ASSAULTED CARAMEL

Murder in a candy store upends an Amish community.

Everyone, including herself, thinks Bailey King is crazy to leave New York when she’s in the running for head chocolatier at an upscale confectioner’s. But since Jebidiah, Bailey’s beloved Amish grandfather, is sick, she wings off to Harvest, Ohio, even if it will mean jeopardizing the six years she’s put into the chocolate trade. It was a trade she first learned from her paternal grandparents—her Daadi and Maami—at Swissmen Sweets, their candy store, and she hopes her visit will reassure herself as much as them. But it’s not the family reunion she hopes for. When she goes into the shop the morning after her arrival, real estate developer Tyson Colton is lying on the floor with a chocolate-cutting knife in his chest. Bailey had given the knife to her grandfather, and now that her gift is a murder weapon, she’s afraid the chief suspect will be her Daadi, the last holdout in Colton’s attempts to buy up all the shops on Main Street. When the sheriff’s investigation focuses instead on Bailey, one of his deputies, Aiden Brody, goes out of his way to try to clear her, but she doesn’t make it easy for him. She’s determined to find out why there was a broken kerosene lamp outside the door, why neither she nor her grandparents heard breaking glass or a scuffle, why the sheriff seems to take such delight in her seeming guilt, and why she finds herself attracted to the handsome, decent deputy even though she has a secret (and obnoxiously self-absorbed) boyfriend back in New York. A society wedding with a bride’s mother from hell, a secret from Aiden’s past, and a ginger cat named Nutmeg lead Bailey back in a circle and straight into danger.

Flower launches her new series by evoking the nightmare nuptials of The Final Vow (2017), throwing in a few Pennsylvania Dutch words to provide atmosphere in a cozy as light as the heroine’s handmade mousse.