Cooking the Books - Plot & Scone Book 2

Cooking the Books

A Plot & Scone Mystery, Book 2

Clara Higgins has finally found her rhythm. The Plot & Scone is thriving, the blue ribbon from the Autumn Harvest Festival hangs proudly above the register, and her quiet romance with Chief Elias Thorne is starting to feel like something real.

Then reclusive bestselling author Silas Blackwood agrees to a rare public signing in her snowbound bakery. Despite a fierce December blizzard, fans pack the shop. Silas is difficult and exacting—insisting on his own thermos of Earl Grey and a pre-warmed mug—but the crowd hangs on every word.

Until he bites into a cranberry-orange scone, sips his tea… and collapses.

Poisoned. Dead.

With her signature pastry and the author's thermos both under suspicion, Clara's carefully rebuilt life is suddenly at risk. A state detective is eager to shut her bakery down. The list of people who wanted Silas dead is long: a disinherited daughter, a desperate literary agent, a bitter rival with a decades-old grudge, and a housekeeper who knows every secret he ever tried to hide.

As the blizzard traps the town and the body count rises, Clara must use her sharp accounting mind to balance a far deadlier set of books. Someone slipped poison onto the inside of a thermos cap, walked away with the evidence, and is still watching the baker who refuses to stop digging.

With Elias at her side and everything she's built hanging by a thread, Clara is about to discover that in Willow Creek, the sweetest treats often hide the darkest secrets.

Sweet treats. Dark secrets. Deadly combos.