Harvest Moon Homicide, The: A Cozy Mystery of an Autumn Festival and a Ripe Murder

?? Orchard owner and fall festival organizer Autumn Bliss is hosting the annual Harvest Moon Festival when the event's celebrity chef—a notoriously demanding farm-to-table purist—is found dead in the apple barn, buried under a suspiciously arranged pyramid of pumpkins. The police suspect a tragic collapse, but Autumn notices the produce has been deliberately bruised and the victim's recipe notes contain coded symbols about crop sabotage. With her festival in chaos and the farming community turning on each other, Autumn must harvest the truth before the season turns cold. Assisted by her orchard workers and the handsome agricultural extension agent analyzing crop damage, Autumn uncovers a scheme involving produce substitution, organic certification fraud, and a plot to undermine local farmers. From suspicious bruise patterns that reveal intentional damage to pesticide residues that don't match organic standards, every piece of fruit tells a story. But when Autumn discovers the victim was systematically sabotaging competitors' crops to control the farmers' market, she realizes the killer is protecting agricultural integrity more valuable than any festival profit. With the harvest moon rising and the real crop saboteur still reaping deception, Autumn must gather the evidence before her own orchard gets permanently pruned.