From January 31, 2015 comes this 

Cozy Food Friday Flashback!

It's

Cozy Food Friday!

That means it's time to share a recipe from 

another great cozy mystery!

Today I'm featuring a recipe from the cozy mystery 

PLAYED BY THE BOOK

Book 4 in the Novel Idea Mystery series

by

Lucy Arlington

The New York Times bestselling Novel Idea Mysteries make their return with Lila Wilkins, literary agent and “murder magnet” planning a book signing garden party. But things aren’t coming up roses when she ends up trying to weed out a dangerous killer…

The owner of A Novel Idea Literary Agency is thrilled when former local boy and popular television show host Damian York returns to Inspiration Valley, North Carolina, to launch his new gardening book. But Lila is less than excited about the hubbub when she sees the mounting to-do list on her desk. Between planning York’s gala and sprucing up her yard for another event, she’s spread too thin—especially after she finds a skull buried in her flowerbeds.

As Lila’s macabre discovery leads to other secrets hidden in Inspiration Valley’s past, a member of the local garden club is found slumped over her prize roses—murdered with a garden spade. Now it’s up to Lila to dig through old mysteries and new clues to unearth a murderer before someone else is found pushing up daisies…

Trey’s Mac-n-Cheese with Bacon and Tomatoes

Ingredients:

 1 (8-ounce) package of penne pasta (elbow pasta or other like shapes are fine)

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

½ cup half-and-half

1 ½ cups milk

1 cup shredded sharp white cheddar cheese

1 cup shredded Gruyere or Swiss cheese

½ cup shredded Parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

5 slices of bacon, cooked

1 tomato, sliced thinly

¼ teaspoon of ground nutmeg (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Prepare pasta according to package instructions. (Best if cooked al dente.)

Cook bacon until slightly crisp, and cut into pieces. 

Melt butter in a large pot, whisk in flour and cook the mixture while constantly whisking. 

Whisk in half-and-half and milk. Continue to whisk until the mixture thickens.

Slowly stir in all cheeses and mix until smooth. 

Remove the mixture from the heat and add salt, pepper, and nutmeg if desired.

Fold in pasta until all the noodles are completely covered. Stir in bacon pieces.

Pour the mixture into an 11x13 baking dish. 

Top with tomato slices and additional Parmesan cheese. 

Bake at 350 degrees until bubbly and golden brown. 

Yields: 7-9 servings

NOTE: All photos, with the exception of the first, are from Google images.
Your finished dish may look different from those shown here.

I think this recipe still holds up today, 8 years later, don't you? 

It's gonna happen. I can feel it in my bones! Hmmm . . . That could just be the cold weather. But, it is going to happen. Someone is going to win a book from Goodreads! I mean, we have a law of averages on our sides at this point, right?

Here we go!

ENTER

ENTER

ENTER

I saw mysteries that were historical, and while I have added them before, I wanted to ask you all . . . Do you think historical mysteries belong in the "cozy" category? Please let me know in the comments.

Make sure to check out Goodreads giveaway in other genres.

Again, I know Goodreads giveaways can be hard to win because of the volume of people who enter them. But stick with it. I have won a few titles, and you can too.

And, since it can be hard to win, I'm still entering each giveaway as well!

If I win, one of you will win it!

I have entered each giveaway I have posted today. If I win a book, I will have a giveaway here and one of you will have another chance to win the book . . . from me! I like knowing that your my friends will have that second chance to win.

So, GOOD LUCK to you!

And wish a GOOD LUCK to me (for you)!

 

As always, please leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Follow my blog by submitting your email in 

upper right hand corner of this page (on the side bar).

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I'm happy to have in today's Spotlight

author 

Kathryn Mykel!

Kathryn is the author of the 

Quilting Cozy Mysteries

Secrets and a patchwork of white lies. Can Alex string together the truth before her life unravels?

Alex Bailey’s heart feels threadbare. Struggling with the dubious practices of her NYC law firm, she’s left her high-profile career and is eager to clear her conscience with a trip home to care for the woman who raised her. But when an ill fate befalls the quilting matriarch, the shocked lawyer suspects someone is covering up murder.

Unpicking the strands of her beloved grandmother’s life, Alex patches together clues that prove her loved one’s death was no accident. And when the practice’s stained history weaves into the culprit’s devious handiwork, she’ll need to stay alive long enough to expose a heartless killer.

Can Alex get to the bottom of a sinister pattern before she ends up buried in a flower garden?

Sewing Suspicion is the captivating first book in a series of Quilting Cozy Mysteries. If you like troubled heroines, pulse-pounding twists, and intriguing howdunits, then you’ll love Kathryn Mykel’s cleverly woven tale.

Quilting calamity and a string of clues. Can Alex untangle the knots before she’s keeled?

After the death of her beloved grandmother, Alex Bailey’s life is left in tatters. As she struggles to stitch things back together, she takes solace in one final gift—a cruise—booked before the quilting matriarch's death. To weave the quilting community back together, Alex convinces her friends on Spruce Street to join her on the cruise.

With all hands on deck, a mysterious quilt and an unknown destination, she must trust that everything will go according to the plan. Until a death onboard the Tranquility puts a wrinkle in Alex’s idyllic quilting vacation. Unraveling the mysterious threads that surround the young man’s death, Alex must determine if it's a terrible accident, or death by design. Determined to catch the culprit, she loosens the knot of suspicion and provides the bait needed to hook a ruthless killer.

Will Alex be able to follow the pattern and untangle this nautical mystery before there's a storm at sea?

Quilting Calamity is the thrilling second book in a series of Quilting Cozy Mysteries. If you like intriguing howdunits, then you’ll love Kathryn Mykel’s skillfully stitched tale.

Pressing matters and a trail of deception. Can Alex pick apart the mystery before she's pinned?

With one misadventure after another, Alex Bailey is determined to iron out her troubles and find the common thread to steer her life back on track. Returning to normalcy is the best way to mend her frayed nerves, and the charity Quilt-A-Thon is the perfect distraction. What Alex doesn’t expect is more of Nona’s ploys.

Mysterious deliveries, unexpected clues, and an old murder have weaved a troublesome web and Alex is tangled in the middle!

The quilters uncover an unexpected secret On Spruce Street—one that can’t be covered up with an artistic motif. While one mystery is solved, another (deadly) pattern emerges.

Can Alex piece together the pattern, or will someone she loves be pinned for the crime?

Pressing Matters is the intriguing third book in a series of Quilting Cozy Mysteries. If you like intriguing whodunits, then you’ll love Kathryn Mykel’s sharply spun tale.

Kathryn is also an author in the 

Holiday Pet Sleuth Mysteries

which is a multi-author series the contains murderless mysteries!

Kathryn's MUTTERLY MISTAKEN

follows after her third Quilting mystery

PRESSING MATTERS

Mutterly Mistaken and a trail of confusion. Can Kibbles show Alex where the missing quilts are before she's out of the competition for good?

Quilts have gone missing at the annual Christmas Quilt Show. Barely having had enough time to complete her own quilt between Pressing Matters and Threading Troubles–Alex Bailey is relying on her usually perceptive pup, Kibbles, to sniff out the culprit. Except, Kibbles’ training is unstitched, and her senses become mutterly mistaken.

Will Kibbles detect the clues or will the missing quilt remain unhung?

Mutterly Mistaken is a charming stand alone book in the Holiday Pet Sleuth Mysteries Series. Read after Pressing Matters and before Threading Trouble, when reading the Quilting Cozy Mystery Series starting with Sewing Suspicion.

If you like Holiday, sweet, clean, wholesome cozy mysteries without murder; then you will love this locked room, animal sidekick, missing item, mystery.

Kathryn Mykel the award-winning author of best-selling quilt fiction books: Sewing Suspicion & Quilting Calamity part of her Quilting Cozy Mystery Series. Inspired by the laugh-out-loud and fanciful aspects of cozies, Kathryn aims to write lighthearted, humorous cozies surrounding her passion for the craft of quilting. Kathryn is an avid quilter, born and raised in a small New England town.

Visit and Follow Kathryn Mykel on

Amazon 

to learn all about her past, current, and up-coming titles!

As always, please leave a comment 

and let me know what you think!

Follow my blog by submitting your email in 

the upper right hand corner of this page 

(on the side bar).

Reading from your phone? Scroll to the bottom of

your page and click "View web version". Then follow 

the above directions.

Congratulations 

Laini Pearl!

The correct answer for Wednesday's

Who Wrote That? is

Linda Reilly!

Laini, please leave a comment acknowledging you have seen this post, and your $5.00 Amazon Gift Card will be emailed to you!

--------------------

PART 2

This is the
SIXTH in A Cheese Shop Mystery series.

Someone is cheesed off . . .

Providence, Ohio, is celebrating Valentine's Day with weeklong events, including lovers' baskets with heart-shaped cheeses at Fromagerie Bessette. Charlotte Bessette is celebrating by finally walking down the aisle with the man of her dreams, handsome artisanal cheese farmer, Jordan Pace. But when a beloved bar owner is discovered murdered on Jordan's farm, he believes they should reschedule their wedding given the grim turn of events.

Charlotte is heartsick over the postponement. This killer crossed the wrong woman. No one, but no one, is ruining her wedding plans!

Don't miss Framed For Murder, a Hallmark Movies & Mystery Original starring Jewel, based on This Old Homicide—the second novel in the New York Times bestselling Fixer-Upper Mystery series!
 
Valentine’s Day is approaching, and while contractor Shannon Hammer is delighted to be friends with not one but two handsome men, not everyone in Lighthouse Cove, California, is feeling the love. After her elderly neighbor Jesse Hennessey fails to make his daily appearance at the local diner, Shannon swings by his place to check on him. Not only does she find Jesse dead—of an apparent heart attack—but she also realizes that his home has been ransacked.
 
Someone suggests that a thief was searching for a priceless necklace Jesse claimed to have retrieved from a capsized sailing ship, but Shannon doesn’t believe it. Everyone knows Jesse had a penchant for constructing tall tales—like the one about him having a hot new girlfriend. But his death is soon ruled a homicide, and shady suspects begin popping out of the woodwork. When another victim turns up dead, Shannon is convinced she must find the killer before someone else gets nailed...

It's Valentine's Day in Tinker's Cove. And while the cupcakes Lucy Stone is baking for her children will have pink frosting and candy hearts, Lucy's thoughts aren't centered on sugary sentiments. She's barely arrived at her first board meeting of the newly-renovated library when Bitsy Howell, the new librarian, is found dead in the basement, shot only minutes before story hour was to start. The agitated board members assume that Bitsy was killed by an outsider, until Detective Lt. Horowitz arrives on the scene and announces that the killer is among them.

Lucy was already aware that Bitsy's uppity big city ways rubbed some people in Tinker's Cove the wrong way. But she has a hunch that motives for the librarian's violent death run a lot deeper. From Hayden Norcross's elegant antique shop to Corney Clark's chic kitchen, Lucy relentlessly snoops into the curious lifestyles and shocking secrets of Tinker's Cove's most solid citizens--secrets that will plunge her into a terrifying confrontation with a conniving killer. . .

No one in their right mind would vacation in Maine this time of year, but to boost the economy, the town of Tinker’s Cove is launching a travel promotion for Valentine's Day. As a reporter for the Pennysaver, Lucy Stone is assigned a puff piece on upscale Chanticleer’s Chocolates, and its deliciously handsome owner, Trey Meacham. Not the best way to keep her widening waistline under control.

Soon Lucy discovers there’s another tantalizing tart behind the counter. Sultry store manager Tamzin Graves is only too eager to serve her male customers. With a throng of jealous women in her wake, it’s almost no surprise when Tamzin turns up dead, her body covered in chocolate. There's no sugar-coating murder, and Lucy must crisscross the snow-covered landscape as she tries to find a heartless killer…

Caprice De Luca Home Staging series, Book 3 Between training her new puppy, helping her sister with her baby, and searching for the perfect vintage dress for Kismet's Valentine's Day dance, home-stager Caprice De Luca has a lot on her to-do list. But she's never too busy to do a little staging, and she's looking forward to thawing February's frozen real estate market with her Hearts and Flowers Open House. Her client Louise Downing's romantically decorated home practically staged itself. But when Louise is found murdered, Caprice is forced to turn her attention from sweethearts to suspects. And as the truth comes out in stages, she discovers that Louise had more secrets than a box of chocolate truffles. . .

From selling camisoles to solving crimes, the ladies of the Sweet Nothings lingerie shop in Paris, Tennessee, will make this Valentine’s a day to remember…

For Valentine’s Day, Emma Taylor and her aunt Arabella have organized a special evening for men only to shop for their sweethearts in the Sweet Nothings lingerie shop, complete with champagne and hors d’oeuvres. But when a former valentine shows up, Aunt Arabella is not her usual bubbly self.

Art dealer Hugh Granger is still a charmer, though. He invites the women to a ball he’s having to celebrate his birthday and his return to Paris, Tennessee. But when Granger is pushed from the balcony, it paints a sinister picture for Aunt Arabella, who gets framed…for her old flame’s murder.

(I Loved LOVED L O V E D this series! It ended way too soon at 3 books.)

Melanie Cooper and Angie DeLaura's Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery is gearing up for Valentine's Day. Unfortunately someone has iced Baxter Malloy on his first date with Mel's mother. Now Mom's a suspect, and Mel and Angie need to find time around frosting to dig into the man's shady past and discover who served him his just desserts.

As always, please leave a comment and
let me know what you think!

Follow my blog by submitting your email in
upper right hand corner of this page (on the side bar).

Reading from your phone? Scroll to the bottom of your page and click " View web version" . Then follow the above directions.