A Bitter Crust

The forty-third Maple Hollow Summer County Fair should be all cotton candy and blue ribbons.

But when baker Penny Vale discovers a suspicious powder on a pie crust at the contest judging table, the fair's sweetest tradition turns deadly. Someone has laced a contest entry with a lethal allergen-and the target is the organizer who just uncovered eight years of financial fraud hidden in the fair's books.

As Penny traces ghost invoices and shell companies from a Deerfield office to the town's most powerful family, she uncovers a conspiracy that has been stealing from Maple Hollow for over a decade. The financial advisor is hiding something. The town matriarch knows more than she says. And an anonymous informant is feeding Penny clues through methods that are as unsettling as they are helpful.

With a state police detective closing in, a rival baker turned unlikely ally, and a revelation that will change everything Penny thought she knew about Maple Hollow's most prominent family, she must unravel the truth before the closing ceremony-or watch the killer's plan succeed.

Every recipe has a secret. Every secret has a price.

A Bitter Crust is the fourth book in the Fatal Frosting Mystery Series-a cozy culinary mystery set in small-town Connecticut, featuring an amateur sleuth baker, a slow-burn romance, and mysteries you can solve alongside the protagonist. Each book stands alone while advancing an overarching series conspiracy. No cliffhangers. No graphic violence. Just pie, secrets, and a town worth protecting.