Check out some of the new titles releasing during the week of September 26 – October 2, 2021 with two debut series. I hope a few of these books take you to an exciting place.

Festive Mayhem 2 edited by Marla Bradeen (Cozy Anthology)
Available on Apple, B&N, and Kobo
Seven crime writers of color have teamed up for the second year running to offer you the gift of escape this holiday season. From Thanksgiving to Christmas, Halloween to New Year’s, cozy mystery fans are bound to find a favorite holiday represented in this limited-time collection of exclusive, never-before-published seasonal short stories.

Dessert is the Bomb by Catherine Bruns (Cozy)
Baker turned sometimes-sleuth Sally Muccio has always loved Halloween, but this year she has more on her mind than ghosts and goblins. In addition to catering a party at her wacky father’s funeral home, a competing bakery has just moved in across the street from Sally’s Samples. The new owner, Celeste Delgado, seems intent on burying Sal’s novelty cookie shop into the ground with her sensational smash cake bombs.

Here Comes The Fudge by Nancy Coco (Cozy)
It’s late spring on picturesque Mackinac Island, Michigan. Allie is prepping her Historic McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shop for the start of the tourist season and her best friend Jenn’s wedding. But when Jenn’s fiancé Shane, a crime scene investigator on the island, misses a dinner date, the two friends go looking for him. Led by Allie’s bichonpoo Mal into an alley, they come upon Shane standing over a body with a bloody knife in his hand. Shane won’t say what’s happened, just tells them to call 911.

The Glitter End by Vivian Conroy (Cozy)
Stationery shop owner Delta Douglas is finally settling into small-town life in Tundish, Montana. But with the tourist season drying up, she must find a way to draw in her stationery shop clientele. Well-known artist Tilly Tay is just the ticket―and her new miniature gold mining display is sure to be a hit attraction in town.

Murder Outside the Lines by Krista Davis (Cozy)
With Halloween just around the corner, the fall colors in Georgetown are brilliant. As manager of the Color Me Read bookstore, coloring book creator Florrie Fox has arranged for psychic author Hilda Rattenhorst to read from Spooktacular Ghost Stories. But the celebrity medium arrives for the event in hysterics, insisting she just saw a bare foot sticking out of a rolled-up carpet in a nearby alley. Is someone trying to sweep murder under the rug?

The Perfect Plan by Jeffery Deaver (Thriller)
When the FBI comes to Lincoln Rhyme with the news that a mysterious assassin is targeting him, the detective is not particularly concerned. With his long career putting away criminals, he is accustomed to threats on his life, and has designed his Upper West Side townhome to be secure against nearly any threat. But when the assassin gets too close for comfort, shadowing Rhyme and his wife, Amelia Sachs, as they go about their daily life, Rhyme determines to find out why this person is after him.

Amish Candy Shop Holidays by Amanda Flower (Cozy)
A holiday bundle featuring Criminally Cocoa: As if being in New York City for Easter isn’t exciting enough, Charlotte Weaver is helping her cousin, Bailey, on the set of her first cable TV show, Bailey’s Amish Sweets; Botched Butterscotch: Mother’s Day is a sweet and busy time at the candy shop Bailey King runs with her Amish grandmother; and Candy Cane Crime: Thanks to her new cable TV show, Bailey’s shop has more orders than she can handle this Christmas.
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The Suspects by Joan Havelange (Cozy)
Mable Havelock and Violet Ficher are on a scenic bus tour of the Nordic capital cities of Europe and Russia. The tour culminates in Moscow. Where The tour director is murdered. There is a busload of suspects to choose from. A flirtatious woman and her jealous husband. A professor of Nordic History who is ill-informed. Two world travellers who describe themselves as gypsies and a mysterious man who is hiding something.

Wreathing Havoc by Julia Henry (Cozy)
Lilly Jayne typically spends the harvest season baking festive pies and crafting colorful wreaths to enter in the library’s annual fundraising contest. But this year, autumn opens on a somber note when beloved local theater owner, Leon Tompkin, dies unexpectedly. His memorial sets the scene for a mini reunion of The Goosebush Players’ best and brightest alumni, including Hollywood star, Jeremy Nolan. . .until someone plucks Jeremy from the spotlight, permanently.

Death at Holly Lodge by Louise R. Innes (Cozy)
Ooh La La hair salon owner Daisy Thorne adores the Christmas cheer in her picturesque hometown of Edgemead, England. Excitement is extra high this year, as international pop star, Mimi Levanté , the village’s newest resident, begins renovating historic Holly Lodge. But the charming country home’s makeover is cut short by a shocking discovery—the body of a man, dressed as Santa Claus, jammed inside the house’s chimney!

Mrs. Claus and the Halloween Homicide by Liz Ireland (Cozy)
For the first time ever, Christmastown is celebrating a strange new tradition—Halloween. But not everyone is willing to watch their dependable winter wonderland get overrun by carved pumpkins and costume parties. As a series of scary happenings hit Santaland, each one more intense than the last, April realizes having a role in the festivities could cost her family, friends—even her own life.

Two Cats Are Better Than One by Gin Jones (Cozy)
Wyn Miller is edging closer to fully deserving the label of crazy cat lady. In addition to her original cat, Sal, she’s added two more adults and their kittens. Not to hoard them, but to train them to provide animal therapy as an adjunct to her private nursing. Her latest patient, Peter, is in bad shape, having given up on life. The cats perk him up a little, but then one of his neighbors is murdered, and everyone thinks the victim’s girlfriend did it.

Murder Gets a Makeover by Laura Levine (Cozy)
Uber-stylist Bebe Braddock plans to juice up her Instagram feed, and thinks Jaine would make a perfect “Before & After” model. At Lance’s insistence Jaine is ushered into Bebe’s sprawling Brentwood spread to await her transformation. Yet, while the surroundings are glamorous, the atmosphere is toxic as Bebe bullies her team of assistants, and even her husband, into obeying her every whim.

Pretty Evil New York by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon (Crime Fiction)
Female criminals are often portrayed as caricatures: Black Widows, Queenpins, Mob Molls, or Femme Fatales. But the real stories are much more fascinating and complex. In Pretty Evil New York author Elizabeth Kerri Mahon takes you on a journey through a rogue’s gallery of some of New York’s most notable female criminals. Drawing on newspaper coverage and other primary sources, this collection of historical true crime stories chronicles eleven women who were media sensations in their day, making headlines across the country decades before radio, television, or social media.

A Lost Claus by Mona Marple (Cozy)
As Christmas approaches in Candy Cane Hollow, it’s time for the annual Claus Family ice fishing trip. Holly Wood (yes, that’s her real name) is a ball of nerves about meeting all of Nick Claus’ relatives, until the trip ends in disaster. One Claus doesn’t return home, and as everyone begins to fear the worst, an old grudge between the Lost Claus and Nick makes his actions look suspicious.

Lyin’ Eyes by Julie Mulhern (Cozy)
Not so much the church, as the patio. And not if Ellison can’t stop finding bodies. She’s finding corpses in pairs now, and planning a wedding, and trying (truly, she is) to steer clear of the murder investigation. But when she finds a third body, Ellison becomes a suspect. Will Ellison get her happily ever after or will a devious killer turn her wedding into a funeral?

Chapter and Curse by Elizabeth Penney (Cozy) *new series*
Librarian Molly Kimball and her mother, Nina, need a change. So when a letter arrives from Nina’s Aunt Violet in Cambridge, England requesting their help running the family bookshop, they jump at the chance. Thomas Marlowe—Manuscripts and Folios, is one of the oldest bookshops in Cambridge, and—unfortunately—customers can tell. When Molly and Nina arrive, spring has come to Cambridge and the famed Cambridge Literary Festival is underway.

Murder at the Royal Botanic Gardens by Andrea Penrose (Historical)
One advantage of being caught up in a whirl of dress fittings and decisions about flower arrangements and breakfast menus is that Charlotte Sloane has little time for any pre-wedding qualms. Her love for Wrexford isn’t in question. But will being a wife—and a Countess—make it difficult for her to maintain her independence—not to mention, her secret identity as famed satirical artist A.J. Quill?

Murder Can Frost Your Doughnut by Rose Pressey (Cozy)
Celeste has pulled up in her pink Shasta trailer, aka mobile art studio, to the Sevier County Fair in the mountains of eastern Tennessee to sell her paintings. A highlight of the fair promises to be the celebrity impersonation contest. But the low point is when Celeste and her floppy-eared white Chihuahua Van (short for Van Gogh) find an Elvis impersonator in his trailer doing a great impression of a corpse, clutching a doughnut in his hand.

Fromage by Sally Scott (Cozy) *new series*
Journalist Alex Grant is enjoying the last days of her summer holiday in Croatia when she is accosted by an old school friend, Marie Puharich, and her odious brother, Brian, both there to attend the funeral of their fearsome grandfather’s two loyal retainers. The only upside of the whole sorry business is meeting Marco, the family’s resident adonis. An incorrigible foodie, Alex is unable to resist Brian’s invitation to visit the family creamery in Australia’s south-west to snoop around for stories and eat her body weight in brie.

The Corpse in the Gazebo by Debra Sennefelder (Cozy)
It seems everyone loves Hope’s blog these days, and she’s busier than ever volunteering to help other women create their own paths to success. So she’s shocked when a neighbor petitions to run Hope right out of her small Connecticut town! Set in her ways, apparently Birdie Donovan doesn’t like the chaos Hope’s sleuthing creates, the police activity and crime scenes, and it’s happening way too often lately. Eager to make amends, Hope bakes Birdie a batch of her best muffins.

A Perfect Bind by Dorothy St. James (Cozy)
Tru Beckett succeeded in building a secret book room in her now bookless library, where book lovers from lovely Cypress, South Carolina, can rejoice in the printed word. Now she’s working hard to maintain the little library downstairs while keeping her “real job” upstairs in the bookless technology center. The last thing she needs is a mysterious vandal who seems intent on breaking into her secret book-filled sanctuary and creating chaos.

Chaos and Cold Feet by Kari Lee Townsend (Cozy)
After finally picking the perfect date, Sunny and her fiancé Detective Mitch Stone are about to get married, and even her mischievous cat Morty seems to be on board. This time her best friend and her friend’s husband are the maid of honor and best man, but they have brand new baby twin boys who need to be baptized first. Just as soon as the ceremony for the babies is finished, Sunny and Mitch’s wedding will take place.