Playing With Bonbon Fire
A Southern Chocolate Shop Mystery
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Charity Penn must smoke out a killer to stop her beachside chocolate shop from going up in flames in this “addictive” culinary cozy mystery series “that keeps you up late reading” (San Francisco Book Review)
Chocolate shop owner Charity Penn is finally settling into life in the quirky South Carolina seaside town of Camellia Beach cooking up chocolate treats. She’s even helped organize the town’s lively beach music festival which has brought rollicking crowds eager to dance the Carolina shag. That is, until one of the band’s lead singers is found dead beside a beach bonfire.
While also trying to balance the amorous attention of music star Bixby Lewis, in town for the festival, and her quest to perfect a new hot flavored bonbon, Charity dives into the investigation. Though it’s more spice than sugar when she discovers a threatening note, comes across decades of age-old secrets, and Bixby comes into the line of fire when a gas grill explodes on the deck of a beachfront house.
Now Charity must turn up the heat and catch the killer before her chance melts away in Playing With Bonbon Fire, the delightful second Southern Chocolate Shop mystery served up just right for fans of JoAnna Carl and Joanne Fluke.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
St. James's so-so sequel to 2017's Asking for Truffle finds Charity Penn running the Chocolate Box in Camellia Beach, S.C., a store she inherited from her late maternal grandmother, Mabel Maybank, and trying to learn more about her wealthy Maybank relatives. She's also involved in putting together the inaugural Summer Solstice Beach Music Festival. Headlining the fest is the reunion of local band the Embers, but the star attraction is music great Bixby Lewis. When a burned body is discovered by a beach bonfire, Penn fears it's Bixby, but the victim turns out to be Stan Frasier, the disaffected former lead singer for the Embers who had a hit with another group in the 1970s. Penn seizes the chance to play amateur sleuth, but she must contend with police chief Hank Byrd, who warns her not to investigate or interfere. Too much is going on in this farrago of a mystery, but cozy fans will still have fun.)
