Discover the delicious mystery that started it all! No one cooks up a delectable, suspense-filled mystery quite like Hannah Swensen, Joanne Fluke?s dessert-baking, red-haired heroine whose gingersnaps are as tart as her comebacks, and whose penchant for solving crimes?one delicious clue at a time?has made her a bestselling favorite. And it all began on these pages, with a bakery, a murder, and some suddenly scandalous chocolate-chip crunchies. Featuring...

"When production for the tenth season of the hit cooking competition Bake Week begins at the gothic estate of the show's host and founder, celebrity chef Betsy Martin, everything seems normal. The six contestants are eager to prove their culinary talents over the course of five days, while Betsy struggles for control of the show with her new co-host, the brash and unpredictable Archie Morris. But as the baking competition gets under way, things begin...

Bee is an orphan in the poor kingdom of Aradyn, and when she is caught stealing a bun from a bakery, the lonely baker offers to take her on as an apprentice--but when she meets Princess Anika, and the evil mage Joris who is her "guardian" she embarks on a journey to save Anika, and restore the kingdom its rightful ruler.

Nancy's failure to pay attention gets her into trouble when she bakes cupcakes for the school bake sale.

"In the fourth Death by Chocolate Mystery, Jacobia Jake Tiptree and Ellie White are fired up for Eastport, Maine's Annual Cookie Baking Contest. But when a cunning killer and a devastating fire threaten to ravage the quaint island town, Jake and Ellie must dip into another homemade homicide investigation before all they love goes up in smoke."--Publisher's description.

While trying to make something for the school bake sale, Pete seems to only be able to make a mess.

"Daisy bakes a little murder into every pie she creates, and she and her dog, Zoe, deliver them to the town's worst cads. Now, Daisy's entered a televised, elimination-style competition and has a shot at $100k in prize money--but she still has a murder pie to deliver between filming. In a completely unexpected turn of events, she discovers that her intended victim is one of the competition judges, and he turns up dead before the pie even arrives....

Lonely Gingerbread Baby, having set out to find a friend, enters a bakery where he tries to talk to different cookies and other figures, but winds up leading a crowd back to his house on a chase similar to the one in the familiar tale.

With her assistant, Pixie, picking up more responsibility around the shop, Tricia Miles suddenly has a lot more time on her hands. Tricia decides to join the local animal-rescue board and enter the Great Booktown Bake-Off, but neither pans out as smoothly as she'd hoped. Balancing a bake-off that's heating up with a frosty reception from the board, Tricia stops by Joyce Whitman's romance bookstore looking for a book to get her fired up. She stumbles...

A mouse concocts a batch of cookies in his little house in a tree trunk, sets them in the oven, and then dozes off, with worrisome consequences.