by Sunny Frazier

Winter weather hasn’t decided whether to stay or let us move on to spring. Either way, let’s read and stay warm until Mother Nature makes up her mind.

As a kick-off to Charleston Fashion Week, tea shop owner Theodosia Browning is serving Limón tea in a lemon orchard. Nothing could ruin this except the murder of a fashion designer. As the lemon curd begins to sour, the victim’s daughter asks Theo for help to find the killer. It’s a tempest in a teapot in Lemon Curd Killer, twenty-fourth in Laura Child’s Tea Shop Mysteries. Recipes included.

More recipes are found in Four Charming Spells by Lynn Cahoon, the fourth in her Kitchen Witch Mysteries. Mia Malone is the owner of Mia’s Morsels Caterer and Cooking School in Magic Springs, Idaho. Mia is still reeling from the loss of her mother and believes there is more to her abrupt death. A coven member pulls her into a twisted mystery which is unsolvable. Now Mia must use her grandmother’s protective stone and her witchy friends to conjure phantoms from the past to play detective.

Another caterer and another Mia finds herself in trouble. Returning to Astoria, Queens, Mia Carina runs Belle View Banquet Manor, her Italian family’s catering business. When a reality show puts out a casting call, a motley crew of wanna-be actors and actresses descend. During the infighting and backstabbing, a body turns up in a pool house. It’s Four Parties and a Funeral in the fifth Catering Hall mystery by Maria DiRicco.

Diane Vallere presents a locked-room mystery, a la Agatha Christie. When Samantha Kidd’s shoe designer husband is a finalist for an industry award, Samantha sponsors a banquet table and invites friends and family. By the end of the night, most of the party aren’t on speaking terms. When the toastmaster’s body is found with a gilded knife in her chest, the golden evening becomes a 24-karat disaster. With brutal weather outside and 200 suspects inside, Samantha has only four hours to solve the crime. It’s a Gilt Trip is Samantha Kidd’s fourteenth outing.

Best of the Rest

Rhys Bowen & Clare Broyles—All That Is Hidden: Molly Murphy #19

David Rosenfeld—Good Dog, Bad Cop: The K Team #4

Lynn Cahoon—A Basketful of Murder: A Farm-to-Fork Mystery #7

Connie Shelton—Road Trips Can Be Murder: A Charlie Parker Mystery #21

Check out other mystery articles, reviews, book giveaways & mystery short stories in our mystery section. And join our mystery Facebook group to keep up with everything mystery we post, and have a chance at some extra giveaways. Be sure to check out our new mystery podcast too with mystery short stories, and first chapters read by local actors. A new episode goes up next week.

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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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