This short story is a look back into Judy and Lily's past. Meet Judy at the moment of her first mystery and hear the story of Lily and Marty's young love. Don't worry. There will be an adorable dog and some delicious food included.

With the summer heat sizzling, grilled cheese restaurant owner Carly Hale is thrilled to have Ross Baxter delivering her sandwiches to local seniors. She’s never met a more polite or hardworking young man, and she brushes it off when one of her more difficult customers complains about him. But then Ross returns to the woman’s home to make another delivery—and finds her dead body. The police and half the town immediately suspect he killed her, so Carly steps in to investigate, determined to prove them wrong.

In the gentle coastal town of South Cove, California, all Jill Gardner wants is to keep her store - Coffee, Books, and More - open and running. So why is she caught up in the business of murder? When Jill's elderly friend Miss Emily calls in a fit of pique, she already knows that the city council is trying to force Emily to sell her dilapidated old house. But Emily's gumption goes for naught when she dies unexpectedly and leaves the house to Jill, along with all of her problems...and her enemies.

Ainsley Holloway had come to Gooseberry Bay to find answers about her past. She’d come to find an explanation for the dreams that haunted her after the death of the cop who’d both rescued and raised her. And she’d come to identify the family she couldn’t remember but knew in her heart she’d once belonged to.

After Lindsey Bakeswell catches her celebrity chef fiance sizzling in the arms of another woman, Lindsey leaves big city Wall Street for small town Beacon Harbor, Michigan, to pursue her own passion as a pastry baker - and gets mixed up in someone's sweet taste of revenge.

The young man with the shock of white-blond hair lay spread-eagled on the floor, surrounded by fallen books. His hand reached out to the scattered pages, as though he was trying to tell her something. But who is he? How did he come to be killed in Flora’s ordinary little bookshop? Flora finds out he was staying at the Priory Hotel, and when the gardener suddenly dies in its beautiful grounds only a few days later, she is certain that something untoward is happening in her quiet village by the sea.

Ex-journalist Violet Brewster is keen to make a good first impression in her new community, having just moved to the small village of Merrywell. When Violet hears about the mystery of Helen Slingsby, who disappeared from the village forty years earlier, she decides to help uncover what happened. But despite Violet’s best efforts, she can find no trace of the missing woman.

After suffering a personal tragedy Abby Sullivan buys a huge old seaside mansion she has never even seen, packs up her life in San Francisco, and moves to Holiday Bay Maine, where she is adopted, quite against her will, by a huge Maine Coon Cat named Rufus, a drifter with her own tragic past named Georgia, and a giant dog with an inferiority complex named Ramos. What Abby thought she needed was alone time to heal. What she ended up with was, an inn she never knew she wanted, a cat she couldn't seem to convince to leave, and a new family she'd never be able to live without.

Discover five humorous and clean best-selling cozy mysteries by Ruth Baker.

My name is Lou Prescott. I was born in South Carolina but spent most of my life in Northern Minnesota. Since the death of my husband, I've found myself at loose ends, so when my niece offered to sell me the quaint seaside bookstore she owned in Holiday Bay, Maine, I jumped at the opportunity to restart my life somewhere new. My journey to date has been a bit rocky but my rescue cat Toby and I are making it work.

Megan's first day running her new scooter rental shop comes with one massive hiccup. A would be purse-snatcher dashes out the front door and Megan takes off after him. As the moment unravels, she finds it was all a harmless prank. But not everything is as harmless as it seems. When a body is found at the construction site of a high-end development, news shakes through the small town and speculation runs wild.

When a crime-stopper senior citizen starts to act oddly, a new business sells fake products, and the New Year’s Eve fireworks display disappears, Mayor Cora Mae Bingham and the Spicetown Police Chief Conrad Harris have to get involved. 

Shelby Morris came to Holiday Bay after receiving a huge inheritance from a woman she'd never met which she'd been destined to share with two half-sisters she'd never knew existed. It took some time for the three very different siblings to settle the estate in a manner that was agreeable to all of them, but in the end, it was decided that Shelby would stay and take care of things.

As the new owner of the Coral Shores Veterinary Hospital, Dr. Emily Benton is in over her head. When she makes a house call at the home of her client, Mrs. Eliza Klein, she finds the woman's terrier, Elvis, in a state of distress and Mrs. Klein face down on the floor-dead. Emily immediately contacts her brother, Deputy Sheriff Duncan Benton, for help. The cause of death is later determined to be nicotine poisoning, triggering an official murder investigation. Who would want to kill a retired piano teacher best known for her animal charity work?

If you want to enjoy a quick light-hearted listen, with an amateur female sleuth, mouth-watering culinary desserts and a gripping murder mystery, then you'll love Lucy Hale and all the quirky characters in Ivy Creek.