by Sunny Frazier

You’ve done enough baking and cooking over the holidays. Now kick back and reward yourself with these mysteries about baking and cooking.

The first of a new series comes from Libby Klein. Class Reunions Are Murder introduces us to Poppy McAlister, a new widow living on cookies, infomercials, and chats with her cat…been there, done that. No way she’s attending her twenty-five-year class reunion in Cape May, New Jersey, but her best friend insists they make an appearance, plus it’s an excuse to visit her crazy aunt. Things get complicated when a former nemesis (and mean girl cheerleader) winds up dead right in front of Poppy’s old locker. Singled out as the killer, it’s up to Poppy to clear her name. But between protecting her aunt from disaster and tackling a gluten-free diet, can Poppy crack the case before she’s voted “Most Likely to Die”? Includes gluten-free recipes from Poppy’s Kitchen.

If reunions are murder, you can imagine how a wedding can be. In the third Wedding Planner Mystery, Mallory Shepard just got a big gig planning the wedding of an actress and famous musician. It’s all set for Valentine’s Day at Mallory’s B&B in Pennsylvania. Not only that, but the wedding will be filmed for the TV reality show. Then the maid of honor dropped out by dropping dead. But, the show must go on, despite a meddling mother and a foot of snow. Stephanie Blackmoore gives us Murder Borrowed, Murder Blue. Beware the Bouquet.

We’re at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, and it’s the role of a lifetime for Jules Capshaw. Her bakery Torte is chosen to bake Elizabethan treats for the Shakespeare Festival. But on the eve of opening night, a brawl between the artistic director and an actor almost brings down the house. The next morning the actor is found dead. Now it’s up to Jules to cut through backstage betrayals and co-stars with secrets before Another One Bites the Crust, Ellie Alexander’s seventh bakeshop mystery.

Meanwhile, in South Lick, Indiana, it’s Biscuits and Slashed Browns at Pans ‘N Pancakes when owner Robbie Jordan arranges a breakfast-themed cook-off for the annual maple syrup festival. When a professor from Boston shows up and makes enemies with scientists on the maple tree panel, he’s found dead from a local restauranteur’s knife. Next, a biologist disappears and an innocent woman is dragged into the mess. Robbie has to set her maple biscuits aside to solve the mystery. This is the fourth Country Store Mystery by Maddie Day. Recipes included.

It was Allie Larkin’s dream to be a ballet dancer. When a bad fall halts her dream, she heads home to Mystic Bay, Connecticut, to heal and help her aunt get the Lazy Mermaid Lobster Shack off the ground. Winning the food festival’s Best Lobster Roll contest would help. But then a contest judge dies after eating a roll from a rival, and now her aunt is a suspect. Allie’s not going to let her aunt be blamed so she brings in friends, family, and customers to trap the killer. Curses, Boiled Again! is Shari Randall’s second Lobster Shack Mystery book.

Stuck in Silver Lake, Ohio, and dying for a donut? Who you gonna call? The Emergency Dessert Squad! It’s Dial M for Mousse in their third outing. Owner and baker Winnie Johnson is working her buns off to create motivational desserts for an artists’ retreat. But then the retreat owner is found dead surrounded by five very eccentric artists as suspects. Laura Bradford sets the dessert bar high for another delicious mystery. Recipes included.

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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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