Cozy Suspense Women Sleuths

Courtney Archer is known for hosting the show Cooking with the Farmer's Daughter...despite the fact that she's actually a pediatrician's daughter. Now she's signed on for a role on The American Baking Battle. On this reality show, she can start developing a more authentic image for herself - and as a bonus, the usual backstabbing and manufactured drama isn't part of the Baking Battle script. But genuine drama is heating up behind the scenes....

The Fall Festival is in full swing. Civil War reenactors from three counties are partaking in Blossom Valley's tribute to John Brown. Blue Ridge Mountain foliage is in full bloom. And best of all is Jacob Potter's pumpkin farm where his hay rides, piglet races, pumpkin picking, and corn maze are time-honored draws for locals and tourists alike. That's why it's such a shock when Mr. Potter is found dead, hidden under a tarp in the back of Winnie's pickup truck.

As if a run-in with an old flame and a failed marriage proposal weren't enough to horrify Krissy for one night, a woman is found strangled to death in a room filled with ominous jack-o'-lanterns. All signs suggest a crime of passion - but when the hostess's jewelry disappears, malevolent intentions seem way more likely.

Ellison Russell is planning the event of the season - and she's stressed. Why not yoga? Because the yoga instructor gets murdered during class - and Ellison's stress level rises exponentially. Now, in addition to raising a ridiculous amount of money, she's babysitting a deranged cat (named after the devil himself), taking 10 million phone calls (most of them from Mother), and finding more bodies (they're popping up like dandelions after a spring rain). There's no such thing as balance when the killer makes it personal. Can Ellison catch a murderer or will her next namaste be her last?

Miranda's business—combining Appalachian adventure tours with art and a bit of moonshine—is the perfect place for an outdoor sporting goods company to hold an employee retreat. It'll be a challenge, but the money they're paying will definitely help with building her new distillery. Miranda has lots of teamwork-fostering activities planned, from sketching classes to Southern cooking, but the executive running things prefers a more competitive spirit. In fact, after the workers are split into teams, they're told that only the winners will keep their jobs, and tensions begin to spike.

With the town clock in desperate need of repair, local lawyer Joyce Swedburg and her ex-husband, Dr. Leland Keay, are trying to put their differences aside to organize a benefit at Marshfield Manor to raise money to restore the beautiful timepiece. While Grace Wheaton, the mansion's curator and manager, appreciates the opportunity to support such a good cause, the tension between the unhappy exes is giving her the urge to put both of the organizers in time out.

When Mia Malone's grandmother asks her to take a week away from her restaurant job and come to Magic Springs, Idaho, she's happy to oblige. Like Mia, Grans has witchcraft running through her veins, and life with her is never boring. Plus, the cause is a good one - helping Grans get the local food bank up and running again. But there's an unappetizing surprise in store. While Mia is knee-deep in boxes of donated produce, she encounters the body of Dorian Alexander. Dorian was a warlock, leader of the local coven. He was also her Grans' new beau.

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it - bringing her cousins, her three-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform.

The staff at Salem, Massachusetts's local station, WICH-TV, is looking forward to the wedding of their program director, Lee Barrett. But when Lee heads off on her Maine honeymoon, she'll be haunted by the ghosts of her own past. Lee and Detective Sergeant Pete Mondello are finally tying the knot - and Lee is tying up loose ends before the big day. After the celebration, complete with a cake made by the station magician, there should be time to relax—but the Maine island happens to be near the site of the crash that killed Lee's parents, a mystery she's never been able to solve.

When the going gets tough, Ella Mae LaFaye bakes pies. So when she catches her husband cheating in New York, she heads back home to Havenwood, Georgia, where she can drown her sorrows in fresh fruit filling and flaky crust. But her pies aren't just delicious. They're having magical effects on the people who eat them, and the public is hungry for more. Discovering her hidden talent for enchantment, Ella Mae makes her own wish come true by opening the Charmed Pie Shoppe.

Rumford, Kentucky has glowing fields of bluegrass, a fine selection of bourbons, and now a professional pastry chef. Broken-hearted Sophia Cummings has come home from New York City. She's not there a minute before she's charmed into making her high school friend Charlotte's wedding cake. The kitchen at the Rumford Country Club seems perfect until Chef Emile's body is discovered, sprawled near the stove, a cast iron skillet on the floor close by. With one look at the shiny, new pan, Sophia knows it's not Emile's. She offers her knowledge to Sheriff Carter and her talents to the manager.

fter an elegant new customer has a breakdown in her shop, Penelope suspects there is something bogus behind the biggest best-seller of the year. This popular potboiler is so hot that folks in her tiny Rhode Island town are dying to read it - literally. First, one customer turns up dead, followed by another mysterious fatality connected to the book, which Pen discovers is more than just fiction. Now, with the help of her gumshoe ghost, Pen must solve the real-life cold case behind the bogus best-seller before the killer closes the book on her.

Maggie Crozat, proprietor of a historic Cajun Country B&B, prefers to let the good times roll. But hard times rock her hostelry when a new cell phone app makes it easy for locals to rent their spare rooms to tourists. With October-and Halloween-approaching, she conjures up a witch-crafty marketing scheme to draw visitors to Pelican, Louisiana.

Baker Georgia Tepper has been hired to provide delicious and spooky cupcakes for the Reading Buddies Halloween Party at the library, and she and Kathleen are meeting to finalize the menu of festive confections. Unfortunately, once Georgia's former mother-in-law ambushes her at the library and threatens Georgia with legal action, the afternoon of fun is soured. When Georgia's litigious in-law is later found dead and the friendly baker is implicated, Kathleen is eager to help prove her innocence.

Saffron Skye can see color like nobody else. What she can't see is how a hardboiled detective in a fedora ends up on her Hawaiian egg farm and how she ends up in Honolulu's historic Iolani Palace. Money's gone missing from the Friends of Hens fundraiser. Money that was meant to help care for some of Hawaii's feral chickens. Now Saffron's on the trail with just a wing and a prayer.

As a colleague of deputy coroner Mattie Winston, social worker Clothilde "Hildy" Schneider is no stranger to unsolved murders at Sorenson General Hospital. Except this time, it's up to her to crack the case.... Motivated by her own difficult past, Hildy has an unparalleled commitment to supporting troubled clients through grief and addiction in Sorenson, Wisconsin. But when a distraught group therapy member reveals disturbing details about her late son's potential murder, Hildy goes from dedicated mental health professional to in-over-her-head amateur sleuth.

Christmas lights on palm trees and Santa hats on plastic pink flamingoes are far from the snowy landscape Maureen and her beloved golden retriever, Finn, are used to. But Maureen is determined to make this a holiday to remember—which means finding a way to promote Haven House on a shoestring. Fortunately, Haven's vintage movie theater, the Paramount, has come up with a great "Twelve Days of Christmas" idea. They'll feature an impressive list of the best classic Christmas movies ever made—shown by one-time movie actor-turned-projectionist Decklin Monroe.

No matter how great or small, I love to help solve a crime. When I find my mother's ex-boyfriend murdered in our convenience store bathroom with a piece of his skull missing, and my mom's a suspect in a murder investigation, my mystery solving goes from zero to 100. To really make matters worse, the town's local conspiracy theorist and official doomsday prepper, Cappie, somehow finds out the victim isn't just missing a piece of his skull - he's missing a piece of his brain!

When Charity Penn receives a letter saying she won a trip to Camellia Beach, South Carolina, complete with free cooking lessons at the town's seaside chocolate shop, The Chocolate Box, she's immediately skeptical. She never entered any contest. Her former prep school friend offers to look into the phony prize - only to end up drowned in a vat of chocolate. Struck with guilt, Penn heads to the southern beach town to investigate why he was killed.

Trudell Becket, known to her friends as Tru, finds herself in a bind when her library in lovely Cypress, South Carolina, is turned into a state-of-the-art bookless "technological center". A library with no books breaks Tru's book-loving heart. Then the town manager, who was behind the big push for the library's transformation, is crushed by an overturned shelf of DVDs. Tru becomes the prime suspect as she hadn't hid the fact that she hated having all of those wonderful books replaced by tablets and computers.