Staged

Staged is a short, comic mystery by Elle Cosimano, the first entry in her Busybodies collection. Lyda, an inexperienced real estate agent, and Dani, a TikTok-trained home stager, are racing to flip a Victorian house when they discover its notorious landscaper dead in the bedroom.

With the open house looming and a roster of suspicious contractors, jilted lovers and business rivals to sort through, the two unlikely partners have to solve the murder themselves. Blending HGTV-style home-renovation detail with a breezy whodunit and Cosimano's trademark wit, it's built as a single-sitting read.

This is a standalone short mystery separate from Cosimano's Finlay Donovan series, though it shares the same comic, amateur-sleuth sensibility.