Turtle Soup

This cozy series has everything you want and more: an eclectic cast of characters, a mystery or two, and diligent detectives on duty. The detectives, feline and canine, figure it all out, but they have a dickens of a time getting the humans to understand them.

The series, Tiger Lily’s Café, is set in a Midwestern town nestled into the sunset coast of a Great Lake. The setting itself acts as a character, bringing the reader into the sights, sounds and smells of the small resort community of Chelsea.

Read the series in order, or read any book alone. Each volume stands alone with a clear beginning and a clear end.

This volume continues the story of Annie, a woman whose ownership of a prime piece of real estate and several businesses was almost a mistake. But own it, she does, and she makes the best of an idyllic situation.

With her family of rescue cats and a diverse collection of business managers, staff and friends, Annie embraces her home on The Avenue, a picturesque slice of life that embodies the best – and sometimes the worst – that humanity has to offer.

In Turtle Soup, Annie’s Café is in trouble. Several issues have marred otherwise pristine reviews from the Health Department. Annie can’t figure out what is happening or why. In the meantime, a not-so-very-good friend, Geraldine, has opened a diner that looks remarkably like the Café. Geraldine seems to benefit from Annie’s problems. Annie is blind, but Tiger Lily, the oldest of Annie’s cats, is wise to Geraldine’s deception.

A group of guests arrive at Annie’s bed and breakfast. They appear to be typical “beautiful people.” They have pre-booked an extended fishing cruise on the lake but arrive early to spend a few days in town. Intrigue seems to follow them. The intrigue turns darker, and through the efforts of another of Annie’s cats, Little Socks, the depth of their depravity is eventually made known to Annie and her friends. But is it too late?

Tiger Lily and her siblings, along with their canine friends Jock and Cyril, are wise to the dangers lurking around Chelsea, but they can’t seem to make their humans understand.

The humans are in the soup. They just don’t know it.