out of time. The older I get, the more worried I am. All the females in my family have struggled to conceive, so there was a very good chance ...

It's the role of a lifetime for Jules. The Shakespeare Festival has returned to Ashland, Oregon, for the season and Torte has been cast as the supplier of Elizabethan-era treats for the main event. But on the eve of opening night, a brawl between Jules's friend Lance, the artistic director, and a strapping young thespian named Anthony almost brings down the house...and the next morning, Anthony is dead.

A murder staged to look like a suicide fools everyone except Albert Smith. He knows better. In Lyme Regis with his faithful dog, the victim invited him to visit the seaside resort. Now he’s dead, and Albert wants to know why.

When the chef tipped to win this year’s annual Eton Mess competition falls to his death in mysterious circumstances, Albert races to investigate—surely this is the work of the Gastrothief again.

For Julia Snowden, the Founder's Day summer celebration in Busman's Harbor, Maine, means helping her family's clambake company to prepare an authentic taste of New England seafood. Any Mainer will tell you that a real clambake needs wood for the fire...so why is there a foot sticking out of the oven?

Betrayal. Murder. A vineyard stained with secrets. Olivia Craven never expected her past to follow her … but now, it’s coming for her. After leaving behind the wreckage of her marriage, Olivia Craven hoped for a fresh start in the tranquil vineyards of Ogilvie. But when her estranged husband is found murdered in a wine barrel, and her mother is brutally attacked in her own home, Olivia is thrust into a dangerous game of cat and mouse. With Detective Harris circling, a Russian crime syndicate closing in, and a chilling discovery hidden in her most intimate belongings, Olivia must unravel...