Spells and Spiced Latte

Maddie Goodwell runs a coffee truck in a small town with her best friend Suzanne, serving lattes to a loyal roster of regulars. Maddie is also a witch, though a strictly limited one: the single spell she can reliably cast lets her glimpse a customer's future in their coffee. It is a party trick more than a power, until the day she looks into Joan's cup and sees the older woman lying dead on her own kitchen floor.

Maddie has no idea how to warn Joan without sounding unhinged, and she says nothing. When Joan is found murdered days later, the guilt is unbearable. With Suzanne beside her and her Persian cat Trixie shadowing her every move, Maddie starts asking questions of Joan's friends and family, working her way through the small town's tangle of grudges while a grizzled detective tells her repeatedly to stay out of it.

Spells and Spiced Latte opens Jinty James's Coffee Witch Cozy Mystery series. It is a light, low-stakes cozy built on coffee, cake, a possible feline familiar, and a heroine whose magic is barely enough to get her into trouble and never quite enough to get her out of it.