Christmas Cake Murder

Hannah Swensen is young, and her biggest hope one Christmas in Lake Eden, Minnesota, is to become the town's favourite baker. Her plan to open a shop called The Cookie Jar is coming together, and December is already crowded with errands.

She also agrees to help recreate a grand Christmas Ball from years past. The event honours Essie Granger, an elderly resident who is in hospice care. Hannah expects to spend her time on dessert recipes for the party.

Instead she becomes absorbed in Essie's old notebooks. They hold a crime story about a woman fleeing danger on the streets of New York, and Hannah did not know Essie wrote fiction like this. The surprise grows when events in the story start to play out in real life.

Hannah's to-do list is already long: get the bakery running and move out of her mother's house. This cozy mystery looks back at her early days, and it turns on whether she can stop another holiday disaster by untangling a case as dense as a fruitcake.