This is my latest batch of books, mostly Kindle reads with one library book thrown in for good measure.

Jenny Colgan’s books are always sweet, fun escapist reads and Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe is no exception.  Issy gets laid off from her office job fairly early on in the book and gets the courage to pursue her talent for baking, which had been nurtured by her beloved grandfather from a young age.  There is a cad of an ex-boyfriend, a perhaps new romantic interest, a couple of good friends and her aging grandfather/mentor to round out the cast.  Light hearted romantic read, the type of book that is a guilty pleasure.

Sweets & a Stabbing is a short, probably novella length, cosy.  The theme is a cupcake food truck.  Amelia Harley is a recently dumped wife and mother, who embarks on a career as a food truck cupcake baker, to support herself.  The lifestyle is definitely a step down from her former “ladies who lunch” life.  A food truck competitor is murdered and it seems as though a miscarriage of justice is occurring.  Amelia takes on the task of investigating the murder herself.  A quick cosy mystery with an interesting theme.

From Garden to the Grave is another Kindle cosy mystery.  I found it to be well written and interesting.  Verity Hawkes receives a call that her aunt is missing, presumed dead and this leads to her returning to her aunt’s home.  Once there she realizes the state of her aunt’s affairs, a falling down house, a business in debt with seemingly no way of collecting over due bills, enemies among town officials, and a mystery surrounding her aunt.  Then, there is a murder.  With the obligatory, “don’t leave town”, Verity is stuck and finds herself dragged further and further into the investigation.  Fun cosy with a twist.

In The Guilty Wife, the narrator has no problem stating she is guilty, except not of the murder.  She has twisted her life up in a series of lies and evasions to cover up an affair.  This leaves her hanging in the breeze as far as anyone believing her once it is important to be believed.  This book has a great plot and some interesting characters, it just really seemed to drag in the middle for me.  I liked the resolution and how the characters were left. Best described as a domestic thriller.

The Silent Girls is the first in a new series with Detective Anna Gwynne at the lead.  A young girl is abducted and brutally killed from her family farm.  The case has glaring similarities to an 18 year old case, which had been solved and the man convicted recently released from prison.  Of course, all eyes go to the original perpetrator, but Anna feels that something isn’t right about the case. She has the “assistance” from behind bars of a convicted serial killer, who knows more than he’s telling.  There is lots of misdirection here and theories of the crime to make it a really interesting read.  Good, solid police procedural.

I saw Find You in the Dark on a blog and was lucky enough that my library had it.  The protagonist here is a man, Martin, who is fascinated with serial killers, or really their victims.  He has a hobby, a successful one, of tracking down their burial sites to give families closure.  He has a close connection because his wife’s sister was taken, presumably by a serial killer and no one ever knew what happened to her or where her body was buried.  Unfortunately for him, serial killers generally don’t like people sticking their nose into the whole corpse disposal business.  Martin draws attention and puts himself and his family in danger.  I found Martin a little grating and so it made some of the book a bit of drag for me, however the resolution was very good and the plot line was excellent.