Guest Sleuth Spotlight: BJ Cade

Series: A Willa Honeycutt Cozy Mystery

The Book: Candlesticks and Corpses

Willa Honeycutt only meant to drop off cookies. Harmony Hollow's charity haunted house at Wexler House is full of fake bodies, and she was there for the fundraiser, not the scares. Then she overhears Evan Wexler give the charity director a deadline, "until Sunday or else," and a few hours later Evan is dead. He is not one of the fake ones.

Sheriff Jack Gilmore would prefer Willa stay out of it. She doesn't. Neither does her Aunt Syl, who saw someone creeping around in a ghostly bride costume before the haunt ever opened, and who then found a note under her windshield wiper telling her to stop talking about it. Aunt Syl has no intention of stopping. She has backup, too: her friends Gertie and Shirley, who make up the town's self-appointed War Council.

The charity director had plenty to lose if Evan talked. Evan's brother has been nursing a family grudge for years. Willa's German Shepherd, Sadie, keeps nosing at a hidden passage in the old house, and Shirley's dog, Walter, mostly keeps objecting to his yellow sweater. Then somebody traps Aunt Syl inside that passage under a pile of collapsed shelves, and it's clear the killer isn't bluffing.

Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars (17 ratings)

What Readers Are Saying: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "The War Council was 1000% committed to the Halloween season." — Susan Estrada

“A haunted house full of fake bodies, one real one, and an aunt who got a written warning to stop talking and took it as encouragement. If you’ve ever met an Aunt Syl, you already know who the killer should be worried about.”

— Willow 🌿

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

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Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Bessie Barr

Series: A Pelican Shores Cozy Mystery

The Book:

Finn Dockrey already has plenty going on in Pelican Shores. Things with Detective Pace Stringfellow are heating up, her best friend Birdie has a pan of pumpkin streusel bars in the oven, and Tory McGee has talked a flock of glamorous international visitors into modeling her new Tide & Brim hat line. Then the island's estate dealer, Kitty Kelley, turns up dead.

The visitors don't seem all that interested in hats. They keep asking about old paintings, jewelry, and the big island estates, and they know each other a lot better than they let on. When Finn hears the name von Röemer, a family of legendary thieves, along with rumors that two lost treasures have surfaced somewhere on the island, Kitty's death starts to look like part of something much bigger.

Kitty didn't leave many friends behind. An angry son says she cheated his family out of a priceless first-edition Hemingway. Her loyal right-hand man has a hole in his alibi. And then there are the hat people. Finn's dog, Beau, and Birdie's cat, Queen Bean, are on the case too, and the deeper Finn digs, the clearer it gets that somebody wants her to stop.

Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (66 ratings)

What Readers Are Saying: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Readers should be prepared to give up sleep, you won't want to stop reading." — SusanneD

Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars on Goodreads (33 ratings)

“A hat line nobody asked for, a flock of “models” who’d rather talk about estate jewelry, and a dead dealer with a long list of people she cheated. If you’ve always suspected tourists of being up to something, Pelican Shores agrees with you.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: L.B. Dayton

Series: A Sadie Stewart Cozy Mystery, Book 7

The Book:

Sadie Stewart has a Halloween show to hang, and she means for it to be the night Chicago's art world remembers. Then a painting turns up that nobody on her staff hung. It's a portrait of Sadie herself, standing alone in a bleak landscape of thorns and blood.

Underneath it is a bloodstained scarf and a note with a warning: play by the phantom's rules, or more people die. So Sadie plays. With her best friend Daniel steady at her side, she follows the phantom's clues across the city, from a haunted mansion to a glittering masquerade, and every treat she's handed turns out to be a trick.

The guest list doesn't help. William Epton is still bitter that the gallery isn't his, and his daughter Maya is ambitious enough to want it for herself. Billionaire JD Larocca and reporter Hugh Hartley are both competing for Sadie's attention, which isn't making her judgment any clearer. And Solomon, her Doberman, won't let her out of his sight, which is exactly right, because the painting is starting to look less like a threat and more like a prophecy.

Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars (40 ratings)

What Readers Are Saying: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "This is definitely a Halloween story that has a touch of creepy with it, while remaining a cozy mystery that is entertaining to read." — skoey

Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars on Goodreads (34 ratings)

“A portrait of Sadie that nobody remembers hanging, a scarf underneath it, and a phantom who sets the rules. It’s Book 7, but the author says each one stands alone, so you can start right here. If you want October to feel like October, with a masked ball at the end and a Doberman standing guard the whole way, this is your book.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Nora Brinkley

Series: Greystone Harbor Cozy Mysteries, Book 6

The Book:

Sloane Harper runs a café in Greystone Harbor, and the town has big plans for its first annual Harbor Bake-Off. Then celebrated baker Vanessa Marsh turns up dead in the prep kitchen, holding a piping bag that isn't hers. The whole town calls it a heart attack. Bailey, Sloane's labradoodle, isn't buying it.

Once murder is confirmed, the sweetest event of the season turns into a tangle of ruined careers, quiet deals, and old grudges. The bake-off goes on, the prize is still up for grabs, and somebody in that tent planned this down to the minute.

The suspects aren't short on motive. A retired pastry chef needs the prize money to keep her bakery open. A wealthy sponsor has a lucrative partnership to protect. And the son of a baker Vanessa once humiliated in public has finally come to face her. Every clue points a different way, and Sloane has until the final ribbon is awarded to find the one that's true.

Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (14 reviews)

What Readers Are Saying: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "The murder was so well planned that the killer is hiding in plain sight!" — Terri Echols

“A bake-off, a borrowed piping bag, and a labradoodle who doesn’t believe the official story. If you’ve ever trusted a dog’s judgment over the whole town’s, Greystone Harbor is waiting for you.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Bessie Barr

Series: An OWL Ladies Cozy Mystery

The Book:

Minnie Mae Harper has been through this once already, and the lesson stuck: don't move until you've got something to move with. So when McKinney turns up another body, she doesn't rush it. She waits, and she watches, and she lets the town tell on itself.

It's February 1900, and the square is strung with paper hearts and fiddle music for the Ladies Aid Society's Valentine's Day Square-Dance-a-thon — three nights, the whole county, everybody's best boots. Before sunrise on the second day, Amos Pruitt is found dead behind the Magnolia House. Pruitt called the dances and collected other people's secrets, and he was the sort of man nobody much liked and everybody tolerated, which in a town this size is its own kind of arrangement. Now it's over, and half the county has a reason to be glad.

That's the trouble. Everybody on that dance floor had cause, and everyone who didn't is busy pointing at somebody who did. Worse, the person the evidence keeps circling back to is someone Minnie Mae trusts — and trust, she is finding out, is a terrible thing to be carrying when you're trying to see a thing clearly. Six church ladies with quilting needles and strong opinions take the case between them. The answer isn't hiding in the dark. It's out on a crowded floor in full view, wearing something that looks like it has nothing to do with murder at all.

Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars (37 ratings)

“Six church ladies with quilting needles and strong opinions does most of the work by itself. What makes this one worth your evening is the shape of the problem — the answer is out on a crowded dance floor the whole time, in plain sight, disguised as something with nothing to do with a murder. If you want turn-of-the-century Texas with six women in it who have no intention of being managed, Bessie Barr has built you exactly that.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: L.B. Dayton

Series: A Kat Calloway Cozy Mystery

The Book:

Kat Calloway has cooked her way through worse than a Halloween party. She is a head chef with a Food Network gala on her plate, a best friend working the room beside her, and one pastry chef she has been carefully not staring at all evening. Then the host drops dead in the middle of the dance floor, and the night stops being about the food.

The gala was supposed to be the good kind of spooky—costumes, sweets, cameras, and maybe a stolen dance if the evening went her way. Instead Morris Day is dead, a masked man dressed exactly like Bash Laurent has disappeared into a room full of people wearing masks, and the police have arrested the one man Kat is certain didn't do it. Clearing him means picking apart a night when everybody's face was covered and nobody can say for sure who they were standing beside.

It does not help that Doll is being strange in a way Kat can't quite name, or that Tux—her tuxedo cat, who has never in his life missed a meal or an opportunity—picks this of all nights to vanish. So Kat heads into it with a crush in handcuffs, a friend she is trying not to suspect, a cat she cannot find, and a costume nobody can identify. There are recipes waiting at the end, which is the sort of thing that makes a long night worth it.

Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars (127 ratings)

What Readers Are Saying: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Someone killed at a Halloween masquerade ball and Kat involved again. Can she spring Bash? Can she stop worrying about being a third wheel? You definitely need to read this book to find out. Splendid writing as always. Highly recommend.”

“A room full of masks is a rotten place to commit a murder and a worse place to prove who did—which is exactly why this one works. If you like your culinary cozies with a framed love interest, a best friend you’re not entirely sure about, and a cat who clearly knows more than he’s saying, Kat Calloway has your evening covered. Stay for the recipes.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Cora Finch

Series: The Daphne Cole Mysteries

The Book:

Daphne Cole runs the bookstore café that anchors downtown Tansy Ridge, and by all rights, Lake Days week should be her busiest, happiest stretch of the summer—boat races on the water, a steady line for scones, the whole town out enjoying itself. Then a true-crime podcaster with a national following rolls into town looking to reopen an old wound, and by the next morning, he's the one who needs investigating.

Elliot Castille came to Tansy Ridge to prove Sheriff Mac Weaver had a hand in a murder that's sat unsolved for five years—and less than a day later, Elliot himself is dead, with the evidence pointing straight at the sheriff. Daphne isn't buying it, not for a second, and she's got her Old English Sheepdog, Mooney, keeping her company while she works out why. The trouble is, whoever actually did this was careful—every clue left behind looks like it was left on purpose.

The suspect list reads like half the town has a motive: there's Tessa Grant, the former business partner who says Elliot built his career on the ashes of hers, and Maren Lawrence, whose family's worst day became one of his most-watched episodes. Daphne's got a frame job to unravel and a sheriff's life to save before the real killer finishes covering their tracks—and Mooney, for his part, is no help at all except at making sure she doesn't do it alone.

Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars (15 reviews)

What Readers Are Saying: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "The plot was wonderfully complex, the characters are interesting, and there are some deft touches of humor." — Early reader

“A true-crime podcaster who picked the wrong week to dig up an old grave, a sheriff who can’t prove he didn’t do it, and a bookstore owner with a very large, very unbothered dog. If that’s the kind of frame-up you like watching someone else unravel, Cora Finch built you one.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Tessa Crumb

Series: A Maisie Brooks Cozy Mystery

The Book:

Maisie Brooks came back to Meadow Creek to take over her late grandmother's café, and she arrived braced for exactly two things: gossip, and a learning curve steeper than anybody warned her about. What she had not planned for was a first blind date who never walked through the door—because by the time she was checking her watch, he was already dead on a road outside town, in what everyone official was calling a tragic accident.

Maisie doesn't think it was one. Nothing she can point to at first, just the small wrongness of a story that fits together a little too neatly for a town this size. So she starts paying attention, which in Meadow Creek is its own kind of dangerous. The café gives her a front-row seat to every conversation that matters, an old friend is willing to be pulled into it, and her dog is better company on a long think than most people. What she finds is that the picture-perfect surface has cracks in it, and that they've been there a while.

The suspects come into focus faster than the truth does. There's a girlfriend whose grief runs defensive rather than sad. There's a sheriff who seems less interested in what happened than in having it settled. And there's a whole town's worth of people who would rather Maisie went back to running the café and left the rest alone. By the time she understands she's stirring up more than gossip, somebody has already decided how far they're willing to go to keep the thing buried—and Maisie is the only one still asking.

Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (41 reviews)

“A café sleuth’s real advantage isn’t nerve, it’s position—everybody in town walks past her counter eventually, and they all talk. Maisie Brooks inherits a café, a blind date who never shows, and a whole town that has quietly agreed the death was an accident. I want to know who agreed to that first.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Sloane Foster

Series: A Marnie Devlin Cozy Mystery

The Book:

Marnie Devlin came to Willow Springs for a fresh start and a vintage boutique—good light, good bones, and a town small enough to learn by heart. What she did not come for was a body behind a wall. But an obnoxious auctioneer turns up dead in a hidden room of a grand old Victorian manor, and at sixty-five Marnie has the two qualifications that matter: she notices everything, and nobody thinks to watch her while she's doing it.

She has help. Ruby, who manages the boutique, knows everyone's business in Willow Springs slightly before they know it themselves. Taco is a very small dog with an outsized talent for turning up exactly where the interesting thing is. And Marnie herself carries an encyclopedic memory for couture and a hopeless soft spot for strays, which is how she has ended up consulting on murder again in a town she moved to for the quiet.

The suspects arrive faster than the answers. The victim's niece was positioned to inherit his job and does not appear to be grieving it. A respected local doctor was swindled out of a fortune in forged art and has not forgotten who by. Every lead twists somewhere Marnie didn't expect, and when a witness is attacked, the shape of the thing changes—this isn't one death and a tidy motive. Somebody in Willow Springs has spent a long time behind a pleasant smile, and they have no intention of stopping now.

Released: August 22, 2026

‍ ‍

“A body walled up in a Victorian manor, a sixty-five-year-old shop owner who can date a hat at forty paces, and a dog small enough that nobody bothers to move him out of the room. Marnie Devlin gets underestimated on sight, and Sloane Foster clearly knows exactly how useful that is.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Anna deWhal

Series: Cedar Harbor Cozy Mysteries—Book 9 of 12

The Book:

Emma Chandler has lived in Cedar Harbor long enough to know how the town handles bad news: quickly, kindly, and in a way that lets everyone get back to work by Monday. So when Walt Greaves is found dead on the boards near the working dock, the verdict arrives almost before he does. Slippery footing. An old man. An unlucky evening. Nobody argues.

What bothers Emma is the box. Walt kept a collection of old harbor objects, and in the last stretch of his life he had gone to real trouble to keep it from becoming public—which is a strange amount of effort to spend on things the water had already finished with. With antiques expert Ollie Bradshaw, Detective Ethan Carter, and one very patient dog, Emma starts pulling on that thread. The question isn't who Walt Greaves was. It's what he was still holding onto, and who else knew he had it.

The trail is paper and rust and photographs: records that don't line up, metal damaged before it ever went in the water, pictures nobody meant to keep. It runs back to a fire decades old, to the man the town assigned the blame to and who is not around to answer for it, and to a second boat that someone with money and standing has spent a very long time keeping off the record. Old harbor glass is only harmless because the water wore the edges down. Nothing wore the edges off this.

Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (21 ratings)

‍ ‍

“A dead man on the dock, a box of harbor junk he’d worked hard to keep private, and a fire the town assigned blame for decades ago and never looked at twice. If your kind of cozy does its detecting in county records and old photographs, Emma Chandler works that way on purpose.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: L.B. Dayton

Series: A Kat Calloway Cozy Mystery—the newest in the series (7 books)

The Book:

Chef Kat Calloway should be having the night of her life. Her catering business is finally taking off, her friends have pulled off the surprise birthday party of a lifetime, and then the door opens on the best gift of all: her best friend Doll, home from Paris with a pastry box in her hands and a one-way ticket in her pocket. For one perfect evening, everything is exactly as it should be.

Then Doll spots a familiar face outside Kat's house. Days later, the same man turns up at Kat's first high-profile catering event, and Doll finally tells the truth: she left Paris to escape Luca Ferrante, a man who spent months stalking her and refusing to take no for an answer—and he has followed her to Dallas.

What Kat uncovers is worse than a stalker. It's a pattern: a missing woman who looks unsettlingly like Doll, two dead wives, and a predator convinced that what he wants belongs to him. With Ben, Bash, Gramartha, Javi, and one very opinionated tuxedo cat at her side, Kat races to put the pieces together before the danger closes in—because this time the mystery isn't threatening her future. It's hunting someone she loves.

Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (69 ratings)

Rating: 4.6 on Goodreads (54 ratings)

‍ ‍

“A best friend home from Paris, the reason she left close behind her, and a kitchen full of people who close ranks the moment one of their own is in danger. If you like a cozy with a little more pulse—and a tuxedo cat with opinions about everyone who walks in—Kat Calloway’s seventh is the one where it gets personal.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Adeline Krupp

Series: The Claire Whitmore Cozy Mysteries—Books 1–4, complete in one boxset

The Book: Claire Whitmore inherits a Victorian mansion in the picturesque coastal town of Saltcliff Cove and does the sensible thing: she opens an inn. The town does the less sensible thing almost immediately—an antiques dealer dies clutching documents about her property, and the thread Claire pulls leads through blackmail and corruption straight back to her mother's death and the family secrets nobody meant for her to inherit along with the house.

That's Book 1, and Saltcliff Cove is only getting started. A marine biologist, Dr. Evelyn Cross, arrives with cryptic warnings and is soon found dead in the saltmarsh, her death tangled in a decades-old conspiracy involving the town's most powerful family. Then a guest turns up at the inn carrying her late sister's journal, convinced a fatal fall at the lighthouse was murder—and Claire investigates despite the warnings, the stalking, and the threats, racing to expose what's hidden in old shipping documents before she becomes the next victim.

It all comes to a head among the camellias, when the garden club matriarch dies during the annual Garden Tour and Claire uncovers a secret society of powerful women who have been running Saltcliff from behind its flower beds all along—with a connection to her own family, and truths someone will kill to keep buried. Four full mysteries, one inn, one town where the postcard view has a body count.

Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars (18 ratings)

“Four murders, one seaside inn, and a garden club with better-kept secrets than the harbor. If your favorite kind of cozy is the kind where paradise has a past—and an innkeeper stubborn enough to dig it up—Saltcliff Cove is a full weekend, handled.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: B. J. Cade

Series: A Willa Honeycutt Cozy Mystery — the latest in the series

The Book: Willa Honeycutt came to Harmony Hollow's very first Pup Parade for the wagging tails and the free biscuits, and expected the day's biggest drama to be a costume malfunction. Then celebrity rescue influencer Janice Young is found dead in the grooming tent, bludgeoned with Mayor Bell's own participation trophy—and the wagging tails become the least interesting thing in town.

Janice, it turns out, hadn't come to the Hollow for the photo ops. She'd been quietly pulling on threads that nobody wanted pulled: missing dog files, secret placements, shelter records that didn't square with the feel-good adoption stories everyone loved to share. Sheriff Jack Gilmore orders Willa to stay out of it, which she manages for about seven minutes before she and her sharp-nosed German Shepherd, Sadie, are following the evidence anyway—with an eccentric great-aunt and two equally meddlesome friends close behind.

Everyone in the Hollow has something to protect: a shelter director missing an audit file, a breeder Janice had taken money from, a brother demanding her phone before the body's even cold, and a terrified volunteer who knows more than she'll say. The trail runs through switched collars, renamed dogs, and a rescue operation with more secrets than Aunt Sylvia's taxidermy collection—until it leads to an abandoned stock barn, a dog that was never meant to be found, and the ugly realization that Janice wasn't exposing the town's secrets. She was selling them. And now the killer has one last secret left to bury.

“What sells me on this one is the turn underneath the wagging tails: a rescue operation with secrets, and a victim who wasn’t the hero of her own story. If you like your cozies warm on top and genuinely twisty underneath, with a German Shepherd who earns her keep, this may be your next favorite read.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Neela Snow

Series: A Claire Winters Cozy Mystery ‍ ‍

The Book: ‍ Claire Winters has poured enough coffee at The Cozy Nook Café to know when a summer morning in Millfield is about to go sideways. When the town rolls out its Heritage Picnic & Paths Festival—scenic walks, riverside picnics, the cheerful nostalgia small towns do best—she's expecting a busy, happy weekend. What she gets is the festival's organizer, dead on the old boathouse trail, and a celebration that stops cold.

The trouble is, the victim had a real talent for making enemies behind a polished smile, and Millfield is suddenly full of people who won't miss her. With her journalist friend digging through the town's dusty records, a deputy trying to keep the investigation on the rails, and a quietly supportive brown tabby overseeing the whole affair, Claire starts pulling threads—and every one of them leads back to Camp Alder, a long-shuttered summer camp shadowed by a tragedy the town never truly faced. ‍

A furious trail guide and a former camper carrying painful memories both had reason to want the organizer gone. But the deeper Claire follows the winding paths between buried lies and present-day corruption, the clearer it becomes that someone in Millfield will do anything to keep the past exactly where it has been all these years—out of sight. Some trails, it turns out, were closed for a reason.

“A festival organizer dead on the boathouse trail, a shuttered summer camp nobody wants to talk about, and a café owner too stubborn to leave it alone—that’s a premise I can get behind. Claire Winters is the kind of sleuth I have a soft spot for: nosy for the right reasons, and smart enough to follow the quiet trail instead of the loud one. If Millfield sounds like the sort of town you’d happily spend a hot weekend untangling, you’ll be in good company here.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Nora Brinkley

Series: A Greystone Harbor Cozy Mystery, Book 3

The Book: Murder at Lighthouse Point

Sloane Harper has one job this weekend: keep the Blue Lantern Café stocked, staffed, and profitable while Lighthouse History Weekend fills Greystone Harbor with tourists. Instead, the town's most difficult resident turns up dead in the lighthouse lantern room—and the only clue was hiding in plain sight.

The whole harbor is buzzing, the official story is tidy, and Sloane cannot ignore a puzzle whose details refuse to add up. When Bailey, her sharp-eyed labradoodle, alerts on the clue everyone else overlooked, Sloane starts pulling at threads someone worked very hard to keep buried.

There's no shortage of people who wanted Theo Basset silenced—a harbor rival nursing a long-standing grudge, and a visiting historian dragging a damaged reputation behind him. But the deeper Sloane digs, the clearer it becomes that the real answer reaches far beyond old arguments: someone in Greystone Harbor is protecting a decades-old secret tied to the lighthouse, and they'll do whatever it takes to keep the truth from coming back with the tide.

Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (21 reviews)

“A café owner who can’t leave a puzzle alone, a labradoodle who notices what everyone else misses, and a clue hiding in plain sight at the top of a lighthouse. If you like your mysteries salt-aired, dog-assisted, and built on decades-old small-town secrets, start here.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Bessie Barr

Series: An OWL Ladies Cozy Mystery — Book 1 of 3 (reads as a standalone; Book 1 introduces the cast) ‍

The Book: ‍

New Year's Day, 1900. A brand-new century, a hard Texas frost—and a dead man floating face-down in the McKinney courthouse-square water tank. Minnie Mae Harper is sixty years old, armed with a basket of eggs and a lifetime of reading people, and she is, though the town would never suspect it, the most dangerous thing in Collin County.

When Leroy McMurtry turns up dead on the first morning of the twentieth century, McKinney settles comfortably on the obvious answer: a livery argument, two brothers with a history of fire, and motive stacked three ways over. Minnie Mae helps build that case herself—until a quiet man standing in a jail doorway says four words she can't shake loose. She isn't working alone, and she never has been. There's a knitting circle behind her: a boarding-house owner, a milliner, a mercantile wife, a doctor's daughter, and her own sister-in-law, women who gather in barns and reading rooms with their needles out and their ears open.

They don't have badges. They don't need them. What they have is a whole town that underestimates them completely—and a wrong answer none of them can let stand. Before there was the Only Women's League, there was just a knitting circle, a dead man in a water tank, and one farmwife who refused to look away. Warm, witty, and thick with frontier-era charm, Tanked is the first thread in a found-family series about six very different women discovering exactly what they're made of.

If you love the historical cozies of Verity Bright, Beth Byers, Magda Alexander, or Tonya Kappes, you'll feel right at home in McKinney.

Just launched — reader reviews are still coming in.

“Bessie Barr has a gift for handing you a character in a single line and having you root for them by the next. So a sixty-year-old farmwife armed with a basket of eggs and a lifetime of reading people, a body in a water tank on the very first morning of the twentieth century, and a knitting circle that runs on sharp needles and sharper ears? I already know these are folks I’m going to love spending time with. If you like your mysteries with real history, real heart, and a heroine the whole town underestimates, start here.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Tessa Silver

Feathers of Fading Magic

Series: A Quillhaven Cozy Mystery (the series can be read in any order)

The Book:

Veterinary assistant Meredith Lee has never met a problem she couldn't explain—until a wildlife ranger named Finn Flaherty walks into the Kindred Creatures Refuge carrying an injured owl whose feathers have gone the color of ash. Something is wrong in Quillhaven. The animals have gone quiet, and the forest seems to be holding its breath.

Quillhaven is a magical New England town protected for generations by an unseen Boundary—and that Boundary is unraveling, thread by thread. When a young runaway named Sylvie Brooks stumbles out of the forest cradling something impossible—a mother Phoenix and her fledglings, all of them fading fast—the town's carefully tended magic stops being a private matter and becomes everyone's problem. Meredith, who trusts what she can measure, suddenly can't explain a single thing she's seeing.

From the shelves of local witch Annie Hart's shop, Spellbound Stories, to a desperate healing ritual at the disintegrating eastern ridge, an unlikely band of Quillhaven residents—magical and otherwise—races to restore what's been neglected before it slips away for good. There's the ashen owl, the failing Phoenix and her fledglings, a runaway with a secret, and a refuge full of creatures depending on people who barely understand the magic they're trying to save. Underneath the mystery, it's a story about belonging, legacy, healing, and the surprising courage it takes to open your mind to the impossible.

What Readers Are Saying: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Tessa Silver's stories are like mini vacations to cozy, paranormal Quillhaven." — Amazon reviewer

“A magical New England town where the animals have gone quiet and the Boundary is coming undone, an owl with ashen feathers, and a fading Phoenix in the arms of a runaway girl. Soft, playful magic wrapped around a real mystery is exactly the kind of thing I love finding in summer, and the fact that you can start this series anywhere makes it dangerously easy to fall in. If you like your cozies with a little enchantment and a whole lot of heart, this one’s going straight to the top of my TBR.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Greta Sinclair

Series: A Darcy and Mozart Cozy Culinary Mystery

The Book:

Newlywed food critic Darcy Finnegan has waited two whole months for one perfect, murder-free honeymoon — Sydney in winter, harbor lights, and pavlova under the dazzling glow of the Vivid festival. Her Interpol husband Marcus is finally at her side, the desserts are legendary, and Darcy has exactly one rule for this trip: no bodies. Naturally, that lasts about as long as it takes a celebrity dessert judge to collapse mid-event.

Because trouble follows Darcy the way Mozart follows a dropped lamington. Just as judge Julian "Jules" Ransom drops dead, her best friend Lizzie turns up unannounced — camera in hand, Schnoodle in tow — and the shoes poking out from beneath the nearest table are unmistakably Lizzie's. Suddenly Darcy's blissful honeymoon becomes a race through Sydney's glittering culinary world to clear the best friend everyone else has already convicted.

The deeper Darcy digs, the messier it gets: stolen recipes, bitter rivalries between chefs who'd sooner sabotage a soufflé than share a spotlight, and a dockside sugar-fraud scheme with a body count. Add in Mozart — the irrepressible Schnoodle who steals every scene and occasionally cracks the case — and you've got a frame job built to cost Darcy everything: her best friend's freedom, her brand-new marriage, and the instincts she's always trusted. (Bonus recipe included, because of course it is.)

Coming June 26 — pre-order now at $0.99. Fresh off the press; reader reviews are still to come.

If you love the culinary cozies of Joanne Fluke, Laura Childs, or Lucy Burdette, you'll feel right at home in Darcy's delicious, dangerous world.

“A newlywed food critic, an Interpol husband, and a scene-stealing Schnoodle named Mozart, all turned loose in Sydney during the Vivid festival — this one is going straight to the top of my TBR. Greta Sinclair took home a Silver Medal at the 2025 Global Book Awards, and she writes the kind of culinary cozy where the desserts are every bit as memorable as the suspects. If you like your mysteries with a passport, a pavlova, and a very clever dog, pre-order this one and settle in.”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Finley Page

The Book: The Poisoned Petal Express

Librarian Charlotte Wren runs her life on lists and schedules, and order is exactly how she likes it. So when she inherits a mystery bookstore from a great-aunt she barely knew, she does the sensible thing: packs one impeccable suitcase and boards the Poisoned Petal Express to go claim it. Then she rescues a shivering golden retriever named Bessie from the platform, and every careful plan she's ever made collapses in about four minutes.

‍When ruthless influencer Dylan Rhinehart turns up dead in his compartment mid-blizzard, the elegant train becomes a locked room on rails—nowhere to run, no one coming, and a killer settling in for the ride. Charlotte teams up with charming travel writer Theo Parker and rookie Deputy Mindy Collier to sort the secrets from the snow, with Bessie supervising the investigation's morale department.

The suspect list is a delight: a flamboyant magician Rhinehart humiliated, an ice-queen socialite shielding her husband's past, and a quiet chef guarding a family secret Rhinehart was about to expose. As the snowdrifts climb and the suspects get desperate, Charlotte has to unmask the killer before they realize she's seen too much. Everyone on this train is hiding something—but only one secret is worth killing for.

‍Just launched—reader reviews are still coming in.

‍ ‍

GET YOUR FREE COPY → https://dl.bookfunnel.com/rr3objeeud

‍ ‍

“A locked-room mystery on a snowbound train, an over-planner heroine, and a golden retriever named Bessie running the show—all in one book. Consider this your blizzard-in-June recommendation”

— Willow 🌿

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

Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Cora Finch

The Book: Murder She Sowed

Bonnie Reed thought she'd signed on for the easy kind of trouble — a quiet stretch of farm-sitting, a handful of opinionated animals, and a loyal dog named Ziggy keeping her company. Then, one ordinary spring morning, she finds a man face-down in the flowerbed before her coffee has had the chance to do a single thing for her. So much for the peaceful country interlude.

Spring in Riverbend is supposed to smell like lavender and fresh starts. Instead it smells like a murder nobody in town is especially sorry about. The dead man was tangled up in land deals and long-simmering grudges, and the more Bonnie tugs at the threads, the clearer it becomes that this was no accident of timing — someone planned it, and planned it carefully. With Ziggy at her heels and a set of instincts she keeps insisting she doesn't trust, Bonnie starts asking the questions the town would rather she left in the ground.

The suspects don't make it simple. Nora Vance had every reason to want the victim gone — he'd been pushing relentlessly to take her land. Douglas Pryce handled the paperwork that made those deals possible, and he's hiding just enough to be dangerous. Both of them look guilty. Neither of them quite fits. And somewhere underneath all of it is one irreversible mistake the killer has no intention of letting Bonnie dig up — which means the deeper she goes, the more dangerous the ground beneath her gets.

“A pet-sitter, a farmful of opinionated animals, and a dog named Ziggy who I suspect has the whole situation more in hand than anyone else does—this one checks every box on my favorite-tropes list. I’ve got my eye on Riverbend, on two suspects who both look guilty and somehow neither quite fits, and on that one buried mistake somebody is desperate to keep buried. Consider this your summer-porch recommendation: pour something cold, and start digging.”

— Willow 🌿

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