Welcome to The Gingerbread House, a Victorian home converted to a shop filled with cookie cutters, baking equipment, and, of course, every imaginable color of sparkling sugar. Did I mention the aroma drifting from the store's kitchen? It might be lemon, perhaps ginger, but you can be certain it means decorated cookies are on the way. If this is your first visit, let me introduce you to the owner of the Gingerbread House, Olivia ("everyone calls me Livie") Greyson and her best friend since age ten, Maddie Briggs. Livie's little rescue Yorkshire Terrier, Spunky, guards the sales floor with all the ferocious dedication in his five-pound body, while Livie and Maddie run the business, bake, and decorate cookies. Their lives are busy and fun... until murder stops by for a visit. Again.
Join Livie and Maddie in their second mystery, A Cookie Before Dying. The opening of a health food store next door draws them in another murder investigation, one that threatens someone dear to Livie. It won't be easy. Livie needs cooperation from the young owner of The Vegetable Plate. But according to the owner, Charlene, sugar, and anyone who uses it, represent the ultimate evil. And she isn't shy about saying so.
Look for Livie and Maddie's third adventure, When the Cookie Crumbles, in early August 2012.
"Virginia Lowell does it again—she bakes up a satisfying blend of sugar and spice and all things murderous in A Cookie Before Dying. Her second offering in The Cookie Cutter Shop Mysteries is a sweet sequel to Cookie Dough Or Die... This excellent offering will satisfy your sleuth-tooth (and make you hungry for an iced sugar cookie). Well done, Ms. Lowell! Long may you bake up delectable books with toothsome plot twists and tasty characters."
—Sherry Ladig, former writer for the Hungry Mind Bookstore's Fodder newsletter, and current reviewer for Irish Music and Dance Association monthly magazine (St. Paul, MN)"[Cookie Dough or Die] is exactly the kind of mystery that made me a fan of the genre... It's always a joy to find a new series that has such a solid first outing and contains such promise. There are plenty of possibilities to the story at hand; enough suspects and subplots to make the mystery delightfully twisty, and to sustain suspense until the end. I'm hoping for lots more from this author."
—CA Reviews
© Virginia Lowell.