by Sunny Frazier

Details at the end of this post on how to enter to win a copy of a book from a past Coming Attractions column, Read Herring Hunt by VM Burns.

It’s too hot to cook, so here are books not about fine dining but final dining with murder for dessert. Welcome a new series and return to the kitchen with your favorite authors.

It’s Live and Let Chai at the first Seaside Café Mystery by Bree Baker. Everly Swan is back at her seaside hometown, Charm, and owner of the Seaside Café. When a former councilman turns up dead with one of her glass tea jars next to him and poison in his system, it doesn’t look good for Everly’s business. Charm turns its back on her so she’s digging up clues. Everly and her business get attacked and a handsome detective discourages her from finding leads. Grab an ice tea and enjoy this beach read.

Crush Week in Nouvelle Vie is when tourists flock to Napa Valley, California, for the pressing of the grapes. Maison (Mimi) Rousseau, owner of the French bakery, Bistro, has started the Sweet Treats Festival. The manager for the festival is upsetting everybody, especially the person who her murdered in Bistro’s kitchen. Mimi’s first course of action is to whip up answers and catch the unsavory killer. A Soufflé of Suspicion is the second French Bistro mystery from Daryl Wood Gerber.

The great thing about being a second book is that readers can easily catch up to the series. In the Poppy McAllister series, Poppy is trying to get her gluten-free baking business off the ground while helping her aunt turn her Victorian house into a B&B in Cape May, New Jersey. But auntie’s new sleep meds are causing her to sleepwalk into neighboring homes and take snacks and knickknacks. When a humanitarian who worked with troubled teens is murdered, police suspect the “Snack Bandit.” It’s a frame job, and Poppy has to unscramble the motive. Libby Klein gives us Midnight Snacks are Murder and seven gluten-free recipes from Poppy’s kitchen!

Another second in a series is Lynn Cahoon’s Farm-to-Fork mystery, Killer Green Tomatoes. Time is ripe for Angie Turner to open her restaurant, The County Seat, in rural Idaho. Topping the menu are fried green tomatoes. When her supplier’s girlfriend turns up dead, the tomato farmer is the prime suspect. Angie needs to produce evidence to clear him before he gets fried!?

Purrder She Wrote is second in the Cat Café Mysteries by Cate Conte. It’s the grand opening of Daybreak Island’s cat café in Massachusetts. Co-owner Maddie James is purring with excitement for a chance to let customers to get cozy with kitties and maybe take one home. But a catfight erupts between an animal rights volunteer and a wealthy woman who wants to take a cat home immediately. When the rich patron is found dead, suspicion lands on the volunteer. Maddie must do whatever it takes to solve the crime and land her and her business on its feet.

It’s Death Over Easy at the Pans ‘N Pancakes in South Lick, Indiana. The annual Bill Monroe Bluegrass Festival is always lucrative for Robbie Jordan’s pancake eatery. This year she’s opening a bed and breakfast above the shop. A few musicians are guests and everything’s easy until one is choked to death by a banjo string. This is the fifth Country Store Mystery penned by Maddie Day.

Nothing kills a good party like a murder! Mystery bookstore owner/amateur sleuth Tricia Miles throws a housewarming at her apartment where one guest gets poisoned. Are her appetizers that unappetizing, or is something sinister going on? Meanwhile, her town of Stoneham, New Hampshire, is experiencing a crime wave. Can Tricia handle everything swirling around her? Find out in Poisoned Pages, twelfth in Lorna Barrett’s Booktown Mysteries.

To enter to win a copy of Read Herring Hunt by VM Burns simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “dine out,” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen July 7, 2018. U.S. residents only. If entering via email please include your mailing address, and if via comment please include your email address.

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Sunny Frazier worked with an undercover narcotics team in Fresno County for 17 years before turning her energies to writing the Christy Bristol Astrology Mysteries. Based in the San Joaquin Valley of California, the novels are inspired by real cases and 35 years of casting horoscopes.

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