This month, as part of my long-running monthly series highlighting some of the most popular and recommended Cozy Mystery Series, which are drawn from the many suggestion sent in by site readers, I will be highlighting the Cranberry Cove Mystery Series by Peg Cochran, starting with the first in the series, Berried Secrets. This is a relatively new series, starting in 2015, and is still running today. It is one of multiple series by Cochran, who also writes under the names Margaret Loudon and Meg London.

As the novel begins, Monica Albertson has recently left Chicago come to the small town of Cranberry Cove, located on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Both Monica and her half-brother Jeff have recently suffered serious losses – Jeff had returned from deployment overseas with a serious injury, leaving one of his arms paralyzed, while Monica was at loose ends since the closing of the cafe she owned and the death of her fiance. This left her more than willing to leave the big city and its unpleasant memories to help out Jeff on his cranberry farm, Sassamanash Farm.

Unfortunately, he really does need the help in more ways than Monica thought. The farm’s former owner before Jeff bought it, the town’s mayor Sam Culbert, had been running it for Jeff while he was deployed overseas, and apparently had been doing a poor job of it. Not only was the farm in very poor conditions due to Culbert’s oversight, but the accounts Monica reviews indicate that Culbert might have been embezzling from the farm’s profits.

Naturally, the day after Monica tells Jeff about the embezzlement, Culbert turns up dead in the cranberry pond, and naturally, Jeff turns into a prime suspect. Whether for good or ill, it quickly turns out that Culbert had plenty of other people who might be out to murder him, so Monica has no shortage of suspects to look into in the course of clearing her brother’s name.

Cozies often either succeed or fail based on the strength of their specific hook, and the cranberry farming industry is one hook that I found myself particularly fascinated by. I like knitting and cooking and antiques as much as the next Cozy reader, but over the years, I’ve read an awful lot of novels that include details on those sort of material. In contrast, I’ve never really known much about cranberry farming, so the introduction to various terms and methods, as well as their integration into the story, was much more novel than more well-explored material.

As I have mentioned in other Cozy discussions, I also appreciate when the murder in a mystery comes up relatively quickly. This one definitely qualifies, with the body being discovered quite early in the novel.

Between an interesting premise, likeable characters, and a strong mystery, I enjoyed Berried Secrets quite a bit, and I would recommend it to fans of modern Cozies with a somewhat unusual theme like cranberry farming.

If you’d like to see other entries about some of the most recommended Cozy Mystery authors, be sure to check out the Most Popular and Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on my site.

PS: For those who may be swayed by such things, there are several cranberry-themed recipes at the end of the book.

Maddy Montgomery is anything but the typical Cozy Mystery sleuth. She’s the main character and narrator of Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder, the first book in the Baker Street Mystery series by Valerie Burns. While most cozy sleuth’s nowadays have been dreaming all their lives that they will be able to return to the small town of their idyllic youths to open the bake shop of their dreams, Maddy knows nothing of baking or cooking, and she spent her youth moving with her Navy dad from Navy base to Navy base as he climbed the ladder all the way to the rank of Admiral.

Instead, Maddy’s plan was always to marry a Doctor. How much farther her plan went than that we don’t learn, since her Doctor fiancé jilted Maddy at the altar. Luckily for young Maddy [she is just out of University with her art degree — yes, art degree (remember, her plan was to marry a Doctor)] Maddy’s great aunt has recently died and left her with a large sum of money, a great house, a bakery, and an English Mastiff named Baby. So Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder, begins with Maddy flying (in a small plane which Maddy is surprised to learn does not have a first class section) in a blizzard to the town of New Bison, a quaint town on the Michigan shoreline.

Maddy soon learns that her bequest comes with a catch. Maddy must live in her great aunt’s house and run the bakery (while taking care of the English Mastiff, Baby) for a year or she will forfeit the money, the house, the bakery, and the dog. And, she learns that her great aunt died in mysterious circumstances while investigating a possible conspiracy between some of the most powerful politicians and business people in the town. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that other murders begin to happen almost immediately upon Maddy’s arrival in town.

A quaint bakery, a social media loving young sleuth, several handsome men who seemingly are smitten upon sight of Maddy, a small town with friendly characters, a loving English Mastiff named Baby, and several murders upon a couple of days of Maddy’s arrival in town — what’s not to like for a cozy mystery lover?

Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder is a page turner and just about has it all. This first book in the Baker Street Mystery Series is this month’s entry in my series of posts about the Most Popular and Recommended Cozy Mystery Series.

If you’d like to see other entries about some of the most recommended Cozy Mystery authors, be sure to check out the Most Popular and Recommended Cozy Mystery Series page on my site.

P.S. Valerie Burns also writes the Mystery Bookshop Mystery Series, the Dog Club Mystery Series, and the RJ Franklyn Mystery Series as V.M. Burns.

P.P.S. For recipe fans, this book does include several recipes.

It’s once again time to discuss one of the most popular and recommended Cozy Mystery series as suggested by site readers, and this time I’ll be talking about the first in Nancy Coco‘s Oregon Honeycomb Mystery Series, Death Bee Comes Her.

Wren Johnson is the owner of Let It Bee, a specialty boutique focusing on all things honey in Oceanview, a small seaside tourist town in Oregon. One of her main sources of exercise is walking her Havana Brown cat, Everett, a very social cat that appears to tolerate a leash much more than any other cat I have ever personally encountered!

It’s on one of these walks down to the beach that Wren and Everett stumble across the body of a local curmudgeonly crafter and a rival of Wren’s Aunt Eloise, Agnes Snow – and she’s clutching a label of Wren’s lip balm, both of which make Wren seem like something of a suspect. Of course, as the mystery proceeds, it quickly becomes obvious that there were quite a few people who might have had various reasons to with harm on Agnes Snow.

Naturally, the cast includes a number of eccentric and interesting locals, such as Aunt Eloise, various owners of shops close to the Let It Bee, and the local police representative, hunky Officer Jim Hampton.

I definitely will say that I appreciate how quickly the corpse is stumbled upon. I like setting the scene of a mystery as much as the next Cozy fan, but finding the body in the first chapter goes a long way toward establishing that this is a mystery with Cozy elements, and not a discussion on a specific Cozy hobby with a bit of a mystery stuck in at the back.

All in all, I quite enjoyed my time reading Death Bee Comes Her. The biggest problem is that this particular series unfortunately doesn’t have much more to it – there is a second entry, but that was released in early 2022 and there hasn’t been any mention of another coming out that I have heard of. Still, perhaps we’ll be lucky and see more mysteries starring Wren and highlighting the Oregon coast.

This might be the first time I’ve written about this particular mystery series, but it isn’t the first time I’ve highlighted Nancy Coco – I have already done another entry on this series for her main mystery series, the Candy-Coated Mystery Series. She also writes a number of other series under two other names – the Kensington Chef Mystery Series under the name Nell Hampton, and the Wine Country Mystery Series, Baker’s Treat Mystery Series, and the Perfect Proposals Mystery Series under the name Nancy J. Parra.

For those who are interested in that sort of thing, this does also include some wax and honey related recipes and tips, though unlike most similar recipes, these are scattered at the end of specific chapters, not collected at the end.