The Tart of Deception

A Small Town Culinary Cozy Mystery with Cat

By: Maisy Marple

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Blair Whitcome has poured everything into transforming the neglected rooftop above Blair's Bistro into a lush container garden and intimate dining terrace — and tonight is the grand unveiling. Fairy lights, fig tartlets, and the golden glow of a Gulf Coast sunset. Thirty guests. One celebrated food blogger with half a million followers, live-streaming the whole thing. Everything is perfect. Then the scream comes from the alley three stories below, and Blair's most beautiful evening becomes her worst.

Maren Solberg didn't come to Pelican Harbor just for the food. The fearless blogger was hours away from posting a bombshell exposé — a meticulously documented investigation into Magnolia Roots Farm, the charming local "organic" operation whose pristine wooden crates and hand-lettered price tags were hiding a wholesale fraud. Someone knew what was coming. And with the video scheduled to post at nine the next morning, they had one window to stop it. As Detective Delcambre circles the most obvious suspect and the clock runs down, Blair follows the evidence where the police aren't looking — through farmers' market gossip, parish property records, and the quiet, methodical habits of a man who has spent three years building something he cannot afford to lose.

Lil' Beefy is on the case. The muffins are on the house. And in Pelican Harbor, the truth has a way of finding the light — with or without a little help from an enormous, unbothered tabby cat who knows exactly where to look.