Guest Sleuth Spotlight: Cora Finch
Meet Cora Finch—author of the Daphne Cole Mysteries. A Lake Days podcaster murder, a framed sheriff, and an Old English Sheepdog who's no help solving it.
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.”
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: Tessa Crumb
Meet Tessa Crumb—a small-town café cozy with real teeth. An inherited café, a blind date who turns up dead, and a town that settled on "accident" a little too fast.
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.”
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
Meet Sloane Foster — a brand-new Marnie Devlin cozy mystery. A body walled up in a Victorian manor, a vintage boutique owner who misses nothing, and a small dog named Taco.
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.”
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
Meet Anna de Wahl—Book 9 of the Cedar Harbor Cozy Mysteries. A body on the working dock, a box of old harbor objects, and a decades-old fire nobody ever reopened..
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.”
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
Meet L.B. Dayton—a surprise party, a best friend home from Paris, and the stalker who followed her. Chef Kat Calloway races to protect one of her own.
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.”
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
Meet Adeline Krupp—four Claire Whitmore mysteries in one coastal boxset. A Victorian inn, a seaside town with a murderous past, and family secrets worth killing for.
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.”
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
Meet B. J. Cade—author of the Willa Honeycutt Cozy Mystery series. A small-town Pup Parade, a dead influencer, a participation-trophy murder weapon, and a German Shepherd named Sadie.
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.”
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
Meet Neela Snow, author of the Claire Winters cozy mysteries. A heritage festival, a body on the boathouse trail, and a shuttered camp Millfield would rather forget.
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.”
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
Meet Nora Brinkley — author of the Greystone Harbor cozy mysteries. A lighthouse death, a clue hiding in plain sight, and a labradoodle who spots it first.
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.”
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
Meet Bessie Barr—author of the OWL Ladies Cozy Mystery series. A New Year's Day 1900 water-tank murder, a sixty-year-old farmwife, and a knitting circle with sharp needles and sharper ears.
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.”
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
Meet Tessa Silver—author of the Quillhaven Magical Cozy Mystery series. An owl with ashen feathers, a fading Phoenix, and a small town's unraveling magic.
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.”
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
Meet Greta Sinclair — award-winning author of the Darcy and Mozart Cozy Culinary Mysteries. A Sydney honeymoon, a collapsed dessert judge, and a scene-stealing Schnoodle named Mozart.
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.”
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
Meet Finley Page—and a locked-room mystery on rails. A snowbound train, a poisoned influencer, and a golden retriever named Bessie with impeccable timing.
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”
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
Meet Cora Finch and her pet-sitting sleuth Bonnie Reed. A quiet farm, a dog named Ziggy, and a body in the flowerbed before the morning coffee is even poured.
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.”
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: Nina Hunt
Meet Nina Hunt — a competition turns deadly when murder strikes mid-biathlon. A roaring crowd, a field of suspects, and secrets someone will kill to keep.
The Book: Biathlon and Betrayal
It was supposed to be the highlight of the season: a high-stakes biathlon, a roaring crowd, the snow and the cheers and the thrill of the chase. Then, in the middle of the competition, someone turns up dead — and the celebration curdles into something far colder.
Suddenly every competitor is a suspect, the crowd's excitement has turned to panic, and no one knows who might be next. Beneath the medals and the applause runs a tangled history of jealousy, old betrayals, and secrets that someone is willing to kill to keep buried.
Every lead seems to open onto another, every suspect is hiding something, and every answer just raises a sharper question. As the pressure builds and the clock runs down, finding the killer becomes a race against time — before the next shot finds its mark.
“A murder in the middle of a biathlon, a field where every competitor has something to hide, and a chill that has nothing to do with the snow—when things get too hot this summer, you can cool off with this winter read.”
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
Meet Neela Snow — a culinary cozy with a café owner who knows before she thinks. A body behind the judging tent, a summer market full of secrets, and a tabby named Max.
Series: A Claire Winters cozy mystery
The Book: Petals, Preserves & Peril
Claire Winters knows two things the moment she finds the body behind the judging tent: that the woman is dead, and that it was no accident. The knowing always arrives before the thought does — it's just how Claire works — and at Millfield's Summer Market, with the ribbons still pinned and the preserves still cooling, her instinct is already certain this was murder.
The dead woman is Iris Bellamy, who ran the Summer Market with a gracious smile and an iron hand. She built something genuinely beautiful in Millfield, and she flattened the livelihood of anyone who got in her way to do it. Now someone has finally stopped her — and with her tabby Max at her heels and her friend Sophie digging through the town records, Claire sets out to find out who, before the wrong person takes the fall.
The suspects are not in short supply. There's Owen Pike, a farmer who watched his crops fail year after year while Iris prospered. There's Lila Bellamy, the niece kept so far under her aunt's thumb she may have finally snapped. As Claire pulls the threads, they tangle into water-board corruption, stolen opportunities, and the quiet, smiling cruelties of a woman who never once had to raise her voice — and the answer, when it comes, is simpler and sadder than Claire is ready for. Justice, she's learning, rarely feels like victory.
“A café owner whose intuition shows up before the evidence does, a summer market with teeth, and a tabby named Max underfoot—some of my favorite tropes!”
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
Meet Greta Sinclair—award-winning Hattie and Moose author. A dead jockey, a steeplechase full of suspects, and three sleuthing pets with very strong opinions.
Series: A Hattie andMoose cozy mystery
The Book: Murder at the Steeplechase
Hattie Leiper went to the Hillshire Farms Steeplechase for the fancy hats, the cross-country jumps, and a double date with Detective Bo Beckett. She did not go expecting a body. But when jockey Austin Grimes turns up dead in the stables alongside his prized horse, the authorities call it a tragic accident—and Hattie, looking at the man's open mouth, is not buying their story.
The setting is bluegrass country at the height of steeplechase season—silk hats, polished boots, and a fortune in horseflesh moving across cross-country fences. Beneath the surface runs a tangle of debts, bitter rivalries, and jockeys with secrets they would rather keep buried. Detective Beckett handles the official inquiry; Hattie, working from the edges with characteristic quiet persistence, starts her own.
What follows is a steeplechase grounds full of people who had reasons to want Austin Grimes gone—rival jockeys with bruised pride, owners with money on the line, and stable hands who saw more than they ever intended to admit. Hattie's investigation is helped, complicated, and very loudly accompanied by her menagerie: grumpy Chow Chow Moose, whose nose for trouble is matched only by his disinterest in subtlety; feisty Yorkie Mini Pearl, who keeps everyone honest; and crime-magnet British Shorthair Cecil, who absolutely refuses to be left out of the sleuthing. The further Hattie pulls at the threads of bluegrass society, the clearer it becomes that the killer is not finished—and that she'd best find them before another body turns up in the stables.
“Greta is a 2025 Global Book Awards Silver Medal winner whose Hattie & Moose books are built to stand on their own, so if you love equestrian settings, Southern small-town whodunits, and pet-driven sleuthing in the tradition of Ellery Adams or Maggie Sefton, this is the one to pick up.”
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
Meet Cora Finch — Riverbend Cozy Mystery series. A pet sitter, a plucky dachshund, and a cooking competition are the perfect mix for cozy intrigue.
Series: A Rvierbend Cozy Mystery
The Book:
Pet-sitter Bonnie Reed came for campfire snacks, not a body by the fire pit. But when Clive Harrow, a famously ruthless food critic, drops mid-competition, Bonnie’s knack for stumbling into trouble (and solving it) kicks in. Luckily, her stubby-legged sleuth Ziggy, the dachshund, is already on the case.
The suspect list reads like a grudge buffet: Jessie Lang, a contestant caught stealing recipes, and ranch judge Walt Brennan, roasted by brutal reviews, both have scores to settle.
Meanwhile, cameras roll, Mayor Tilly smiles, and Sheriff Cordell, stoic and sharp, is starting to trust Bonnie, and ask for her help.
Because inside that tent? Nothing was accidental. The air itself was weaponized.
Now Bonnie has to expose a killer who planned every breath, before the next “safety demo” turns deadly… and this time, the whole town is watching.
“I love a small town cozy mystery. Cora Finch has created a wonderful cozy world with pet sitter Bonnie and her sidekick Ziggy. Readers are enjoying this latest installment of her Riverbend Cozy Mystery series.”
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 -
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.
👉 Apply for Willow's Inner Circle | Get Ghosts Don't Use Blueprints on Amazon
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