Join Eliza in  figuring out all the clues she’ll need to solve the mystery of her murdered neighbor while struggling to survive her first semester of culinary school.

Readers can get their first looks at this series in the charity anthology BARGAIN.

Trouble Magnet

Eliza Carlisle Mystery, Book 1

Eliza Carlisle has the unwanted talent of attracting trouble, in all its forms.

That couldn’t be truer than when she moves into the most bizarre apartment building on the planet. Weekly required dinners with the landlord and assigned chores are bad enough, but the rules don’t end there. Top most on the list of requirements is NO physical violence against the others residents.

There have been issues.

In the past.

The young manager, Sonya, claims that hasn’t been a problem recently, but Eliza comes home from her first day of culinary school to find a dead resident, her next door neighbor looking good for the crime, and a cop that seems more interested in harassing her than solving the case.

All Eliza wanted was to escape her past and start over, completely anonymous in a big city. That’s not going to be so easy when the killer thinks she’s made off with a valuable piece of evidence everyone is trying to get their hands on. The ultimatum that she turn it over to save her own life creates a small problem. Eliza has no idea what the killer wants, or where the mysterious object might be.

If she can’t uncover a decades old mystery in time, surviving culinary school will be the least of her problems.

The Catalyst

(Eliza Carlisle Mystery 1.5)

When one small favor for a friend turns into a missing persons case and all-around chaos, Amos realizes looking after Eliza Carlisle is about as easy as bathing a cat.

In the two years since Logan’s death, Amos Walker has worked nonstop to avoid having to face life without him. His driven focus has given him the opportunity to open his own four-star restaurant, but hasn’t helped him deal with his grief. Escaping New York for the New Orleans is a start, though, until a friend calls to beg for a small favor. Cover her classes at the culinary institute where she teaches while she goes home to deal with a family emergency.

Sounds simple enough. Amos has covered for her before and it gets him out of the apartment he can’t stand being in without Logan. There’s just one caveat. There’s this girl, one who might need a little help and encouragement, Lauren tells him. No big deal.

Except looking after Eliza Carlisle is about as easy as bathing a cat.

Sweet, but naïve, Eliza’s efforts to help her friend and fellow culinary student leads everyone around her into a missing persons case that quickly spirals from hoping the girl missed her flight, to untangling an international web of crime. Amos isn’t sure he can keep her safe, but he’s positive he can’t keep her from getting into trouble.

Firebrand

Eliza Carlisle Mystery, Book 2

What’s worse than getting dragged into a murder investigation because you tried to help a friend?

Answer: Getting dragged into a murder investigation, drug ring, and criminal syndicate because someone mistakes you for a friend of your most despised coworker.

When Eliza sees the man dead on the floor of Saul’s Diner, she’s more annoyed than scared. Until they all realize the man’s death wasn’t caused by a heart attack and Queen Bee Danielle blames Eliza’s cooking. Fit to be tied, Eliza is determined to let Officer Gordon figure out who really killed the guy and put her energy toward not getting kicked out of culinary school after a reporter prints Danielle’s spiteful accusations.

But Eliza is Eliza, and staying out of things never works out quite the way she expects. When she is somehow mistaken for a friend of Danielle’s by the people who actually killed the guy in the diner, she quickly finds herself up to her eyeballs in creepy fish, a burgeoning drug ring, scary criminals who like to put black bags over people heads before they kidnap them, and baking a three tier birthday cake at the last minute for someone she doesn’t dare refuse.

Eliza has never hated Danielle more, but helping her is the only way to save herself. After that, Danielle is fair game.

Instigator

Eliza Carlisle Mystery, Book 3

“Why would someone commit murder over a cupcake?”

That is Detective Gordon’s question. Eliza doesn’t have an answer, and doesn’t particularly want to find one. Gordy promises she doesn’t have to get involved…just look at the cupcake and use her culinary knowledge to tell him why it would inspire murder.

It’s never that easy.

Not for Eliza Carlisle.

What should be a relaxing two week break between semesters of culinary school turns into a never ending string of embarrassing, injury-inducing, rat-filled situations Eliza can’t escape. She hadn’t wanted to meet Puck’s parents to begin with. Meeting them in the middle of the murder investigation and running into Chef Harper, her least favorite instructor who is intent on making her life miserable, guarantees anything but a good time.

Add it just keeps getting better. Baxter is getting impatient. His ex-wife, the Evil Queen of Darkness, is getting more vicious by the second. Cupcake bakers are dropping every time the cops turns around. Eliza quickly finds herself hating the Christmas holidays even more than usual. All she has to do to survive her least favorite time of the year is catch a killer, beat Megan at her own evil game, hold off Baxter a little longer, and face down Puck’s unimpressed parents.

Piece of…cupcake.

Incendiary

Eliza Carlisle Mystery, Book 4

How long can Eliza keeping looking over her shoulder before she finally sees her own death approaching?

New Year’s means resolutions, getting on track, making decisions.

For Eliza Carlisle, starting a new year means making tough choices, even if those decisions mean losing friends and possibly getting kicked out of culinary school. She’s all set to take her life in a new direction when her demented half-brother Simon’s reappearance changes everything.

Broken and more alone than she’s been since fleeing her childhood home, Eliza struggles to hang onto the fragile threads that are holding her life together. Only a comically disastrous young chef and the threats against her life pull Eliza out of her fog of self-loathing. Saving seven-year-old Clara means ignoring the threat Simon now poses and surrendering to burnt grilled cheese sandwiches and whipped cream-splattered kitchens…not to mention family secrets, death threats, and a whole host of spy gadgets. And who can forget about Baxter?

With so much mounted against her, Eliza has as much chance of surviving the criminal elite, her psychotic half-brother, and Baxter’s determined advances as she does escaping Chef Harper’s quest to kill her culinary dreams.