Christmas Cow Bells

Christmas Cow Bells opens Mollie Cox Bryan's Buttermilk Creek series in Shenandoah Springs, a small Virginia town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Brynn MacAlister has left a failed relationship behind and bought a farm, arriving with three Red Devon cows and a plan to make artisan cheese. Her cow Petunia's bellowing quickly puts her at odds with the neighbours, and Brynn discovers that being the newcomer means being watched.

When her neighbour Nancy dies in a fire, the death is written off too easily for Brynn's comfort. Nancy had been pushing to renovate the Old Glebe Church, a plan not everyone in town welcomed. Brynn starts asking questions, and strange things begin happening on the far side of her own frosty pasture.

The book is a traditional cozy: an amateur sleuth, a rural setting at Christmas, a close-knit community with more friction under the surface than its postcard exterior suggests, and violence kept firmly offstage.