Title:	Cooking for Ghosts
	Author:	Patricia V. Davis
	Published:	October 7, 2016, H D Media Press
	No. of Pages:	360
	Cover Price:	$15.95 Paperback, $3.99 Kindle

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Four very different women meet on a food blogging site and decide to partner up and open a restaurant on The RMS Queen Mary cruise ship that has been docked in Long Beach, California, and is now a floating hotel. Each of the women – Cynthia, Angela, Jane, and Rohini – has secrets, and each is suffering a bit because of them; the ship, of course also has secrets. The Queen Mary is known to have ghosts, and the women have some encounters with them. There were some unsolved murders that occurred on the ship during the 40s, also, and the women discover some of the clues leading to solving the years’ old mysteries.

Davis is an excellent storyteller, and the story will hook readers from the first chapter. She also does a good job of developing the characters who have several conflicts during the planning and execution of readying the restaurant for opening, as well as throughout. Another character besides the women is an ex-con, Cris, who admits he was guilty of murder and served ten years in prison; he had been thought of by many as a prodigy chef before going to prison, and the dishes he (as well as Angela who is the pastry chef) comes up with are amazing. At first Jane doesn’t want to hire him, but she changes her mind as the facts come out, and Rohini’s (she is an expert herbalist and adds some herbs to the dishes) secrets put all of them in danger and their very lives are threatened.

The only real problem with this excellent first installment of The Secret Spice Café Trilogy, is that there are so many mouthwatering dishes coming out of the kitchen, and no recipes for them. If this were a culinary mystery, the recipes would be there, but this really isn’t a cozy, so the author can get away with leaving them out.

The story is good. The characters are good. The suspense builds throughout, and readers will like the fact that there is so much diversity in the not only the characters, but the scenarios.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.