Guest Sleuth Spotlight: L.B. Dayton -
Meet LB Dayton — Kat Calloway Cozy Mystery series. A Cinco de Mayo taco showdown in Dallas, a dead rival chef, and a tuxedo cat supervising like a food critic.
Series: A Kat Calloway Cozy Mystery — Book 6 of 6
The Book:
Kat Calloway is a top head chef in Dallas — the kind of woman who can run a kitchen on a Friday night without breaking a sweat. So when her boyfriend Bash and her grandmother Gramartha sign up for the city's fiercest Cinco de Mayo taco showdown, Kat's only job is to cheer from the sidelines. Until a rival chef turns up dead, and the festival goes from sizzling to seriously suspicious.
Dallas on Cinco de Mayo means smoke, salsa, and the kind of heat that has nothing to do with the grills. The taco competition is a citywide event, the trophies matter, and the trash talk runs hot enough to curdle the crema. When Bash and Gramartha land squarely in the suspect column, Kat has to step out from behind the line and start asking questions — because a top chef can handle kitchen chaos, but a murder investigation isn't on anyone's menu.
The suspect list grows hotter than ghost peppers. There's a disgraced judge with a grudge, a furious food critic with poison-pen tendencies, and a couple of former business partners who've been waiting years to settle a score. Through it all, Kat's tuxedo cat Tux supervises every move from the nearest countertop with the disdain of a Michelin reviewer. Then Gramartha is run off the road, and the case goes from spicy to sinister — and Kat has until the next round of cooking to figure out who's plating revenge.
🏆 #1 New Release in Cozy Culinary Mystery
Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (47 reviews)
What Readers Are Saying: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "A great cozy mystery that kept me turning the pages until the very end! Great creative characters and writing style!" — Amazon Reviewer
Rating: 4.6 on Goodreads (51 ratings)
“A Cinco de Mayo taco showdown, a tuxedo cat with the disdain of a Michelin critic, and a grandmother named Gramartha — L.B. Dayton had me at “go.” #1 New Release in Cozy Culinary Mystery, 4.6 stars, and the sixth book in a series readers don’t want to put down. If you love food-forward cozies with a romance subplot, opinionated pets, and a sleuth who can hold her own in a kitchen, this one’s going straight to the top of my TBR.”
Love Small-Town Mysteries?
If you enjoyed this spotlight, you'll love the Maple Grove Gazette—my weekly blog where a certain town archivist reports on the latest incidents in Maple Grove (there are always incidents), and I share the cozy mystery authors and books I think you need to know about.
👉 Read the latest Maple Grove Gazette
Want free early copies of my books? My ARC team, The Inner Circle, gets every new release before it hits Amazon — in exchange for honest reviews.
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Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Becca Garner: Clues, Chaos, and a Cat
Meet Becca Garner — a new voice in paranormal cozy mystery. A cat adoption, an unconscious volunteer, and a ghost who refuses to stay quiet.
Series: Standalone
The Book: Hazel Merriweather walks into a cluttered coastal animal shelter looking for two simple things — a cat, and maybe a fresh start. What she walks back out with is an unconscious volunteer on the floor, a regret-tinged ghost only she can see, and a decision made by the cat himself. Edgar, sharp-eyed and gray, is going home with her — a fact he has settled before she has finished filling out the paperwork.
The shelter sits in a coastal town where the fog rolls in and stays as long as it likes, and Hazel quickly learns the staff is a maze of secrets. The attack on the volunteer has been brushed off as an accident — too quickly, in her opinion. The ghost is not satisfied. Neither is Edgar, who has opinions and will share them. Together the three of them start asking the questions no one at the shelter wants answered.
A conspiracy-obsessed janitor, long at odds with the victim, insists he was the real target — and may not be wrong. A fast-talking grant writer, shaken and evasive, has every reason to dread what an investigation will turn up. Add a missing rescue dog, muddy pawprints leading into the coastal fog, hushed conversations behind closed doors, and a box of secrets buried in the sand. If Hazel and Edgar cannot piece the truth together in time, the shelter will fall — and the past will stay buried with it.
What Readers Are Saying: Just launched — reader reviews are still coming in.
“A stubborn gray cat with strong opinions, a regret-tinged ghost who refuses to stay quiet, and a coastal animal shelter full of secrets. Becca Garner is a new voice in the paranormal cozy lane, and her launch reviews are still rolling in. If you love amateur sleuths with sharp-eyed animal sidekicks, take time to discover this new author..”
Love Small-Town Mysteries?
If you enjoyed this spotlight, you'll love the Maple Grove Gazette—my weekly blog where a certain town archivist reports on the latest incidents in Maple Grove (there are always incidents), and I share the cozy mystery authors and books I think you need to know about.
👉 Read the latest Maple Grove Gazette
Want free early copies of my books? My ARC team, The Inner Circle, gets every new release before it hits Amazon — in exchange for honest reviews.
👉 Apply for Willow's Inner Circle | Get Ghosts Don't Use Blueprints on Amazon