MURDER OF A MAIL-ORDER BRIDE

In her second hunt for a killer, a bookstore owner improves her love life and her batting average.

Though Lizzie Hale owns a romance bookstore in Tinker’s Creek, Ohio, her own romantic prospects were dismal until she solved a murder with the help of baseball player–turned–national park investigator Max Alverez, who seems to share her attraction. Roped into helping plan the rapidly approaching nuptials of her friend Al Little, who’s marrying Svetlana Anatov, a woman he found on Bride of Your Dreams, an online service for mail-order brides, Lizzie had never expected to have to fish Svetlana out of a canal hours after the wedding and then solve her murder. Svetlana had been staying with Lizzie’s flamboyant aunt Charmaine before the wedding, and there were a few things that seemed odd about her, including an unpleasant encounter she had with another Russian bride. Lizzie’s early sleuthing success has gone to her head, and despite Max’s warnings to be careful, she jumps into the investigation. A big break comes when they learn that the woman Al married was really Sharona Schwartz, the owner of Bride of Your Dreams. Sharona, who looked enough like the real Svetlana to pass herself off as her, evidently wanted to marry Al in order to inherit a fortune once she bumped him off. But since Al’s anything but rich, Lizzie has to discover where Sharona thought the fortune was coming from in order to solve her murder.

Plenty of suspects and a slow-burn romance make for an entertaining cozy.