Pleading the Fish

Everly Swan runs Sun, Sand and Tea, an iced-tea shop on the island of Charm off the North Carolina coast, and she is finally marrying Detective Grady Hayes. The Swan women, however, are said to be cursed in love, and Grady — who does not believe in curses — intends to prove the whole thing nonsense before the ceremony.

Then a historian who had been digging into the Swan family's past is found dead in an antique wishing well. Everly, who has never once managed to leave an investigation to the police, splits her time between the shop, the dress, and a murder that keeps circling back to her own family history.

Bree Baker's Beachfront Cozy Mysteries close here: the series' running threads — the curse, the Swan matriarchs, Everly and Grady — are resolved alongside the case, with the recipes and seaside comfort the series is built on.