Showing results by author "Jenn McKinlay" in All Categories

Melanie and Angie are determined to win the Challenge to the Chef cooking competition to promote their Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery. Mel's mentor from culinary school, Vic Mazzotta, may be one of the judges, but Mel and Angie will have to bake their best to win fair and square. But when Vic's dead body is found inside a freezer truck, Mel and Angie will need to use their best judgment to find the cold-blooded killer or they may lose more than the contest; they may lose their lives.

There is nothing Sarah Novak loves more than a literary adventure. When the director of the Museum of Literature sends her to an uninhabited island in the Aegean Sea to look for a rare artifact from Ancient Greece, as an expert on the Classics, she's all in. There's only one problem: nine other scholars are also on the hunt for the artifact, one of whom is Irishman Liam Maguire, Sarah's ex and the man she beat out for the curator position at the museum seven years ago. Liam wants to form an alliance, but Sarah refuses.

Life is sweet and business is booming at the Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery - and the fact that Mel and Joe are getting married is the icing on the cake. Their reception will be held at the swanky resort where Oz works as the pastry chef. The wedding planning is all fun-fetti and games until Mel and Joe meet the head chef at the resort who has been making Oz's life miserable. When the eccentric chef insults Mel's bakery, Oz gets into a blowout argument with the culinary prima donna.

Briar Creek Library director Lindsey Norris and her husband, Sully, are at a popular library conference in Chicago to hear book restoration specialist Brooklyn Wainwright give a keynote address. After the lecture, Lindsey looks under her seat and finds a tote bag containing a first edition of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, inscribed to Alfred Hitchcock. Brooklyn determines the novel is one of a kind and quite valuable, so Lindsey and Sully return the book to the conference director, not wanting to stir up any trouble.

Melanie Cooper and Angie DeLaura are finally living out their dream as the proud owners of the Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery. But their first big client is a nightmare. She's a bridezilla who wants 500 custom cupcakes for her wedding. When Mel stumbles upon the bride-to-be dead - by cupcake - Mel becomes the prime suspect. To save themselves and their business, the ladies need to find the real murderer, before the cupcake killer ices someone else.

When the owner of their team, the Arizona Scorpions, is found dead on the floor of their new bakery following an argument with Keogh, Keogh and Tyler become prime suspects. As the investigation heats up, Mel and the rest of the cupcake bakery crew must step up and prove their franchise owners are innocent before it's game-over for the new bakers.

Library director Lindsey Norris is happy to learn the Briar Creek Public Library is the beneficiary of the Dorchester family’s vast book collection. However, when Lindsey and the library staff arrive at the old Victorian estate to gather the books, things take a sinister turn. One of the bookcases reveals a secret passage, leading to a room where a skeleton is found, clutching an old copy of The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Answering Shakespeare trivia comes with the job description for library director Lindsey Norris. But when the Briar Creek Community Theater mounts their newest production of the Bard, she has no intention of leaving the stacks for the stage. Unfortunately a villain is waiting in the wings....

When the Briar Creek Public Library holds its first overdue book amnesty day—no fines for late returns—the volume of incoming materials is more than Lindsey and her staff can handle. In a bind, Lindsey drafts the crafternoon ladies to help check in and sort the stacks of books. But one tardy tome catches her attention—a copy of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, twenty years past due. When Lindsey looks up the borrower, she’s shocked to discover it was a murdered teacher named Candice Whitley, whose killer was never found.

For Samantha Gale, a summer on Martha’s Vineyard at her family’s tiny cottage was supposed to be about resurrecting her career as a chef, until she’s tasked with chaperoning her half-brother, Tyler. The teenage brainiac is spending his summer at the local library in a robotics competition, and there’s no place Sam, who has dyslexia, likes less than the library. And because the universe hates her, the library’s interim director turns out to be the hot-reader guy whose book she accidentally destroyed on the ferry ride to the island.

Scottsdale, Arizona, may not be the liveliest place on earth, but it's never been as dead as this. The first annual Old Town Zombie Walk is announced, and Mel, Angie, and the Fairy Tale Cupcake crew are donning their best undead attire to sell some horror-themed desserts to the hungry hordes. But fun turns to fright when Mel finds a real dead body in a prop casket outside of the bakery's truck - and the corpse looks alarmingly like a zombie of their own. Mel worries that someone near and dear was the real target.

When up-and-coming singing sensation Shelby Vaughn arrives in town for two weeks of concert dates, she hires her old friend Angie and the rest of the bakery crew to supply cupcakes for the VIP guest lounge every night. After overhearing Shelby in a heated argument with her manager, Mel is concerned, but she and the crew decide to make the best of their time working with the star. Just as the bakers fall into the rhythm of the job, Shelby’s manager is found dead, clutching a bit of fabric from a Santa suit and a cupcake.

Melanie and Angie are taking a gamble by opening their first franchise of the bakery, and where better to hit the jackpot than Vegas? Holly Hartzmark is a former showgirl who's looking to bring Mel and Angie's sweet treats to Sin City, but Mel isn't so sure she's ready to hand her recipes over to a complete stranger - especially one as brash as Holly. But after the potential bakery location gets blown up, Mel begins seeing another side to Holly.

When a stack of library materials is found at the scene of a hit-and-run, library director Lindsey Norris finds herself dragged into the investigation as the police try to link the driver of the stolen car to the person who borrowed the books. Before Lindsey can delve into the library's records, the victim of the hit-and-run, Theresa Houston, suffers another accident, and the investigation shifts from driver negligence to attempted homicide.

Mackenzie "Mac" Harris fled her hometown of Bluff Point, Maine after being left at the altar and seeking solace in the arms of her best friend's off-limits brother, Gavin. Seven years later, she's back to attend her best friend's wedding, and she figures she's safe now from the mistakes of her youth. But Gavin, the town's veterinarian, has never forgotten the woman who has always held his heart. And when Mac rescues a stray puppy named Tulip, only Gavin can help.

Life is smooth as buttercream at the Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery, and newlyweds Mel and Joe are stopping to smell the flours. But things start to crumble one night when an unknown gunman takes a shot at Mel. Even though the bullets miss their mark, the cupcake crew goes on high alert to figure out who would want to kill a small-town baker—and why.

The New York Times best-selling library lover's mystery from the author of Due or Die. “Avast” in pirate speak means what? Answering tricky reference questions like this one provides plenty of excitement for library director Lindsey Norris. But when a shocking murder is committed in her cozy coastal town of Briar Creek, Connecticut, the question of who did it must be answered before an innocent man gets the book thrown at him...

Melanie Cooper has zero interest in catering her 15-year high school reunion, but Angie insists it’s only right that they bask in the success of Fairy Tale Cupcakes - and Mel’s engagement to the delicious Joe DeLaura is the cherry on top! Everything is going better than expected until Mel’s high school nemesis picks a fight. No longer willing to put up with Cassidy Havers’s bullying, Mel is ready to tell the former homecoming queen to shut her piehole and call it a night. But as Mel and Joe prepare to depart, Cassidy is found dead in the girls’ bathroom....

Library director Lindsey Norris must solve a murder in her cozy Connecticut hometown before anyone else is checked out for good in this Library Lover’s mystery. Carrie Rushton, the president of the Friends of the Library, has been accused of murdering her husband. The evidence is stacking up against Carrie, but neither Lindsey nor the Briar Creek crafternoon club is buying it. When a nor'easter buries the small coastal town, the police are too busy digging out the locals to investigate the murder.

Emily Allen, a librarian on Martha’s Vineyard, has always dreamed of a life of travel and adventure. So when her favorite author, Siobhan Riordan, offers her a job in the Emerald Isle, Emily jumps at the opportunity. After all, Siobhan’s novels got Em through some of the darkest days of her existence.