Dive into a Cozy Mystery
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Five-Ingredient Mysteries
Welcome! I write mysteries about people caught up in crimes who pursue justice, armed with quick thinking and courage. My Five-Ingredient Mysteries feature a café manager solving murders with her live-wire grandfather in a historic Chesapeake Bay town. Each book has five suspects, five clues, and Granddad's five-ingredient recipes. Scroll down to read about the books in the series.
The Latest Five-Ingredient Mystery: Bake Offed
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Reviews of Bake OffedA fun romp in an equally fun setting." -Mystery Scene Magazine "A mystery fan fest makes the perfect place for murder. . .Granddad is a hoot, and a clever method of faking an alibi adds to the fun." -Kirkus Review "Enough hidden agendas, mistaken identities, and red herrings to give even Hercule Poirot’s little gray cells a workout" -Kings River Life Click on the image to read an excerpt and find out where to buy Bake Offed
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Earlier Five-Ingredient Mysteries
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By Cook or by CrookAs Val adjusts to living with her curmudgeonly grandfather, he takes up cooking, and she takes up sleuthing to find the killer who framed her cousin for murder.
Val Deniston has left her job as a cookbook publicist in New York for a quieter life near the Chesapeake Bay. Now living with her grandfather in the tourist town of Bayport, she runs a café at the athletic club. After a club patron is murdered, Val cooks up a scheme to find the killer while Granddad creates havoc in the kitchen. But kitchen disasters are the least of Val's problems when a killer targets her.
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Scam ChowderWhen a con man preying on retirees dies after eating Granddad’s clam chowder, Val must prove her grandfather innocent of murder.
Val loves the historic town where she lives with her grandfather, the Codger Cook. Running the fitness club’s Cool Down Café—and salvaging the five-ingredient dishes Granddad messes up—keeps her busy. When a dinner guest, a scammer who preys on retirees, goes face down in the chowder, Granddad's in the soup. To prove him innocent, he and Val dredge up secrets that could save him or get them both killed.
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Final FondueWhen Granddad's houseguest is murdered while eating chocolate fondue, he and Val must stop a killer bent on re-creating Alfred Hitchcock’s creepy scenarios.
As Val helps Granddad get ready for houseguests, visitors to Bayport’s tricentennial festival, he reminisces about 1970s fondue parties and makes chocolate fondue to greet them. One of them eats her final fondue that night. In the dark the murderer might have mistaken her for Val. After a fondue fork and a kitchen knife disappear, Val and Granddad team up to keep the killer from making another stab at murder.
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The Tell-Tale TarteWhen Val serves dessert at a book club dinner, she uncovers a fraud that embroils her and Granddad in a murder among deadly serious Edgar Allan Poe fans.
Val fears for her grandfather’s life when an actor famed for his Poe one-man show is murdered while dressed like Granddad. She soon learns the actor isn’t the only one doing an impersonation. The search for his killer takes her and Granddad to the home of a Poe-inspired author, Rick Usher. Stranded at the "House of Usher" by an ice storm, they uncover clues to the murder, but will they live to tell the tale?
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S'more MurdersWhen Val caters a Titanic memorial dinner on a yacht in the Chesapeake Bay, long submerged grievances lead to murder.
A Titanic-obsessed yacht owner hires Val to re-create the final meal served on that doomed ship. On the anniversary of its sinking, the yachtsman welcomes his guests aboard and assigns them roles in a mystery game, "Death on the Titanic." Val soon realizes that the host is fishing for the culprit in a more recent crime. When someone goes overboard, Val has to reel in a killer before s’more murders go down.
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Crypt SuzetteWhen a murder masquerades as an accident, Granddad's ghost-busting and Val's foray into a haunted house turn up clues to the killer.
As Val caters a Halloween party at Bayport’s bookshop, a group of would-be writers, the Fictionistas, compete in the costume contest. When one of them, the secretive Suzette, is found dead after a hit-and-run, the Fictionistas accuse one other of murder. Did a Fictionista kill Suzette or was her death rooted in the past she’d tried to escape? Val must pull off a Halloween ruse to rip the mask off a murderer.
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Gingerdead ManWhen Santa keels over after eating gingerbread at the holiday party Val caters, she and Granddad must keep a killer from baking more deadly treats.
While Val hosts a tea for the costumed volunteers during Bayport's Dickens of a Holiday festival, a Christmas Carol ghost crashes the party. The masked figure delivers gingerbread men with white icing skeleton bones. Though the creepy gingerdead man looks like a Halloween leftover, Santa can't resist it. When the man in red turns blue, Val and Granddad have a cookie-cutter killer to catch.
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Bake OffedWhen Granddad's rival in the Deadly Desserts bake-off at the Maryland Mystery Fan Fest is found dead, he and Val turn up the heat on a murderous mystery lover.
The mystery fest features a bake-off between contestants assuming the roles of cooks to fictional sleuths. As Nero Wolfe’s gourmet chef, Granddad is up against his nemesis, Cynthia Sweet playing Sherlock Holmes's landlady Mrs. Hudson. When the not-so-sweet Cynthia is found dead, Val and Granddad must figure out which mystery fan was no fan of Cynthia.
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