Bakery owner Hannah Swensen is leaving Lake Eden to help a friend in sunny California. But an unexpected phone call swiftly brings her back to a cold Minnesota winter...and murder ... When Hannah learns that her sister Michelle's boyfriend, Detective Lonnie Murphy, is the prime suspect in a murder case, she goes straight from a movie studio sound stage to the Los Angeles airport. Back in frigid Minnesota, she discovers that proving Lonnie's innocence...

After her best friend Claire and her new husband, the Reverend Bob Knudson, leave for their long-awaited honeymoon, Hannah Swensen stumbles upon the body of Bob's substitute, Matthew Walters, a Lutheran minister with a sweet tooth and a penchant for robbery, in the rectory.

Hannah is marrying Ross Barton, her college crush, but not before she can solve the murder case of nasty celebrity chef Alain Duquesne found stabbed to death in the Lake Eden Inn's walk-in cooler.

Dazzling her patrons with scrumptious cupcakes at her Salem, Massachusetts, bakery, Elizabeth Tucker continues to fall for the irresistible Diesel, who protects her from a villain who is seeking mystical stones tied to the seven deadly sins.

With her dream of opening The Cookie Jar taking shape, Hannah's life matches the hectic December hustle and bustle in Lake Eden--especially when she agrees to help recreate a spectacular Christmas Ball from the past in honor of Essie Granger, an elderly local in hospice care. But instead of poring over decadent dessert recipes for the merry festivities, she instantly becomes enthralled by Essie's old notebooks and the tale of a woman escaping danger...

Wedding baker Laurel McBane has been in love with her business partner's older brother, Delaney Brown, since childhood, but she worries that her relationship with the dashing Ivy League lawyer will never move beyond friendship.

When a pirate festival blows into their small town, bakeshop owners Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree and her best friend Ellie White expect they'll be busy baking up a storm, but instead they find themselves marooned in a new murder investigation after someone kills a well-known food writer and TV personality ... Everything is shipshape at Jake and Ellie's new waterfront bakery, The Chocolate Moose, especially now that the annual Pirate Festival is dropping...

"Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv, the orc barbarian, cashes out of the warrior's life with one final score. A forgotten legend, a fabled artifact, and an unreasonable amount of hope lead her to the streets of Thune, where she plans to open the first coffee shop the city has ever seen. However, her dreams of a fresh start filling mugs instead of swinging swords are hardly a sure bet. Old frenemies and Thune's shady underbelly...

Hannah Swensen of the Cookie Jar in Lake Eden, Minn., discovers her neighbor's head bashed in; Jaine Austen's holiday stay at her parents' home in the Tampa Vistas retirement community is enlivened by the murder of elderly lothario; and, Maine reporter Lucy Stone investigates a four-year-old boy's disappearance. Includes recipes.