Cupcakes and Casualties

The residents of Peridale don't like change, so when the famous actress Candy Bennett rolls into the village intending to demolish a historic cottage and build a modern home in its place, things do not go as smoothly as she hoped. The newly formed Peridale Preservation Society turns out to protest her plans, and the mood in the village quickly sours.

Days into the project, Candy's lead builder, Shane, is murdered — and the task of solving the mystery falls once again to Julia South, the cake-baking cafe owner the village knows as its unofficial sleuth. Between the actress, the protesters and the building crew, there is no shortage of people with a reason to want the project stopped.

Book eleven in Agatha Frost's Peridale Cafe Cozy Mystery series: a light, British-set village mystery with a cat-loving, cafe-owning amateur sleuth and a cast of quirky locals. No cliffhanger, no gore, no graphic scenes.