Tea Shop Cozy Mystery

Fifty-something widow Willow Foxglove's dream is to operate a herbal tea shop. If only she could stop tripping over dead bodies long enough to organize the business! When murder comes to peaceful Aniseed Valley, Willow Foxglove is on the case. Believing the local sheriff to be unequal to the challenge, she pursues leads in between building a new tea shop and looking after her Maine Coon kitten, Mavis.

When the murder victim is revealed as her 'kind-of' boyfriend, the finger of blame points squarely at Willow. To avoid a murder charge, she needs to track down the real killer. Believing that the local Aniseed Valley sheriff is unequal to the challenge, Willow sets about clearing her name. She must also decide the fate of a gifted Maine Coon kitten, who's set her allergies ablaze. As the net tightens, Willow draws on the book-smarts of best friend Harmony and conspiracy-laden facts from second-best friend Reg to help solve the crime.

With her home conservatory being noisily transformed into a tea room, Willow has quite enough on her plate. The last thing she needs is for her head builder to turn up dead in the nearby river. To make matters even worse, the local sheriff is certain that Willow's conspiracy-laden friend Reg is the murderer. Between her fears that the dream of owning her own business will now collapse and fighting to keep her friend out of jail, Willow is just about at her wit's end. Throw a gregarious British builder into the mix, and this might be a case that even Miss Walsham Investigates would have trouble cracking.

When a hotel manager's dead body closes the main road to Willow's new tea shop, none of her customers can get through to celebrate her opening day. On a mission to investigate the closure, she instead becomes embroiled in the case. But Willow isn't the only person to raise the local sheriff's suspicions. There's the janitor last seen fighting with the manager as he handed in his resignation. Not to mention a pair of teenage boys, who might have taken a prank too far.

Willow Foxglove is excited when her favorite television show comes to town to shoot an episode in the local park. But delight turns to dismay, when a sound man is electrocuted on set. An incidence with Mavis, her Maine Coon kitten, puts Willow near the scene, making her terrified she contributed to the accident. But when the sheriff's office determines the incident is a case of cold-blooded murder, they instead put her favorite actress squarely in the frame.

After taking a few days sick off work, Willow Foxglove's waitress, Tiffany Woodstock, is declared a missing person. When Clay, her husband, then turns up dead, the search escalates into a manhunt. Willow can't rest easy until she knows Tiffany is safe and sound. Unfortunately, though, her best friend Harmony seems to know something more, she's keeping mum.

When Reg doesn't turn up for his tour group, Willow is frightened something terrible has happened to him. After an increasingly panicked hunt, she and Harmony find him hiding away from the extraterrestrial life-forms he usually seeks. After Sheriff Wender uncovers a body in the same pasture Reg insists he encountered an alien being, they must consider whether a universal incident has taken place.