If you enjoy cozy mysteries, you may want to check out award-winning author Daryl Wood Gerber. She is the author of The French Bistro Mystery series, The Cookbook Nook Mystery series, and the Cheese Shop Mystery series (under the pseudonym Avery Aames). For those readers who enjoy books without graphic sex, violence, or profanity, but good murder mystery plots, these series are fun. They all are suspenseful, and have likeable characters that readers will want to read about over and over. Gerber also writes stand-alone thrillers, which are also excellent. The following fun books from Gerber’s series are fast reads, and are perfect to take on vacation, read at the beach, or read on a long airplane trip.

A Soufflé of Suspicion is the second novel in the French Bistro series. Chef Camille who is the talent behind the great food at Bistro Rousseau, is working with her sister Renee, who is in charge of the Sweet Treats Festival. Renee is driving everyone crazy, including her sister, and turns up dead – murdered. Of course Camille is a suspect, and Mimi must find the murderer before Camille goes to jail and the festival is ruined.

Gerber is a great storyteller, and the setting for this series is charming. The food described is mouthwatering, and the recipes included are French; there are actually 14 recipes, all for dishes readers will want to prepare to eat while reading the novel. The characters are well-developed – Mimi Rousseau is delightful, and Camille is a believable (a bit difficult, but likeable) chef. Gerber presents her characters so that they seem like real people. The Bistro is definitely a restaurant that most readers would like to visit. This novel is fun, and will keep readers on the edge as the suspense builds and the murderer is unmasked at the end.

This is an excellent series, and readers will definitely anticipate the subsequent novels.

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Sifting through the Clues is the eighth installment of the Cookbook Nook series. The small town of Crystal Cove is celebrating the library’s Book Club Bonanza week, and Jenna Hart has special activities planned during the festival at her bookstore, The Cookbook Nook. The bookstore owners are getting together for a progressive dinner, and at the last stop, Jenna discovers that the owner of one of the stores has been murdered. Not only does that ruin the progressive dinner, but Jenna’s close friend Cinnamon who is also chief of police must also put her own mother on the suspect list. Cinnamon doesn’t like Jenna putting her nose into investigations, but that doesn’t stop Jenna, and it causes plenty of trouble.

While this isn’t the most suspenseful book in the series, it is well-written and will keep readers interested throughout. The familiar characters find themselves helping Jenna investigate, even though there are distractions, like Bailey being very pregnant, Rhett thinking of changing careers, and Jenna and Rhett working on wedding plans. There are several other characters introduced in this novel, and they all seem to be suspects, but Gerber writes in a way that the mystery isn’t solved until the end of the novel. Food lovers will love this series, since there are lots of recipes for the treats served in the bookstore and the adjoining restaurant. Culinary mystery aficionados will enjoy reading this novel and also preparing the simple recipes.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying review copies of these books.