April and May Cozy Reads

As with the showers and flowers, the months of April and May bring out a multitude of great cozy mysteries! Here are a few that I found mysteriously intriguing and perfect for springtime reading.

April Highlight Book of the Month:

It’s always a reading treat when Susan Wittig Albert has a new book out, and her China Bayles series is always a popular selection for cozy mystery fans. WIDOW’S TEARS finds China’s best friend, Ruby, in the middle of a great mystery, and she turns to China for help. The two friends have an intriguing adventure in the county in this story, and it was a pure delight to see Ruby get her time in the sun. I highly recommend this book!

WIDOW’S TEARS: A China Bayles Mystery #20
By Susan Wittig Albert
Berkley Prime Crime

Herbalist and ex-lawyer China Bayles is “in a class with lady sleuths V. I. Warshawski and Stephanie Plum.” WIDOW’S TEARS, a haunted house may hold the key to solving the murder of one of China’s friends...

After losing her husband, five children, housekeeper, and beautiful home in the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, Rachel Blackwood rebuilt her home, and later died there, having been driven mad with grief.

In present-day Texas, Claire, the grand niece of Rachel’s caretaker, has inherited the house and wants to turn it into a bed and breakfast. But she is concerned that it’s haunted, so she calls in her friend Ruby—who has the gift of extrasensory perception—to check it out.

While Ruby is ghost-hunting, China Bayles walks into a storm of trouble in nearby Pecan Springs. A half hour before she is to make her nightly deposit, the Pecan Springs bank is robbed and a teller is shot and killed.

Before she can discover the identity of the killers, China follows Ruby to the Blackwood house to discuss urgent business. As she is drawn into the mystery of the haunted house, China opens the door on some very real danger.

May Highlight Book of the Month:

Bestselling author Carolyn Hart continues her popular Death On Demand series with her twenty-third novel, DEAD, WHITE AND BLUE. Fans of Hart’s will love this new intriguing story!

DEAD, WHITE AND BLUE: A Death on Demand Mystery #23
By Carolyn Hart
Berkley Prime Crime

Summer is a hectic time of the year for Annie Darling. Sun and scorching temperatures never fail to bring swarms of tourists to her mystery bookstore, Death on Demand, for the latest beach reads. But Annie still finds time to enjoy herself. The Broward’s Rock Fourth of July dance is just around the corner, and the island is buzzing with excitement—Shell Hurst included...

Shell is the kind of woman wives hate—for good reason—and most of them wish she would just disappear. But when she does, and a teenage girl is the only one who seems to notice, Annie can’t help but feel like someone should be looking for her. Last seen walking into the pine trees at the Fourth of July fireworks display, Shell has seemingly vanished without a trace.

The residents of Broward’s Rock grow uneasy when a second islander mysteriously disappears. Annie and her husband, Max, know something dangerous is brewing. They soon find themselves following a twisted trail marked by blackmail, betrayal, and adultery, winding from the corridors of the island’s lovely inn to a pier lashed by pelting rain, to a gathering on the terrace of a country club where a trap is set for a calculating killer...

April Debut Book:

From the writing team of Jim and Joyce Lavene comes a fantastic new series that promises to be a huge hit!

THAT OLD FLAME OF MINE: A Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade #1
By J.J. Cook
Berkley Prime Crime

Set in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, J. J. Cook’s thrilling new mystery series features Fire Chief Stella Griffin, who solves crime with the help of her predecessor, who just happens to be a ghost.

After knocking the lights out of her boyfriend when she catches him cheating on her, Chicago fire fighter Stella Griffin hops on her Harley and heads for Sweet Pepper, Tennessee, where she ends up becoming the small town’s fire chief. When her dear friend Tory Lambert dies after her gingerbread-style house is set ablaze, Stella suspects arson and foul play.

As Stella investigates, she gets help from a most unlikely source—the ghost of Eric Gamlyn, Sweet Pepper’s old fire chief. And if that isn’t enough to rattle her, attractive police officer John Trump seems to have taken an interest in her. But Stella’s got to stay focused if she hopes to smoke out a killer before her own life is extinguished.

May Debut Book:

GLUTEN FOR PUNISHMENT: A Baker’s Treat Mystery #1
By Nancy J. Parra
Berkley Prime Crime

Gluten-free baker Toni Ryder may not cook with wheat, but when there’s a criminal on the loose, she’ll do what it takes to figure out who has their finger in the pie.

Even though Toni is used to going against the grain by preparing allergy-safe, gluten-free products for her online bakery, Baker’s Treat, opening a storefront in the middle of wheat country Kansas might be biting off more than she can chew. The town is already skeptical of her flour-free ways, but when a local wheat farmer is murdered outside her patisserie, skepticism turns into outright suspicion.

With the help of her eccentric grandmother, her handsome lawyer, and the sexy new widower in town, Toni is determined to find the real criminal before bad publicity and increasingly personal acts of vandalism shut her down. But when another suspect winds up dead, Toni realizes that this half-baked killer isn’t just trying to get her to close shop—he’s trying to make sure that she’s made her last gluten-free cookie...forever.

Other April Titles You May Enjoy:

THE HOMICIDE HUSTLE: A Ballroom Dance Mystery #3
By Ella Barrick
Obsidian Books

The traveling TV dance show, Ballroom with the B-Listers, is coming to Washington, D.C., and ballroom dancer Stacy Graysin is first in line to participate. Not only will the publicity propel Graysin Motion, Stacy’s dance studio, into the limelight, but the prize money could help offset her looming debt. Plus, Stacy’s teen idol, heartthrob Zane Savage, specifically requested to be her partner.

But the whirlwind reality contest stumbles when the show’s coproducer, Tessa King, is found dead in the Potomac River. All the clues point to Tessa being murdered—and the suspects are the contestants and crew of B-Listers. Now Zane and the rest of the B-Listers must promenade back to fame, and Stacy will need o hustle to maintain her reputation, win the competition, and catch a killer.

GOING, GOING, GANACHE: A Cupcake Bakery Mystery #5
By Jenn McKinlay
Berkley Prime Crime

After a cupcake-flinging fiasco at a photo shoot for a local magazine, Melanie Cooper and Angie DeLaura agree to make amends by hosting a weeklong corporate boot camp at Fairy Tale Cupcakes. The idea is the brainchild of billionaire Ian Hannigan, new owner of SWS (Southwest Style), a lifestyle magazine that chronicles the lives of Scottsdale’s rich and famous. He’s assigned his staff to a team-building week of making cupcakes for charity.

It’s clear that the staff would rather be doing just about anything other than frosting baked goods. But when the magazine’s creative director is found murdered outside the bakery, Mel and Angie have a new team-building exercise— find the killer before their business goes AWOL.

May Titles You May Enjoy:

KILLER IN CRINOLINES: A Consignment Shop Mystery #2
By Duffy Brown
Berkley Prime Crime

It’s August in Savannah, Georgia—hardly the season for a traditional Southern wedding with hoopskirts and crinolines. One could die from the heat—or from a cake knife in the back...

Reagan Summerside should be devoting all her energy to her consignment shop the Prissy Fox. But when her dear friend Chantilly Parker is arrested for murder, Reagan vows to clear her name. The victim is Simon Ambrose, who’s found lying in his own wedding cake with a knife in his back.

Chantilly has motive (Simon broke her heart to marry wealthy Waynetta Waverly) and opportunity (crashing the wedding in her UPS delivery truck). And she has cake on her face, and the stolen bridesmaid dress the killer wore is in her truck. But Chantilly would never wear crinoline to kill a man!

With the help of her flamboyant auntie, KiKi, and vexing but attractive attorney Walker Boone, Reagan is determined to save her friend—before she’s forced to turn in her brown uniform for an orange jumpsuit...

THE BEGONIA BRIBE: A Garden Society Mystery #2
By Alyse Carlson
Berkley Prime Crime

Roanoke, Virginia, is home to some of the country’s most exquisite gardens, and it’s Camellia Harris’s job to promote them. But when a pint-sized beauty contest comes to town, someone decides to deliver a final judgment.

A beauty pageant for little girls—the Little Miss Begonia Pageant—has decided to hold their event in a Roanoke park. Camellia is called in to help deal with the botanical details, the cute contestants, and their catty mothers. She soon realizes that the drama onstage is nothing compared to the judges row. There’s jealousy, betrayal, and a love triangle involving local newsman—and known lothario—Telly Stevens. And a mysterious saboteur is trying to stop the pageant from happening at all.

But the drama turns deadly when Stevens is found dead, poisoned by some sort of plant. With a full flowerbed of potential suspects, Cam needs to dig through the evidence to uproot a killer with a deadly green thumb.