Frosted with Malice: A Sweetwater Bakery Mystery

A celebrity chef. A poisoned gingerbread plate. And a baker who can't stop asking questions.The Sweetwater Cove Winter Frost Festival should have been the highlight of Delia Marsh's December. The gingerbread competition. The string lights. The cider. And - fine - the Michelin-starred celebrity judge whose arrival has the entire town buzzing with nervous excitement.Then Renaud Beaumont collapses backstage after the preliminary tasting, dead from a poison hidden in one of the competition entries. The last three plates he sampled include Delia's own gingerbread - which puts her uncomfortably close to a murder investigation for the second time in four months.But when the toxicology reveals that the poison wasn't meant for the celebrity chef at all - that he grabbed the wrong plate, and the real target was the festival's beleaguered event coordinator - Delia realizes this murder isn't about culinary grudges or stolen recipes. It's about money. Specifically, about the sixty-two thousand dollars someone has been quietly siphoning from the festival's nonprofit accounts.With her dog Biscuit finding evidence in tent seams, Nan's gossip network delivering critical intelligence before breakfast, and her relationship with Sheriff Tom Reyes deepening in ways that neither of them quite knows how to handle, Delia navigates a suspect list that includes a wronged protégé, a trapped assistant, a smooth-talking sponsor, and a retired pastry chef whose history with the dead man is more complicated than she's willing to admit.Someone in Sweetwater Cove poisoned a plate of gingerbread. Someone in Sweetwater Cove is stealing from the community. And Delia Marsh - armed with a bakery counter, an instinct for the truth, and a dog who deserves a commendation from the governor - is going to find out who.Frosted with Malice is the second book in the Sweetwater Bakery Mysteries - a warm, witty cozy mystery series set in a charming Maine coastal town, featuring an amateur sleuth with flour on her apron, a slow-burn romance that finally starts to simmer, and a community worth fighting for.Perfect for fans of Joanne Fluke, Diane Mott Davidson, and Jenn McKinlay's cupcake mysteries. Includes bonus recipes from the Marsh Family Bakery: Delia's Competition Gingerbread, Royal Icing for Assembly, and Nan's Spiced Molasses Cookies.Standalone mystery with a satisfying resolution. Series romance deepens (near-miss moment included). No graphic violence. No explicit content. Just gingerbread, genuine mystery, and a town that gathers when it matters most.