It’s Christmastime and everyone is heading to Torte, the most cheerful bakery in town. There’s no place like home for the homicide... Ashland, Oregon, looks as pretty as a postcard this holiday season. The halls are decked, stockings hung, and eyes are all aglow—mostly thanks to the buttered rum. Jules Capshaw and her staff at Torte are busier than ever. . . still, even the town’s most in-demand bakers need to take a break. So Jules invites everyone to celebrate at the local Winchester Inn’s Dickens Feast, a six-course extravaganza with Yorkshire Pudding, Christmas goose, and all the trimmings. But as the weather outside becomes frightful, things inside turn less delightful when one of the guests ends up as dead as Scrooge’s doornail. Now it’s up to Jules and her helpers to make a list of suspects—and check it twice—to try to find out who’s naughty, who’s nice, and who’s guilty of murder... The Bakeshop mysteries are: “Delicious.” —RT Book Reviews “Marvelous.” —Fresh Fiction

Includes an excerpt from A crime of passion fruit by the author.

Ellie Alexander's Live and Let Pie is the most delicious installment yet in the fantastic Bakeshop Mysteries set in Ashland, OR! Life is sweet once you step into Torte, everybody’s favorite small-town bakeshop. But what happens when it becomes the scene of a crime? The heat is on for pastry chef, family business operator, and unlikely sleuth Jules Capshaw. Just when she thought she could enjoy some time away from the kitchen, Jules manages to discover a skull during a picnic by the lake. As if unearthing remains that may be connected to a missing-persons case from the 1960s isn’t enough on her plate, Jules must contend with the unsolved matter of her own marriage while her estranged husband Carlos sails the open seas, awaiting a verdict. Then there’s Jules’s bitter landlord Edgar, who is intent on making a sweet deal on a vacant lot down the block from Torte—until he turns up dead. If only Jules could find a recipe that would let her bake her cake and eat it, too... The Bakeshop mysteries are: “Delectable.”—Portland Book Review “Delicious.”—RT Book Reviews “Marvelous.”—Fresh Fiction

On a lonely Christmas a nephew remembers his beloved great-aunt and realizes the value of her legacy, a message of advice revealing the true spirit of the season.

Includes excerpt from A batter of life and death (pages 309-316) and recipes.

This time, Torte’s pastry chef and amateur sleuth finds herself coming out of the oven and straight into the fire in Ellie Alexander's Nothing Bundt Trouble: A Bakeshop Mystery. Spring has sprung in Ashland, Oregon, and everything at Torte seems to be coming up buttercream roses. But just when Juliet Capshaw seems to have found her sweet spot—with her staff set to handle the influx of tourists for this year’s Shakespeare festival while she moves back into her childhood home—things take a dramatic turn. Jules discovers a long-forgotten dossier in her deceased father’s belongings that details one of the most controversial cases in Ashland’s history: a hit-and-run accident from the 1980s. Or was it? Now it’s up to Jules to parse through a whole new world of details from another era, from unraveling cassette tapes to recipes for Bundt cakes, before an old enemy brings the Capshaw “pastry case” to a modern-day dead end. The Bakeshop Mysteries are: “Delicious.”—RT Book Reviews “Marvelous.”—Fresh Fiction “Delectable.”—Portland Book Review

Poison and weddings don't mix, so Jules Capshaw will have to find the killer stalking her before her mom and soon-to-be stepdad tie the knot.

Welcome to Torte-a small-town family bakeshop where the treats are killer good. It's the dead of winter in the sleepy town of Ashland, which means no tourists-and fewer customers-for Jules Capshaw and her bakery. But when she's asked to cater an off-season retreat for the directors of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, business starts heating up...until Jules finds a dead body in the freezer. "An intriguing new series."-Reader to Reader Someone at the retreat has apparently iced the bartender, a well-known flirt with a legendary temper-that is, before a killer beat him to the punch. Then, from out of nowhere, Jules's own ex-husband shows up at the shop-and soon becomes a suspect. With accusations piling up higher than the snow-and thicker than a chocolate mousse cake-Jules has to think outside the (recipe) box to find the real culprit...and make sure he gets his just desserts. "A delectable tale of murder and intrigue."-Portland Book Review on Meet Your Baker

Jules and her team struggle to make chocolate showpieces and an Elizabethan feast for the gala opening of a museum exhibit featuring a lost Shakespeare manuscript, but before the manuscript can be unveiled it goes missing and the security guard assigned to protect it is murdered.

For fans of Vox, The Power and The Handmaid's Tale comes a dystopian novel set in a world where touching is forbidden, books are banned and The Key governs. Elodie obeys The Key. Elodie obeys the rules. Elodie trusts in the system. At least, Elodie used to...