College librarian and struggling artist India Hayes isn’t sure how her older sister Carmen talked her into managing a face-painting booth at the Stripling, Ohio, Founders’ Day Festival or how Carmen convinced her to wear the pink gingham pioneer dress, including mobcap and granny boots, but that’s where she finds herself in a chilly October just before Halloween. India’s annoyance turns to suspicion as she discovers the body of Zen-like basket weaver, Tess Ross, on the festival grounds. Tess leaves behind an angry blacksmith husband, a confused adopted son, greedy siblings, a dysfunctional artists’ co-op, and a chocolate-colored labradoodle with a two-million-dollar trust in his name. Much to India’s dismay, she learns Tess is the sister of her stuffy college provost, Samuel Lepcheck, and the mother of a library student worker, Derek, who has an irrepressible crush on India that she’s doing her best to ignore. Derek begs India to investigate his mother’s murder. Despite the urgings of handsome Police Detective Rick Mains to stay out of the investigation, India agrees to Derek’s request and finds herself playing sleuth as well as foster-owner to Zacchaeus, the two-million-dollar labradoodle. With her own eccentric family commenting from the sidelines and her Irish-centric landlady, Ina Carroll, as volunteer sidekick, India must discover the truth before she has a permanent canine houseguest or she ends up the next victim in the basket weaver’s murder.

My Comments: India Hayes ranks right up there as one of my favorite new detectives in a cozy mystery.  Her family makes me smile!  I love it that her mom is a pastor and her dad is in a wheelchair – real people!  Her parents, middle aged hippies, get involved in all the local “causes.”  The women in this family are strong – including India’s sister Carmen.  There is a book that comes before this and I’m anxious to read it as well.  The book ends with a great cliff-hanger making me want more, more, more.  If you like books by Leslie Meier and Joanne Fluke, you will love this book!

Gracious living can be murder. First in an all-new mystery series— includes delicious recipes and great tips on entertaining!

Few can compete with Natasha Smith when it comes to entertaining, but her childhood rival, Sophie Winston, certainly tries. Natasha may have stolen the spotlight—and Sophie’s husband—but Sophie is determined to rob her of the prize for the Stupendous Stuffing Shakedown. She just needs the right ingredient.

But Sophie’s search for the perfect turkey takes a basting when she stumbles across a corpse. And when the police find her name and photo inside the victim’s car, Sophie will have to set her trussing aside to solve the murder—or she’ll be serving up prison grub.

But Sophie’s search for the perfect turkey takes a basting when she stumbles across a corpse. And when the police find her name and photo inside the victim’s car, Sophie will have to set her trussing aside to solve the murder—or she’ll be serving up prison grub.

My Comments: I’m enjoying this series by Krista Davis.  This particular book I downloaded on my Nook and read fairly quickly.  I love the main character Sophie and it interests me to wonder if the author is trying to get her back with her husband who she divorced a couple of years ago.  It seems that her mother and mother-in-law want them back together.  I also love a woman who has to solve a mystery.  This book makes me laugh and definitely engages my interest.  Natasha seems to want everything Sophie has and vice versa – a real rivalry exists between them

Piper Donovan never imagined that decorating wedding cakes could be so dangerous! A struggling actress with no immediate prospects and a recently broken engagement, Piper moves back in with her parents to take stock of her life. She steps tentatively into the family bakery business, and finds herself agreeing to create the wedding cake for the acclaimed star of a daytime television drama. But soon, someone close to the bride-to-be is horribly murdered and it seems that somebody is ruthlessly determined to stop the wedding.

With the help of her former neighbor, Jack, a handsome FBI agent with a soft spot for the gorgeous cake-maker, Piper moves closer to the truth. As she narrows in on a suspect, Piper realizes that it’s hotter in the kitchen than she may be able to handle.

Like Piper Donovan, New York Times Bestselling author Mary Jane Clark has a mother who made customized cakes for the neighborhood kids when Mary Jane was growing up. After writing 12 media thrillers and a career at CBS News, the author is currently taking cake decorating classes herself, having fun as she works on her baking skills, and concocting her next novel.

My Comments: I enjoyed this nice, cozy mystery!  Piper is a nice, family girl who wants to be an actress and actually receives occasional roles.  She lives with her mom and dad for now.  Her parents have their own issues to contend with.

The story moves along well.  Piper receives an old role back temporarily, and while she is involved at an auction put on by her co-workers’ daughter’s school, someone is murdered.  The author gave several potential suspects and I liked guessing which one actually committed the crime!  The characters are a little quirky and fun, especially Piper’s dad.  I know people like him – or at least people that would like to BE like him – a little fanatical about safety.  I like someone who bakes as the main character and part of the setting actually being in a bakery.

Hopefully this is the first of many more books in a series to come by Mary Jane Clark.

Thank you NetGalley for the galley of this book.  To Have and to Kill was published the end of December 2010.  I’ve seen it in bookstores.

My comments: This was the perfect book for me to read after the holidays.  The setting takes place in Washington, D.C. in January.  A new administration is put into place and there are many other “new” goings on.  I read the book in just about one day – it was hard to put down.  I never read any of the books in this series before, but I loved another book by the author, Grace Under Pressure.  These are the type of cozy? mysteries I enjoy.  I am looking forward to going back and reading some more books in this series.  Even though I hadn’t read any of the others, I had no problem reading this, and I would consider it a good “stand alone” book.

This book is slated to be released on January 4, 2011 and is published by Berkley Prime Crime.

Ok friends, now that I’ve finally had my surgery and on the upward swing, I need to get busy reviewing some great books I have been reading.  The first on I want to review is Cleo Coyle’s Roast Mortem.  Here is a synopsis:

After local firefighters pull Clare out of a blazing café, she happily comes to their rescue by teaching them the finer points of operating their newly donated espresso machine. But matters really heat up when somebody is torching cafes around the city and firefighters begin to die in suspicious ways…

Believing the two events are related, Clare investigates, staking out a five-borough bake sale and sniffing out clues in the pizza ovens of Brooklyn. When her detective boyfriend, Mike Quinn, is pulled into the fire of a false accusation, Clare is desperate to put out the flames. But will she be able to come to Mike’s rescue before someone tries to extinguish her?

My Review: Of course, I loved this book.  I missed some of my favorite characters though as they weren’t involved quite as much as usual – Clare’s ex-husband Matt and Mike Quinn.  Some more information was given as to the rough relationship  between Mike Quinn and his cousin Michael however, which was good.  The book concentrated on the FDNY which was an educational topic for me.  Growing up in New Jersey, I knew next to nothing about the NYPD or the FDNY and it had to take September 11th to show the country how great these workers are!  Ok, so to summarize – this is a great book, different character emphasis than previous books so can definite be a read on it’s own book, coffee, coffee-making, and other food that is yummy with coffee are included, lifts up our firefighter heroes without making them perfect, funny, serious, suspenseful – all the qualities of a light cozy mystery!

www.coffeehousemystery.com – GREAT WEB SITE

About the book:

Watch the tangled mess a Kansas hairdresser gets herself into when she reports to the funeral home that the body she is to work on is not the same as in her reference photo. Is she being punished when the director accuses her of stealing a diamond ring? Will Hilde Higgins’s former boyfriend help her unravel the issue or only bring more trouble to her life?

My Review: This is my new favorite series.  I love the setting –  a coffeehouse in Greenwich Village, New York City –  I can relate to the main character – Clare Cosi, and the mystery keeps me engaged.  It is difficult to figure out “who did it.”  There is usually a twist in the end, so I THINK I know, but I really don’t – I like that!  In the end it all comes together and makes perfect sense.  Again, this author has added recipes and hints for making great coffee!  I haven’t exactly read these in order but I’m on my fifth story, Murder Most Frothy, I have downloaded two of them to my Nook, and have bought the ones which aren’t available to download on my Nook.  I look forward to reading the rest.  A new one is available for pre-order titled Roast Mortem will be I believe book 9 in the series.  I plan to read them all.

H

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder introduces cozy mystery heroine, Hannah Swenson.

From back cover: In this story, Hannah already has her hands full trying to dodge her mother’s attempts to marry her off while running The Cookie Jar, Lake Eden’s most popular bakery.  But once Ron LaSalle the beloved delivery man from the Cozy Cow Dairy is found murdered behind her bakery with Hannah’s famous Chocolate Chip Crunchies scattered around him, her life just can’t get any worse.  Determined not to let her cookies get a bad reputation, she sets out to track down a killer.  But if she doesn’t watch her back, Hannah’s sweet life may get burned to a crisp.

Strawberry Shortcake Murder is the second book in this series.

From Back Cover:  When the president of Hartland Flour chooses cozy Lake Eden, Minnesota, as the spot for their first annual Dessert Bake-Off, Hannah is thrilled to serve as the head judge.  But when a fellow judge, Coach Boyd Watson, is found stone-cold dead, facedown in Hannah’s celebrated strawberry shortcake, Lake Eden’s sweet ride to fame turns very sour indeed.

My Review:  I love these books and have ordered three more in the series.  Both of these stories are engaging and kind of folksy – enjoyable reads for Spring Break!  I feel good when I read these books – because they are about people I could really know.  People who have real problems with lots of mystery thrown in.  Small town Minnesota is a great setting.  I enjoy the setting because I lived in Iowa for eight years.  Hannah is a single woman near or at about 30 years old.  Everyone is trying to marry her off, and she has two semi-serious boyfriends as different as night and day.  One of the main characters is her cat Moishe – a finicky feline.

 The pet, the home, the humor, and the cooking (including mouth-watering recipes) give Fluke’s books charm and create a high level of interest.  Hannah’s relationship with her mother and sister, Andrea, are easy to identify with.  Her mixed feelings about men and her curiousity and impatience with the system to solve murders ring familiar bells with me.

While there is not a super amount of psychological suspense in these stories – there is SOME suspense, definitely enough to keep turning the pages.  I love these books and am reading the third – Blueberry Muffin Murder right now and plan to read all the books in this series.  They are refreshing and lots of fun!  

Strawberry Shortcake Murder (from back

A bomb goes off with the noon lunch bell, but not before all the kids are safely evacuated, and Carol Crane, the new assistant principal, is hailed as a hero.  But days later, Carol is found murdered and everyone is stunned when the most popular teacher at the school is arrested for the crime.  However, not everyone is buying the open-and-shut case, including Lucy Stone, who senses there’s more to things than meet the eye.

It soon becomes clear that Lucy is flirting with danger, as sizzling secrets and explosive surprises provide a primer for the most diabolical of motives.  Hot on the trail of a clever killer, the dedicated mom and seasoned sleuth must harness the courage and cool aplomb to uncover a crime that just might give her an education in the fine art of murder.

My Review: Love these books – I guess because the main character is a female, mom, wife, and works full time.  There is humor and a little suspense.  The characters are real to life although some are not developed very deeply (ok with me in these books).  Any more cozy mystery fans out there in blog land?  Let me hear from you and tell me your favorite books.  I want to know about more of these books.  I love books by Leslie Meier and I love Joann Flute’s books.  Any more out there along these lines?  Please let me know.

From the back cover: I seem to be gathering quite a collection of murder victims: first my husband, then my contractor. And now my ex-husband’s fiancée has turned up dead. But I, Gracie Lee Harris, am on the job – much to the dismay of my boyfriend, homicide detective Ray Fernandez. I’ve enlisted the ladies of the Christian Friends to help me figure out who killed my ex’s sweetie not long before their wedding. My ex is the prime suspect, but his fiancée kept secrets that might have been deadly. I just pray that her secrets don’t get me killed!

No Love Lost by Lynn Bulock was one of my beach reads and it fit the bill perfectly! It is described on the front cover as a cozy mystery. I’m not sure how a book earns that title, especially when the plot of the book involves a dead person! But it was a fun book to read and as far as mysteries go, not too graphic or morbid.

Overall I enjoyed the book. The characters are likeable, the plot kept me hooked, and there was a touch of humor that I appreciated. I had not read one of Lynn Bulock’s books previously, but apparently she has written a few other Gracie Lee mysteries that would be fun to check out.

This book was published by Steeple Hill Books in 2007.