Spells and Spiced Pumpkin

Pie number seven is Maren Tolliver’s, and the judge who just tasted it is lying on the floor of the Grange. Now the whole town wants to know what was in it.

Maren runs The Kettle & Crust, a small bakery in Windle Hollow, Vermont. In this witchy cozy mystery, she has one odd edge: her tongue can read a baker’s mood. The judge’s emergency pens are missing, someone hid something deadly in a sealed dish of cream, and every neighbor has a theory.

She has help, of a kind. Biscuit is a young crow who steals shiny things and, it turns out, evidence. Aunt Fenella answers questions with riddles and herbs. Deputy Eli Navarro writes everything down and trusts almost nothing. Gran’s old green recipe book keeps its secrets in pencil in the margins.

Maren wants to keep her shop and clear her name. Plenty of people could have reached that cream, and every one of them is someone she knows.

This is a clean, funny, small-town puzzle with fair clues on the page, a sly crow, and a heroine with flour on everything. Gran’s pumpkin bread recipe is tucked in at the back.

Grab a fork and find a seat at the Grange.