Almond Paste and Alibis: A Kittiwake Harbor Bakery Cozy Mystery, Book 1
ASHBY, CORA
Synopsis "Almond Paste and Alibis: A Kittiwake Harbor Bakery Cozy Mystery, Book 1"
A bake-off, a blueberry tart, and a developer who will never sign another deal. Ruby Whitby came home to Kittiwake Harbor, Maine, to do one thing: keep her grandmother's bakery open. The Saltbox Oven has been pulling blueberry tarts out of the oven at six every morning since 1961, and Ruby is not about to be the Whitby who let the oven go cold. Then Dalton Voss comes back to town with a resort plan that needs one last parcel - hers - and a craving for the tart his mother used to make. The morning after the Blueberry Festival bake-off, Ruby unlocks the back door and finds him on her flour room floor, beside an empty tart box and the smell of bitter almond. Ruby's tarts are nut-free. This one was not. And the only people in town who could have baked it are the ones she has known her entire life. Welcome to Kittiwake Harbor - a harbour town where the coffee is always on, gossip travels faster than the tide, and everybody knows exactly what everybody else was doing at six in the morning. There is Wanda Pelletier, who runs the bait shop and the town's real news service. There is Ellis Thorne, the harbourmaster, who has not spoken to Dalton Voss since 1998. There is Gram Iris's recipe tin, still on the left-hand shelf where she left it, full of cards in her own handwriting. And there is Cardamom - Cardi, to the regulars - a one-eared tabby who sleeps on the flour bin and has opinions about everything. Ruby is not a detective and has no wish to be one. But she has a baker's palate, a memory for what she sold and to whom, and a stubborn conviction that somebody in this town used her kitchen to kill a man. Every clue in this book is on the page before the reveal - if you want to solve it alongside her, you can. A culinary cozy mystery with a small-town cast you will want to visit again, a slow-burn romance, and a one-eared bakery cat A clean read: no gore, no graphic violence, no on-page sex, no strong language - and no harm comes to any animal Four recipe cards from Gram Iris's tin, including the blueberry tart the whole town is fighting over Book 1 of the Kittiwake Harbor Bakery Mysteries - every mystery stands alone, and the series is best read in order For readers of small-town culinary mysteries who like their murders neatly off-page and their desserts described in detail. Start with Almond Paste and Alibis - and stay for blueberry season. Almond Paste and Alibis is a complete standalone mystery. More Kittiwake Harbor mysteries are on the way.
