Well hello there lovely readers,
We’ve finally made it. In just a few days time, summer will fade into memory and autumn will be upon us. You’ve probably already noticed ghosties, witch hats, and pumpkins trickling into stores, and you likely know at least one person who has already started to clear the real spider webs out of their corners in favor of faux ones. We’re not going to lie, we have a few decorations of our own waiting in the wings as we speak.
But, until that fateful day, we’re merely going to tip-toe the line towards Spooky Season and enjoy ourselves some wonderfully quirky cozy mysteries while we wait. And, as always, we’ve made a list to share with you. Do some of them feature a few of our favorite Halloween-adjacent paranormal staples? You bet your sweater-in-70-degree-weather-wearing bottom they do. However, there are some without for those of you who aren’t quite ready for all of that.
So, go ahead and grab yourself a hot apple cider or PSL (you know you want to), wrap yourself in your softest blanket, and cozy up with a couple of our favorite amateur sleuths as they scour their towns for possible leads, and inevitably fall into shenanigans galore.
Monkshood, Tea, & Murder by Joni Folger
The ebook of this one will be .99 this week from 9/20-9/27
Fellow witches Lydie Charles and Vanessa Deerborne strive to bring joy to their community with the events they plan and cater. The Seal Cove Garden Society’s annual garden party is next up on the agenda, but Lydie has been having some disturbing visions with the Society playing a starring role. Something dark is afoot, and the women know it’s going to take more than a simple spell to head off what’s coming when Society members start dropping like rose petals.
Game of Scones by Mary Lee Ashford
The ebook of this one will be FREE this week from 9/20-9/22
At Sugar & Spice Community Cookbooks, business is flatter than a fritter and so Sugar and Spice are thrilled when the local Founders Club hires them to assemble a collection of old-time recipes for the town’s upcoming bicentennial celebration. It’s Recipe Wars in small town St. Ignatius and the town’s rival bed & breakfast owners, one of them Spice’s aunt, end up in a food fight over who has the best scones. The situation heats up and when things turn deadly, Sugar and Spice have to cook-up a scheme to find the killer before the town council votes to scrap their cookbook deal.
Tempest in the Tea Leaves by Kari Lee Townsend
In the fortune telling business, there are a lot of pretenders, but Sunshine Meadows is the real deal—and her predictions can be lethally accurate…
Leaving the Big Apple for the quaint town of Divinity, New York, Sunny is determined to start anew and make it on her own as a psychic. But when she sits down to do a reading for the local librarian, what she finds at the bottom of the teacup is anything but helpful. And when her visions soon come true, hard-nosed and handsome Detective Mitch Stone is convinced they sound more like incrimination than divination.
Piper Addison has three problems: a broken espresso machine, malfunctioning magic, and a dead body. Guess which one she doesn’t see coming?
One month from forty, Piper Addison thinks she finally has life figured out. Sure, her bank account could be fuller and the cafe she opened with the last of her savings could use some help, but what’s a few kinks for an Orchard Hollow witch?
Too bad Piper can’t witch to save her life, which is exactly what she might need to do when a dead body is discovered in the alley behind her cafe. To make matters worse, all the evidence points to Piper and the local sheriff is not too keen on the town’s paranormal inhabitants.
Set Sail for Murder by Richard Tyler Jordan
Polly Pepper, the queen of TV musical comedy, is battling professional stagnation and a bank account on life support. So, when her scene-stealing former co-star and eternal diva, Laura Crawford, extends an invitation for a nostalgia-infused voyage, Polly jumps at the chance.
As the cruise liner sets sail, Polly’s excitement curdles to dread when she discovers that beneath the glitzy façade, old rivalries and simmering tensions are ready to boil over. Things take an absolutely bananas turn when Laura is found dead.
Now, Polly must step into her favorite role—detective—to uncover the truth behind this maritime mystery.
Liver Let Die by Liz Lipperman
Jordan McAllister dreams of becoming a popular sports columnist but gets stuck in a po-dunk town writing personal ads for a small time newspaper. When she’s offered a chance to fill in for a local food critic off on sick leave, she jumps at the chance rationalizing that it’s one step closer to her dream. However, when a dead body is found underneath her apartment stairwell with her name and number along with it, she becomes the prime suspect, as well as the main course on the murder menu.
Flora Flowerdew & the Mystery of the Duke’s Diamonds by Amanda McCabe
Flora Flowerdew has a secret. The former Florrie Gubbins, music hall dancer, is now Madame Flowerdew, one of London’s most renowned spirit mediums. But it’s actually her beloved Pomeranian dog, Chou-Chou, who can see the ghosts.
One of her most lucrative seances, for the wealthy Petrie family whose daughter is about to marry a handsome young duke, goes chaotically awry. The duke’s late, and very irate, grandfather demands Flora and his grandson Benedict find the long-missing family diamonds—even the search becomes littered with mayhem and murder! Can Flora discover the jewels before she loses her career, her sanity—and her heart?
Cracker Jacked by Barbara Witek
When the news of her mother’s passing finally reaches her, a guilt-ridden Juli returns home ready to make amends with her past. Turning her mother’s antique store into an organic café for people and their pets seems to be the fresh start she needs. Only she doesn’t count on her old friend, Chase Hargrave, being the town Sheriff or that she’d be his number one suspect when a man turns up dead in her mother’s rose garden.
Booked for Homicide by S.E. Babin
“When a rare book order leads me right to a homicide, somehow I’m the one investigating…
I’m Dakota Adair, owner of Tattered Pages, a bookstore specializing in cool and quirky books, and a grumpy Persian cat named Poppy. 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. I have to find out whodunnit and quick, before I become the next subject of a murder mystery…”
