Precious and the Monkeys


Book Description

Well before Precious Ramotswe founded her Number One Ladies' Detective Agency, as an eight-year-old girl she was already solving mysteries. Here, in this delightful, enchanting tale for children, we find out just who has been stealing her schoolfriends' snacks and how the young Precious became the crafty and intuitive private investigator we all know and love!




The Great Cake Mystery


Book Description

Before becoming the first female private investigator in Botswana, eight-year-old Precious Ramotswe tracks down a thief who has been stealing her classmates' snacks.




The Mystery of the Missing Lion


Book Description

A detective in the wild. Young Precious gets a very special treat. She gets a trip to visit her Aunty Bee at a safari camp. While there she makes a new friend, a boy named Khumo, and meets an actor-lion named Teddy, who is starring in a film. When Teddy disappears, Khumo and Precious will brave hippos and crocodiles as they search for the missing lion. With a Reader's Guide




The Mystery of Meerkat Hill


Book Description

Precious wants to be a detective when she grows up. She is always practicing at being a detective by asking questions and finding out about other people’s lives. There are two new students in her class, a girl called Teb and a boy called Pontsho. She learns that they are brother and sister, and—even more exciting—that Pontsho has a clever pet meerkat named Kosi. One day, Teb and Pontsho’s family’s cow disappears. Precious helps them look for clues to find the cow. But getting the cow back home will require some quick thinking and help from an unexpected source.




Cake on a Hot Tin Roof


Book Description

Pastry chef Rita Lucero's Mardi Gras party turns funereal when one of her guests is found dead after a public fight with her uncle-leaving Rita no choice but to find the real killer and clear her uncle's name...




Killer Sweet Tooth


Book Description

Cake decorator Daphne Martin finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation—and an Elvis impersonator convention—with a bullseye on her back. Dead as a...dentist? They say sugar is bad for your teeth, but can it actually kill you? The Brea Ridge police seem to think so when they find cake decorator Daphne Martin wielding an oversized plastic toothbrush over a dentist’s dead body. Daphne moved back to her small Virginia hometown just months ago to open her Daphne’s Delectable Cakes business and already she’s been mixed up in murder. Now she’s got to prove her sweet innocence again. After hours of police questioning, Daphne returns home to find Elvis Presley in her driveway. She’s certain she’s hallucinating until the leather-clad hunk orders up a pink Cadillac cake for a convention of the Elvis impersonators. Daphne accepts, but her reporter-boyfriend Ben is suspicious of Elvis’s intentions. Does the King want to make Daphne his confectionery queen? Or is the convention a ruse for a more sinister operation? Daphne’s own investigation into Dr. Bainsworth’s murder, meanwhile, reveals the dentist made as many enemies as he did fillings. Just about anyone could have done him in, but it’s up to Daphne to find the killer—and finish Elvis’s cake—before she’s the one singing “Jailhouse Rock.”




Battered to Death


Book Description

The third “entertaining…and tasty read” (Entertainment Weekly) in the Daphne Martin Cake mystery series. A RECIPE FOR MURDER Life is sweet for Daphne Martin right now, from her flourishing cake-decorating business to a rekindled romance with her high school boyfriend, Ben. All that’s about to change, courtesy of famously foul-mouthed celebrity chef Jordan Richards. The TV star has come to Brea Ridge, Virginia, for the town’s lavish cake competition, but he won’t be leaving under his own steam. After his first master class, Jordan is found bludgeoned with a cake stand and drowned in some very bitter batter. Plenty of townsfolk think the curmudgeonly confectioner had it coming, but the half-baked evidence points to Daphne as a prime suspect. With Ben mulling a new job offer—in Kentucky—Daphne is faced with a multilayered dilemma. She needs to somehow keep her boyfriend, win the cake competition, and sift out the real culprit . . . before the killer serves up another victim.




A Sheetcake Named Desire


Book Description

New Orleans pastry chef Rita Lucero is out to bake her way to the top. But when she finds her almost-ex-husband killed with a chef's knife in his back, she becomes suspect number one. Now it's up to her to find the real killer before she winds up as the next victim served.




Cake and Punishment


Book Description

In the first of a delectable new Southern-set baking cozy series, a pastry chef must craft the perfect cake for an old friend’s wedding while sifting through the suspects in a murder Perfect for fans of Joanne Fluke and JoAnna Carl, Cake and Punishment—with authentic Southern recipes!—will satisfy your sweet tooth. Bucolic Rumford, Kentucky has glowing fields of bluegrass, a fine selection of bourbons, and now a professional pastry chef. Broken-hearted Sophia Cummings has come home from New York City. She’s not there a minute before she’s charmed into making her high school friend Charlotte’s wedding cake. The kitchen at the Rumford Country Club seems perfect until Chef Emile’s body is discovered, sprawled near the stove, a cast iron skillet on the floor close by. With one look at the shiny, new frying pan, Sophia knows it’s not Emile’s. She offers her knowledge to Sheriff Carter and her talents to Evelyn, the manager, who needs an interim chef. The mood in the country club is grim: Emile’s peppery personality had burned members and staff alike. Sophia wonders which one of them burned him?




Not an Alphabet Book: The Case of the Missing Cake


Book Description

Follow Bear from A to Z as he hunts for a cake thief in a hilarious alphabet book crossed with a whodunit. There has been a terrible crime, Bear tells us. Someone has STOLEN a delicious chocolate cake! Bear sets off to find the culprit, questioning characters and compiling clues from A to Z. Among the suspects: a gingerbread man (G) with a bite out of his head, a kite (K) that may be above the law, and an octopus (O) with grabby tentacles. But — hold on — are those crumbs on Bear’s page? Is that frosting on his face? Looks like our narrator is a little unreliable! And it appears our culprit might be the one that Bear wants readers to suspect the least of all. . . . Author Eoin McLaughlin’s sly, cheeky humor takes the alphabet book to inventive new heights, while best-selling illustrator Marc Boutavant’s smart and striking graphic-style art matches the irreverent tone. Young ABC learners and older fans of funny stories will laugh out loud at Bear’s uproarious “investigation” and his anything-but-usual suspects.