Food Fiction

In an attempt to woo tourists to Jewel Bay and cheer up the townies, Erin Murphy, manager of the specialty local foods market known as the Merc, is organizing the First Annual Food Lovers' Film Festival, filled with classic foodie flicks and local twists on favorite movie treats. But when her partner in planning, painter Christine Vandeberg, is found dead only days before the curtain rises, Erin suspects someone is attempting to stop the films from rolling.

Goldy Schulz has a lucrative new gig, preparing breakfasts and conference-room snacks for a local law firm. It's time-consuming, but Goldy is enjoying it, until the night she arrives to find Dusty, the firm's paralegal, dead.

"In almost any culture, at any time, you can find food writing,” writes guest editor Mark Bittman in his introduction. “Food means growing and hardship, and health and medicine, and work and holiday. In its abundance it is a gift and a joy, and in its absence a curse and a tragedy. If a culture has writing, that culture has food writing.” The stories in this year’s Best American Food Writing are brilliant, eye-opening windows into the heart of our country’s culture.

Welcome to The Berry Home, where the food is to-die-for!When up-and-coming politican Alex Tramden dies after a campaign celebration, everyone blames Kylie Berry. The event was catered, it involved food, and it lead to a strange death. Kylie had nothing to do with Alex’s death! But somehow, she ends up in hot water over it. When everything goes awry, Kylie joins forces with Zoey, Agatha and the rest of the gang. Alex’s killer is going to be brought to justice… unless they get to Kylie and Sage first. Praise for A.R. Winters: "The perfect balance of being lighthearted, but still a ...

It's time for Addi, Sam, and Cece to set sail again on another magical cruise. This time, literally. "Winters will have you giggling into your book!" The whole cruise is set up for a magic theme. All the guests are set to enjoy a cruise they’ll never forget. It becomes even more unforgettable when one of the magician’s assistants dies on stage in the middle of a show! Addi, Sam and Cece set to finding out just what happened to the unfortunate magician’s assistant, following a path of mistruths and distractions. Praise for A.R. Winters: "The perfect balance of being lighthearted, but ...

Hayley Powell, food and cocktails columnist for Bar Harbor's Island Times, is...well, kind of broke. So when she's selected for that extreme coupon-clipping reality game show coming to town...she's thrilled, especially when her competition is nasty nurse Candace Culpepper. But when Haley stumbles across a face-down-in-the-snow Candace - scissors gleaming between her shoulders - she knows the next thing she'll be selected for will probably be a police line-up.

When the Swan Of The Sea's housekeeping manager is found dead near a shipping container, the crew is rocked—and not just by the waves. The ship’s security chief, Steve Johnson, is benched due to a long (and loud) history of arguments with the victim, Luisa Diaz. So temporary Captain Ethan Lee turns to the one person who always manages to find trouble—and solve it: Addi. The deeper Addi digs, the murkier things get. From a secret burglary ring to a scammed gambler with a grudge, Luisa had plenty of enemies—and plenty of secrets. Why was Luisa snooping around passengers’ rooms ...

It's been years since author Thom Mortenson has been back to Garrison, Colorado. As part of the committee who invited the best-selling writer to speak at the library fundraising benefit, Sadie Hoffmiller wants everything to be perfect - right down to the homemade devil's food cake she baked herself. Certainly, murder was not on the menu. When Thom's manager ends up dead on stage, Sadie immediately offers her guidance and expertise to investigators.

A snowy afternoon at the Paris Opera... What could possibly go wrong? When Ava Sext, an amateur sleuth who sells books from an outdoor stand overlooking the Seine, is hired to interview the dancers of an upcoming ballet at the Paris Opera House, she jumps at the chance. But her joy is short-lived when she stumbles upon a secret concerning the death of the last dancer who danced the ballet and finds herself pulled into a web of intrigue where anyone and everyone seems to have a motive. Death in the Paris Opera: A lighthearted cozy mystery set in Paris, a city where food, wine, and crime make...

Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming - mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account. Enter Jack, class clown and thorn in Pepper’s side. He works in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.

Welcome to The Berry Home: where the food is to-die-for! Kylie is thrilled when the space next door is finally leased out to a bookshop owner. Unfortunately, opening day doesn’t go as planned. Instead, the bookshop becomes the scene of a murder. Who could’ve killed Charlie Mccoy, a man of many secrets and just as many enemies? With a murder to investigate and a friend’s wedding to plan, Kylie must call on all her friends to help keep the Berry Home afloat as she scrambles to uncover the truth before it’s too late. Meanwhile, Brad is left to fend for himself as a newly minted ...

As a single mom, Hayley Powell already has a full plate - she's got deadlines to make and a teenage daughter with eyes for an aspiring singer-songwriter. But when country music superstar Wade Springer rolls into town, Hayley spies an irresistible side gig: personal chef to her all-American idol. After he tries her home cooking, Wade's so impressed that he hires her on the spot - and invites her to dine with him alone.

A Cupcakes-and-Crime Caper A food-truck-festival gone awry, potentially murderous snails, and a health inspector with a grudge against food trucks… When eccentric artist Kylie Mince and her husband Pierre find themselves accused of murder, they call on Tiffany Black and Rosie to help them out of this predicament. But with so many unusual suspects, could this case be too much for the investigators? Worse still, could they have underestimated how dangerous this killer is? Praise for A.R. Winters: "The perfect balance of being lighthearted, but still a serious page-turning mystery." - Jaycie...

Bar Harbor, Maine, is quieter in the off-season, but the population has just increased a bit with the arrival of Tim and Trudy Lancaster. Tim's taking over for a retiring minister, and Trudy runs a food truck called Wicked 'Wiches. When she stops in at the Island Times office to place an ad, Hayley happily devours the sample sub Trudy offers - and the two become fast friends. But when Trudy tragically dies in her truck while catering a Halloween party, suspicion falls on a cranky, competitive caterer who'd made veiled threats to Trudy.

These mischievous dinosaurs show that burping, spilling, playing with one's food and outright refusing to eat are not the best ways to enjoy a meal. An entertaining guide to table manners and a good reminder that positive and pleasant mealtime behavior gets the best results.

Isabella joins a coven... But there are no witches in it. When Isabella's friend Emma changes her religion, Isabella is happy she's found something she can believe in. Until she learns Emma thinks she's a witch. Magic doesn't work that way and now she's worried her friend is being taken advantage of. Isabella is desperate to find out who is killing members of the coven - desperate enough to hunt him down on her own. What will it take for her to capture a witch older and stronger than her, and is she willing to pay that price? *** For fans of Amanda M. Lee, Annabel Chase, and Leighann Dobbs,...

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner treats its customers to wonderfully extravagant meals. But that's not the main reason to stop by... The father-daughter duo have started advertising their services as 'food detectives'. Through ingenious investigations, they are capable of recreating a dish from their customers' pasts – dishes that may well hold the keys to forgotten memories and future happiness.

During the week between Christmas and New Year's, the year-round population of Key West, Florida, faces a tsunami of tourists and snowbirds. It doesn't help that outrageously wealthy key-lime-pie aficionado David Sloan has persuaded the city to host his pie-baking contest. Every pie purveyor on the island is out to win the coveted Key Lime Key to the City, and Key Zest food-critic Hayley Snow is on the scene to report it. Meanwhile, Hayley's home life is turning more tart than sweet.

Freya Braithwaite knows she is lucky. Nineteen years of marriage to a man who still warms her soul and two beautiful teenage daughters to show for it: confident Charlotte and thoughtful Lexi. Her home is filled with love and laughter. But when Lexi's struggles with weight take control of her life, everything Freya once took for granted falls apart, leaving the whole family with a sense of helplessness that can only be confronted with understanding, unity and, above all, love.

When a friend needs help... you drop everything for them. Isabella's apartment building has suffered because she lives there. In one year, her landlord has put up iron railings on the windows, revamped the entire security system, and refurbished the entire inside because someone tried to burn her out of the building. When he needed her to prove his son was innocent she agreed without needing to know any of the details. Once she started digging into the case, she started to have second thoughts. Add in the tensions between the witches in the Sorority of Brigid all aimed at her, and she's got...