Death Warmed Over

In Marigold Bay, the tea is hot and the truth is stone cold.

Grief counselor Maeve Calloway moved to the foggy little harbor town of Marigold Bay to start over - and to run her death cafés, where the living gather over tea and cake to talk honestly about dying. It's gentle, unglamorous work. It is not supposed to get anyone killed.

Then, at the very first café, the town's feared old matriarch shows up unannounced and vows to set a thirty-one-year-old wrong right before she dies. Four days later she's found dead at the foot of her own grand staircase. An accident, the whole town agrees. Everyone but Maeve, who looked her in the eye and knows better.

The trouble is what the old woman confided can't leave that room. To prove a murder, Maeve will have to keep the one promise that makes her café worth having - while a beloved neighbor watches, a grieving mother waits for a truth thirty-one years overdue, and a town that would much rather keep its secrets buried closes ranks around its own.

Death Warmed Over is the first Death Café Mystery: a warm, twisty, fair-play cozy about small towns with long memories, the things we leave unsaid until it's nearly too late, and one stubborn woman who cannot let a wrongness lie.

Perfect for readers who love:

• Small-town, seaside cozy mysteries with a close-knit recurring cast
• A warm, wry amateur sleuth and a slow-burn detective
• Fair-play clues, an emotional heart, and no gore
• Louise Penny's Three Pines, Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club, and the cozies of Ellery Adams and Jenn McKinlay

The first rule of a death café is that nobody dies. Someone should have told the murderer.

Pour a cup and pull up a chair. The Snug is open.