Grilled Cheese Mysteries

Back in Balsam Dell to heal after the death of her husband, Carly Hale is finally pursuing her lifelong dream - opening Carly's Grilled Cheese Eatery. After only five months, business is booming as Vermont vacationers and townspeople alike flock to lunch on her Party Havartis and other grilled-cheese concoctions. That is, everyone is but Lyle Bagley, her one-time high-school boyfriend who's now the town bully - and he just bought the building that houses her eatery and wants her out. After a muenster of a fight, she's forced to put her nose to the rind and find a solution to keep her business afloat. But then Lyle is discovered dead behind the dumpster of Carly's shop, and one of her employees becomes the prime suspect. In order to save her eatery and prove her friend's innocence, she must sleuth out the killer before she's the one who gets grilled. With a delightful cast of characters, an inventive amateur sleuth, and a whole host of cheesy hijinks, Up to No Gouda is the perfect cozy murder mystery to melt into.

After a long hot summer in Balsam Dell, Carly Hale is ready for crisp Vermont weather and gourmet grilled cheeses at her Grilled Cheese Eatery. And the upcoming Halloween food competition is the perfect way to impress the locals. But Ferris Menard, the owner of Sub-a-Dub-Sub, is nursing a serious grudge against Carly. Two days before the competition, one of Carly's employees quit his part-time gig at Menard's sub shop, sending Menard into a serious snit. In a confrontation at the Eatery, Menard accused Carly of sabotage and vowed to bring her down. That's when Menard's body is found in his kitchen the morning after the competition, a steak knife sticking out of his heart. But Menard had a slew of enemies, and if Carly doesn't figure out which one is the culprit, she might find herself, or someone she cares about, serving grilled cheese sandwiches under lock and brie!

Winter in Balsam Dell is a snowy affair, and to add in some cheer after the holidays, Carly's former classmate Klarissa Taddeo is hosting her extravagant bridal shower at the historic Balsam Dell inn. That is, she was until a double-booking throws some mold in the cheese and leaves Klarissa scrambling. With the venue moved to the maid of honor's family mansion and Carly rinding to create a new delicious treat, it seems the group is going to pull off the shower without a hitch-until a rowdy band of groomsmen crashes the event. Klarissa is furious with her groom-to-be, and when a loud argument ensues, everyone is shocked by what they hear. When the groom is later found dead at the bottom of the stairs, his drink spiked with a hefty dose of poison, Carly must put her nose to the rind and save Klarissa from being suspect #1. Because you know what they say-it's always the (almost) wife.

When a mean and quarrelsome woman is found murdered in her own home, most of the residents of Balsam Dell can only say feta late than never... With the summer heat sizzling, grilled cheese restaurant owner Carly Hale is thrilled to have Ross Baxter delivering her sandwiches to local seniors. She's never met a more polite or hardworking young man, and she brushes it off when one of her more difficult customers complain about him. But then Ross returns to the woman's home to make another delivery and finds her dead body. The police and half the town immediately suspect he killed her, so Carly steps in to investigate, determined to prove them wrong. Carly soon learns that the victim had an estranged stepson and stepdaughter, both of whom needed her money to get their lives back on track. Worse still, in her younger days, the dead woman had a reputation for preying on other women's husbands, leaving broken marriages in her wake, and a list of suspects a mile long. But Ross's fingerprints were found on the murder weapon, leaving Carly hungry for any clue she could find. Until she comes face-to-face with the killer and realizes this time, she may have bitten off more than she can chew...

Humbug! leads to Homicide! in the new Grilled Cheese Mystery by Linda Reilly Christmas in the close-knit community of Balsam Dell promises to be especially festive for Carly Hale this year when a prominent theater company comes to town to stage A Christmas Carol. But it turns out that Scrooge is not the most ill-tempered character in the production, as blowhard actor Prescott Lennon proves when he begins berating everyone else in the cast for their poor theatrics. When his arrogant behavior threatens the production, someone decides to resolve matters with a fatal solution-and frames Carly's friend Gina for the murder. With such an unlikable victim, Carly finds herself faced with a long list of suspects, including a grieving widow who hasn't shed a tear, an ambitious understudy looking for his big break, and all the cast members Lennon mistreated. But there's a ghost of a clue in the air as rumors begin to surface that the dead man had a shady past that may have come back to haunt him. With her friend still on the hook, Carly will have to sort out past misdeeds from those of the present, even as her pursuit of the killer scares the dickens out of her... Includes melt-in-your-mouth sandwich recipes!

When a fundraiser turns fatal, Carly Hale is confronted by a trail of clues that all point to her mother as the culprit . . . When the local high school hosts a fundraiser, restaurant owner Carly Hale is happy to sign on and enlists her mother's help selling her much-loved grilled cheese sandwiches at the school. But no good deed goes unpunished, and the vendor stationed next to them at the event turns out to be aggressively rude and bullies them both. Never one to be pushed, Carly's mom gives the man a vicious tongue-lashing and assumes that's the end of it-until later that day when the man is found dead, strangled with her scarf. With her mom on the hook for murder, Carly has no choice but to find out who killed the man and why. It turns out the victim had always been bad news and had racked up a long list of enemies. One of those enemies may have been the menacing stranger Carly saw lurking on the edges of the fundraiser, but her intuition tells her the murdered man's girlfriend may have been mixed up in it too. Certain one of them-or both-did the deadly deed, Carly realizes too late that all her sleuthing has landed her next on the killer's hit list . . . Includes tantalizing grilled-cheese sandwich recipes!

Restaurant owner Carly Hale Mitchell has to get her husband off the hook when he's implicated in the suspicious death of a crooked coworker . . . When the elderly owner of a historic mansion asks Carly to come visit and make one of her famous grilled cheese sandwiches, Carly can hardly say no. She loves spending time inside the fabled home, and she knows her husband will be at the grand old manse too, rewiring the electrical as part of larger renovations. But sparks fly when he gets into a shoving match with the contractor overseeing the project, and that puts him at the top of the suspect list when the contractor later falls to his death from the roof amid signs of foul play. Desperate to clear her husband's good name, Carly puts her restaurant work on the back burner while she tries to track down the real culprit. Thinking it must be someone on the renovation crew or an employee at the mansion, she begins grilling the suspects, only to learn that the victim had enemies throughout the community. Then another dead body is discovered at the mansion, and Carly has to approach the case from a whole new angle-just as the killer is angling to make her the next victim on their list . . .