Strawberried Alive

“Quirky, cupcake-fueled characters add to the joy of this long-running…series.”
—***Kirkus

Praise for the Cupcake Bakery Mysteries*

“[A] fun, quirky whodunit!”
—Woman's World

"[McKinlay's] characters are delicious."
—Sheila Connolly, New York Times bestselling author of the Orchard Mysteries

"All the ingredients for a winning read."
—Cleo Coyle, New York Times bestselling author of the Coffeehouse Mysteries

"McKinlay bakes a sweet read!"
—Krista Davis, New York Times bestselling author of the Domestic Diva Mysteries

"A tender cozy full of warm and likable characters and a refreshingly sympathetic murder victim. Readers will look forward to more of McKinlay's tasty concoctions."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Auteur
Jenn McKinlay is the award-winning New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of several mystery and romance series. Her work has been translated into multiple languages in countries all over the world. She lives in sunny Arizona in a house that is overrun with kids, pets, and her husband's guitars.

Texte du rabat

The crew from the Fairy Tale Cupcakes shop risks getting burned when they set out to find a murderer who is terrorizing their town, in the fourteenth Cupcake Bakery Mystery from New York Times bestselling author Jenn McKinlay.

Life is smooth as buttercream at the Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery, and newlyweds Mel and Joe are stopping to smell the flours. But things start to crumble one night when an unknown gunman takes a shot at Mel. Though the bullets miss their mark, the cupcake crew goes on high alert to figure out who would want to kill a small-town baker, and why.

When more business owners are attacked, things turn fatal, and locals start to wonder if the killer could be one of their own. Every shop owner in town starts to fear it's only a matter of time before they too become victims of the mystery murderer. Despite the cupcake crew's superb baking skills, it will be anything but a piece of cake to catch the killer, as they try to prevent anyone else from being berried.

Story Locale: Scottsdale, AZ

Series Overview: Melanie and Angie, bakers, best friends, and owners of the Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery, whip up delectable desserts and hunt down crafty killers in this New York Times bestselling culinary cozy series.

Échantillon de lecture
Chapter One

“I’m not paying for these,” Emerson Henry snapped. “They’re not what I asked for, in fact, they’re hideous.”

Melanie DeLaura’s eyebrows rose up to her hairline. She glanced at the bride-to-be, who stood across the counter from her with her harried mother, Julia Henry, by her side, and debated tossing them out of Fairy Tale Cupcakes. Not to be full of herself but Mel was positive she had never baked a hideous cupcake in her life.

“Now, princess, I don’t think—” Julia began, but Emerson interrupted her.

“Exactly. You don’t think,” Emerson said, with an impatient toss of her long, honey-blond hair. Her wide mouth twisted up into a puckered knot. “I told you to check on the color of the cupcakes, but you said, ‘Oh, they’ll be fine.’ And now look at the mess we’re in the day before my wedding. You knew I wanted the cupcakes to match the new bridesmaids’ dresses and these don’t. They are aqua and the dresses are teal. Now my wedding is ruined!” Emerson stalked out of the bakery, sobbing hysterically and texting frantically as she went.

Julia scrunched up her hands into tight fists. Mel hurried around the counter to position herself between the aggravated mother of the bride and the box of cupcakes on the off chance that Julia felt the need to vent her temper by slamming her fists into the pastries.

“Twenty-four hours,” Julia muttered. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply in through her nose, letting the air out on a soft exhale. Then she gave Mel a small, closed-lip smile. “In twenty-four hours, she will no longer be my problem.”

“There’s a silver lining,” Mel said. “What can I do to help?”

Mel thought about pointing out that if you called your adult daughter “princess” maybe you were part of the problem, but she resisted, guessing that now was not the time, and it really wasn’t her business.

She turned to stand beside Julia as they stared down at the cupcakes. They were vanilla cake filled with raspberry mousse and topped with white chocolate buttercream frosting covered with a layer of fondant. The fondant had been matched to the hue of the bridesmaids’ dresses with the couple’s entwined initials crafted from white chocolate centered on top. Mel plucked a swatch of fabric from where it was taped to the side of the box.

“I gather that Emerson is disappointed, but I don’t see how I could match the fondant any more closely than this,” she said. She held the fabric against one of the cupcakes and glanced from it to Julia.

Julia rubbed her forehead with her fingers. “That’s the original color for the bridesmaids’ dresses.”
Mel got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Original color?”

“Yes,” Julia said. “She changed it two weeks ago from aqua to teal and we had to pay an insane amount of money for a rush order on the dresses.”

“Oh.” Mel had sudden sympathy pangs for the dressmaker and the bridesmaids. “I’m sorry. No one told me.”

“Apparently that was my job on top of everything else,” Julia said. She sounded bitter and a teeny bit hysterical. She turned troubled eyes to Mel. “Is there any way you can redo the fondant to match the new dress color?” She opened her bag and peered inside. “I have a sample and I’ll pay you for your time.” She held up the tiny square of teal that was definitely a deeper green than the aqua.

Mel wanted to howl. This would mean an all-nighter and she’d already put in a full day. Given that Emerson had been such a brat, she wanted to say no, but Julia was a longtime customer and other than this wedding, she’d always been a pleasure to work with. Mel didn’t want to let her down.

Mel turned to look at her counter help, Marty Zelaznik, who had been listening to the entire exchange. Being an octogenarian who didn’t suffer fools, she expected him to have a few choice words to say about the situation. Instead, he raised his hands in surrender and slowly backed away, moving down the counter to help other customers. Mel was on her own.

She glanced at the swatch and then the box of cupcakes. The Henrys had ordered 350, all of which were already boxed and in the walk-in cooler in her kitchen. This was going to mean hours of work. Despite not wanting to do it, she found herself nodding. She couldn’t abide the idea of having Emerson Henry trashing her bakery over the color of the cupcakes, because Mel had no doubt that she would, while conveniently leaving out the part that it was completely her own bridezilla fault.

“Okay,” Mel said. “I’ll have them ready first thing in the morning.”

Now Julia looked like she might cry. She pressed the square of fabric into Mel’s hands and hugged her. “You’re a lifesaver.”

Mel watched as Julia rushed out the door after her daughter. She supposed it could be worse. She could be Julia, stuck catering to princess’s every whim. Suddenly a night of making new fondant didn’t seem so bad.

Marty rang up his cus…