Death by Peppermint: a Christmas Manor Cozy Mystery With Cat Estates Mystery

Forensic document examiner Juniper Vale arrives in the charming coastal town of Winterberry Bluff seeking nothing more than a peaceful Christmas vacation with her ribbon-stealing Norwegian Forest Cat, Figgy Pudding. Instead of hot chocolate and festive shopping, she finds herself invited to a Christmas Eve will reading at the town’s most notorious mansion—where family tensions run as high as the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic, and decades of secrets are about to surface.When one of the heirs dies after biting into a personalized candy cane laced with cyanide, Juniper’s trained eye catches a crucial detail that everyone else missed. The beautiful gold leaf calligraphy on the victim’s candy cane isn’t quite right, suggesting someone tampered with it after it was made. As a blizzard traps suspects in town and Detective Sarah Cortez investigates, Juniper must use her expertise in detecting forgeries and fraudulent documents to uncover which of the feuding family members turned a holiday tradition into murder.With Stella Brightwood’s endless supply of cookies and local gossip, Figgy’s uncanny ability to find evidence while stealing Christmas decorations, and her own sharp skills at spotting lies hidden in plain sight, Juniper races to solve the murder before the killer strikes again. But in a town where everyone has secrets and the victim had more enemies than friends, finding the truth means exposing lies that some would kill to keep hidden—even during the season of peace and goodwill.