In the eighth installment of the Coffeehouse Mystery series, Clare Cosi, manager of the Village Blend in Greenwich, NY, has her hands full trying to get her team of baristas to join in on the holiday spirit.

When Clare finds Alfred Glockner, a traveling Santa and frequent customer at the blend, shot dead in an alley near her shop, she fears that her friend’s murder wasn’t the result of a random mugger as the police suspect. Alf’s daughter thinks they’re wrong, too, and enlists Clare’s aid in finding the real killer.

This cozy mystery series continues to go strong and everything that this reader has come to love about it was fully present: Great characters, wonderfully developing relationships, coffee and food talk, and, of course, a solid mystery that leads Clare into more hot water than she can handle. Pure fun, Holiday Grind is a real treat that is capped off by at least fifteen pages of mouth-watering recipes.