Lavender Lies Bleeding

Success isn’t always so sweet in Leslie Budewitz’s ninth addition to the Spice Shop Mystery series . . .

At Seattle Spice Shop, owner Pepper Reece has whipped up the perfect blend of food, friends, and flavor. But the sweet smell of success can be hazardous . . .

Spring is in full bloom in Pike Place Market, where Pepper is celebrating lavender’s culinary uses and planning a festival she hopes will become an annual event. When her friend Lavender Liz offers to share tips for promoting the much-loved--and occasionally maligned--herb, Pepper makes a trek to the charming town of Salmon Falls. But someone has badly damaged Liz’s greenhouse, throwing a wrench in the feisty grower’s plans for expansion. Suspicions quickly focus on an employee who’s taken to the hills, though Liz herself is not convinced.

Then Liz is found dead among her precious plants, stabbed by a pruning knife. In Salmon Falls, there’s one in every pocket.

Pepper digs in, untangling the tensions between Liz and a local restaurateur with eyes on a picturesque but neglected farm, a jealous ex-boyfriend determined to profit from Liz’s success, and a local growers’ cooperative. She’s also hot on the scent of a trail of her own, sniffing out the history of her sweet dog, Arf.

As Pepper’s questions threaten to unearth secrets others desperately want to keep buried, danger creeps closer to her and those she loves. Can Pepper root out the killer, before someone nips her in the bud?

Includes delicious recipes!

Leslie Budewitz blends her passion for food, great mysteries, and the Northwest in two cozy mystery series, the Spice Shop Mysteries, set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, and the Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, set in NW Montana. She also writes moody suspense under the pen name Alicia Beckman. Leslie is the winner of three Agatha Awards--2013 Best First Novel for DEATH AL DENTE, the first Food Lovers’ Village mystery; 2011 Best Nonfiction, and 2018 Best Short Story, for ＂All God’s Sparrows,＂ her first historical fiction. A past president of Sisters in Crime and a former board member of Mystery Writers of America, she lives and cooks in NW Montana.