At Gram's Country Cooking School, Betts and Gram are helping students prepare the perfect dishes for the Southern Missouri Show-Down, the cook-off that draws the first of the summer visitors. Everything is going smoothly until they discover the body of local theater owner Everett Morningside in the school's supply closet, and Everett's widow points an accusatory finger at Gram. Now, Betts has to dig deep into Broken Rope's history to find the modern-day killer-before the last piece of chicken is served...

At Gram’s Country Cooking School in Broken Rope, Missouri, Isabelle “Betts” Winston and her grandmother share the secrets of delicious home-style recipes. But there’s one secret they keep from their classes—their ability to talk to ghosts from the town’s colorful past… Betts and Gram agree to help their friend Jake at Broken Rope’s Historical Society by accommodating some foodie tourists for the night and occupying them with cooking lessons. It couldn’t be worse timing when the pair encounter the ax-wielding ghost of Sally Swarthmore, one of Broken Rope’s legendary murderers, who pleads with Betts to help find her diary--a diary that could prove that Sally was really a victim, not a villain. But they soon have a modern-day murder on their hands when one of the tourists turns up dead with a noose around his neck and two other tourists are nowhere to be found. Now Betts needs to put the cooking classes on the back burner to untangle two knotty mysteries and rope in a cold-blooded killer.

At Gram’s Country Cooking School, Isabelle “Betts” Winston and her grandmother share their home-style culinary secrets. But what they keep to themselves are the secrets of Broken Rope, a quiet little Missouri town, that isn't nearly as quiet as it seems... A fresh school year begins as Gram and Betts anxiously await the arrival of their new crop of students. But their enthusiasm is thwarted when a stranger named Freddie O’Bannon arrives and claims to have proof that he was accepted to the school despite what is in their files. And when the ghost of Cylas Gent, a young man who might have a romantic past with Gram, also appears, there are suddenly two mysteries demanding their attention. But just as Gram and Betts start sifting through the past, one of their new students is murdered. Does the seemingly sweet Freddie O’Bannon have something sinister to hide, or are Gram’s ghosts trying to teach her a lesson? Either way, it’s up to the country cooks to catch a killer before another living soul gets burned. Includes delicious recipes!

The New York Times bestselling author of If Catfish Had Nine Lives returns to Broken Rope, Missouri, where ghosts of the Old West seek assistance from country cooks and amateur sleuths Betts Winston and her grandmother. With summer tourists flocking to Broken Rope, locals volunteer to keep chaos to a minimum. Old West skits are running smoothly, actors are behaving, and stagecoach rides are more popular than ever, but when a spectral visitor appears by ghost train, it’s a job only Betts and Gram can handle. Gram soon starts having nightmares about their ghostly visitor’s demise. And if a ghost and the hot summer weather weren’t making things sticky enough, one of the town’s volunteers—a man notorious for having more than his fair share of ex-wives—is murdered. When Jerome, Bett’s otherworldly friend, makes an unsettling appearance, this simmering double mystery becomes a recipe for disaster. Includes delicious recipes!

MORE THAN 100 RECIPES FROM AVERY AAMES/DARYL WOOD GERBER ELLERY ADAMS CONNIE ARCHER LESLIE BUDEWITZ LAURA CHILDS CLEO COYLE VICTORIA HAMILTON B. B. HAYWOOD JULIE HYZY JENN McKINLAY PAIGE SHELTON Great meals don’t have to be a mystery—but they can come from a mystery. Selecting the most delicious recipes from some of the most popular names in crime solving, The Cozy Cookbook serves up mouth-watering appetizers, entrèes, and desserts that will leave your family or book club group asking, “Whodunit?” In addition to recipes, choose a sleuth du jour from our menu of mystery series and get a taste of each of our authors’ bread and butter—page-turning puzzles and stay-up-all-night suspense in excerpts from their bestselling works. Whether you like your meals sautéed, roasted, baked, or served cold like revenge, The Cozy Cookbook has something to satisfy every mystery fan. This book contains previously published material.

Betts Winston has inherited more than her cooking skills from her grandmother—she can also see and talk to ghosts of people that once roamed the streets of Broken Rope, Missouri, in the days of the Old West… With Gram’s Country Cooking School on spring break, Betts and Gram are taking part in this year’s cowboy poetry convention, offering lessons on frying catfish over an open campfire. But when a staged gunfight ends in real death and her brother Teddy becomes a prime suspect, Betts may be the one to jump from the frying pan into the fire. After her ghostly guardian Jerome appears to watch her back and a spectral Pony Express rider gallops into town with some unfinished business, Broken Rope starts to seem more like a cowboy ghost convention. With trouble on both sides of this mortal coil, it’s up to Betts to clear her brother, put the spirits to rest, and make sure the true killer doesn’t become the one who got away. Includes Recipes!

A personal, social, and intellectual self-portrait of the beloved and enormously influential late Randall Kenan, a master of both fiction and nonfiction. Virtuosic in his use of literary forms, nurtured and unbounded by his identities as a Black man, a gay man, an intellectual, and a Southerner, Randall Kenan was known for his groundbreaking fiction. Less visible were his extraordinary nonfiction essays, published as introductions to anthologies and in small journals, revealing countless facets of Kenan’s life and work. Flying under the radar, these writings were his most personal and autobiographical: memories of the three women who raised him—a grandmother, a schoolteacher great-aunt, and the great-aunt’s best friend; recollections of his boyhood fear of snakes and his rapturous discoveries in books; sensual evocations of the land, seasons, and crops—the labor of tobacco picking and hog killing—of the eastern North Carolina lowlands where he grew up; and the food (oh the deliriously delectable Southern foods!) that sustained him. Here too is his intellectual coming of age; his passionate appreciations of kindred spirits as far-flung as Eartha Kitt, Gordon Parks, Ingmar Bergman, and James Baldwin. This powerful collection is a testament to a great mind, a great soul, and a great writer from whom readers will always wish to have more to read.

Bookseller and amateur sleuth Delaney Nichols returns in Paige Shelton's second Scottish Bookshop Mystery, Of Books and Bagpipes Delaney Nichols has settled so comfortably into her new life in Edinburgh that she truly feels it’s become more home than her once beloved Kansas. Her job at the Cracked Spine, a bookshop that specializes in rare manuscripts as well as other sundry valuable historical objects, is everything she had dreamed, with her new boss, Edwin MacAlister, entrusting her more and more with bigger jobs. Her latest task includes a trip to Castle Doune, a castle not far out of Edinburgh, to retrieve a hard-to-find edition of an old Scottish comic, an “Oor Wullie,” in a cloak and dagger transaction that Edwin has orchestrated. While taking in the sights of the distant Highlands from the castle’s ramparts, Delaney is startled when she spots a sandal-clad foot at the other end of the roof. Unfortunately, the foot’s owner is very much dead and, based on the William Wallace costume he’s wearing, perfectly matches the description of the man who was supposed to bring the Oor Wullie. As Delaney rushes to call off some approaching tourists and find the police, she comes across the Oor Wullie, its pages torn and fluttering around a side wall of the castle. Instinct tells her to take the pages and hide them under her jacket. It’s not until she returns to the Cracked Spine that she realizes just how complicated this story is and endeavors to untangle the tricky plot of why someone wanted this man dead, all before getting herself booked for murder.

Looking for a new cozy series? In the new edition of Cozy Case Files, Minotaur Books compiles the beginnings of five charming cozy mysteries starting in December 2019 for free for easy sampling. Travel cross country – and across the ocean – with the latest cozies by the following authors: M.C. Beaton, Vivien Chien, Diane Kelly, Elizabeth Penney, and Paige Shelton. Start in Cleveland in Egg Drop Dead, where a dinner party catered by Ho-Lee Noodle House has deadly consequences. From there pop down to Nashville, where the real estate market is to die for, in Dead in the Doorway. Travel to Maine in series debut Hems & Homicide; this apron shop will have readers on pins and needles! You’ll finish your journey across the pond. In The Stolen Letter, pandemonium ensues in Edinburgh when bookseller Delaney Nichols meets a woman who believes she is Mary, Queen of Scots, reborn. And in Beating About the Bush, Agatha Raisin must investigate a case of industrial espionage at a factory where nothing is quite what it seems.

Looking for a new cozy series? In the new edition of Cozy Case Files, Minotaur Books compiles the beginnings of six charming cozy mysteries publishing in Winter 2021 for free for easy sampling. The eleventh edition of Cozy Case Files features the latest cozies by the following authors: Ellie Alexander, Vivien Chien, Mariah Fredericks, Diane Kelly, Elizabeth Penney, and Paige Shelton. It’s 1914 New York, and a killer is stalking Broadway in Death of a Showman. A treasure hunt through Edinburgh gives way to a search for a villain terrorizing the city in Deadly Editions. It’s the end of a beautiful Maine summer in Bodies and Bows, and apron shop owner Iris Buckley must track down a killer before her best friend is arrested for murder and everything unravels. In Murder with a View, the body of a popular country music singer turns up in Nashville carpenter Whitney Whitaker’s latest real estate investment. Oregon’s favorite bakery Torte’s newest venture - a pop-up ice cream shop - is swirling into a nightmare in Chilled to the Cone. And in Fatal Fried Rice, a delectable cozy set in Cleveland, Ohio, Lana Lee may be next on the chopping block when her cooking class turns deadly and Lana is forced to investigate to clear her name.