Murder Before Morning Bread

A miller never lets the stones run dry. So why were they turning over nothing at all? When baker Edie Hartwell revives her great-aunt Sylvie's tradition, the dawn Morning Bread round through the crooked lanes of Hearth Hollow, the very first delivery ends at the foot of the mill stairs. Frank Hollis, the man who counted everything twice, is dead. The millstones above him are grinding dry over an empty hopper, and no miller who ever lived would leave them that way. The village would like it to be an accident. Edie can't quite let it be. Frank had been asking her odd questions about loaves and sacks the Friday before he died, and Sylvie's recipe book, it turns out, kept more than recipes in its margins. Between proving loaves and a preservation fund that doesn't add up, Edie follows a trail of chalk tallies, padded invoices, and a supplier nobody can find, while DS Ben Carver works the same case from the other end and her friend Priya keeps the questions, and the flowers, coming. Someone in Hearth Hollow has been doing arithmetic in the dark. Edie just has to reach the answer before the ovens do. And in the bakery's cold pantry, something older than any ledger is beginning to stir… Book Two of The Hearth & Hollow Mysteries, a cosy village mystery series featuring warm kitchens, memorable villagers, a watchful cat, and just a whisper of the uncanny. No gore, no strong language, and all violence remains off the page.