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A mixture of library and gently used books here. If I had to pick a favorite of these it would be Death by Committee. This is the first in a new series. Abby McCree has inherited her Aunt’s house and property in Washington and relocated there. She also seems to have inherited her Aunt’s pretty substantial responsibilities to the community in terms of volunteer positions and duties and a dead body buried in the backyard. This was a fun read and even though I figured it out the who and why relatively early on I still enjoyed it and plan on reading another in the series. Great escapist reading.

Sugar and Vice is the second in the A Cookie House Mystery series. I really liked the first one and this was really good as well. A body is found and for a moment it seems like it might be a good thing, yo ho ho and a dead man’s chest and all that, but alas no. Kate and Maxi work together, while also running their business and mingling within the currently pirate crazy community. A twist of an ending is seen here. A fun cozy read.

The Solace of Bay Leaves is set in Seattle and is book 5 in the Spice Shop Mystery Series. This book seems to be tying up some loose ends and I probably wouldn’t recommend reading it if you had not read others in the series. A new crime seems to be tied to previous case because of a single gun. Pepper has connections to both of them. The case has a historical family component that has to be uncovered by digging into the past. Maybe uncovering things people don’t want to look at to deeply. This was a really good series, this was perhaps not the strongest book in the series.

Murder with Oolong Tea is part of the Daisy’s Tea Garden Mystery series. A tea party is held at the local high school and one of the staff dies. She is a particularly controversial staff member, who is loved and hated by various members of the faculty and students past and present. Daisy digs into her background in an effort to determine which one of her multitude of enemies would go so far as to kill her. There is also a side plot involving Daisy’s daughter and a new “troubled teen” best friend. This was an okay cozy mystery for me, but I will admit I’ve not read others in the series so I am not invested in the characters.

Blood Never Dies is a DI Slider mystery, so a police procedural. I picked this up completely on impulse. There was a whole shelf of these at the library. I’d never heard of them. Turns out this is book 15 in the series. The mystery involves a suicide that isn’t. A victim with no form of ID. The investigation takes them from a flat in a rather seedy neighborhood, to a porn studio, to a landed gentry’s home. Slider and his team painstakingly work to identify the victim and reconstruct the crime and motive. This felt a little dated to me and I was surprised when I flipped to the beginning of the book and checked the front cover and it was only published in 2012. I am not sure if I would read another or not.

Dying on the Vine is book 3 in the Gourmet Detective series. This one is set in Provence as the Gourmet detective investigates vineyards and possible fraud. A death due to a local species of wild boar, airborne bee hive attacks and various other shenanigans abound. All long the way there is an abundance of wine and food. This one is a bit of a stretch and not as strong a book as the first in the series.

Ginger Snapped is different Spice Shop Mystery, set in Brandywine Creek, Georgia. This is also Book 5 in a series. Piper owns the Spice Shop and has a slightly romantic interest in Wyatt the sheriff. The town Realtor and beauty is found dead on the Sheriff’s property. He is suspended and seems under suspected of her murder. Piper works to clear his name and solve the case. This was a fun cozy in a good series that continues to be consistently strong.

Eva’s Eye is a Nordic Noir/psychological crime novel by Karin Fossum. I have read other novels by her in the past. This novel focuses on Eva and her part in discovering a body and her rather unusual way of dealing with it. Inspector Sejer and his team eventually find the body and in the course of the investigation they discover Eva. There are links to another crime and Sejer has to pull together threads from multiple sources to understand the cause and effect of all the actions. The point of the novel really seems to be not solving the crime, but the effect of the crimes on those left behind, Eva’s daughter, Eva’s father, and Jan Henry. Very good read, although the titular character, Eva can be very hard to feel sorry for as she seems determined to made the worst possible choices at all times.