Corinna Chapman

One day, Corinna Chapman, high profile accountant and banker, walked out on the money market and her dismissive and unpleasant husband James, threw aside her briefcase, and doffed her kitten heels forever. Now she is a baker with her own business, Earthly Delights, in Melbourne, Australia, living in an eccentric building on the Roman model called Insula with a lot of similarly eccentric people. She and her cat Horatio are quite content with this new life until a junkie falls half dead on her grate, a gorgeous sabra stalks along her alley telling her that she is beautiful, and threatening letters accusing her of being a scarlet woman begin to arrive. Then suddenly Goths, lost girls, fraud, late nights, nerds, and beautiful slaves complicate life for Corinna. And she still needs to get her bread out for the morning rush…

"""Lose all thought of New Year's diets, you who enter Australian author Greenwood's delectable second Corinna Chapman cozy."" —Publishers Weekly STARRED reviewCorinna Chapman wakes at four every morning to make bread. She's happy with her life. The residents of her little Melbourne community finally caught the rotten man sending those ""scarlet woman"" letters. The former addict she rescued from her alleyway, Jason, is shaping into a good apprentice. And her beautiful Israeli lover, Daniel, who has been away for the last couple of weeks, is as enchanting as ever.Corinna has no intention of doing any more investigative work...until she bites into what should have been a lovely violet cream gourmet chocolate and instead chomps a chili-filled catastrophe.Could someone want Heavenly Pleasures, her friends' chocolate shop, to fail? Is this tasteless tampering part of an elaborate and horrible joke? Or is it a warning that worse is to come?Then Daniel returns bruised and battered from a run-in with a so-called messiah. Could the assailant be involved in the chocolate crime as well? And who is the mysterious man who has moved into the upper apartment?"

If there's one thing that Corinna Chapman, baker extraordinaire and proprietor of the Earthly Delights Bakery, can't abide, it's people not eating well, particularly when there are delights like her very own, just-baked, freshly buttered sourdough bread to enjoy. So when a strange cult which denies the flesh and eats only famine bread turns up, along with a malnourished body, Corinna is very disturbed indeed. On top of that, her hippie mother, Starshine, has turned up out of the blue, hysterical that Sunlight, Corinna's father, has absconded to Melbourne with all their money and a desire for a new young lover. Someone is poisoning people with weight loss herbal teas, and then odd things are happening at the nearby Cafe Vlad Tepes, which attracts a very strange clientele indeed. It's a delicious recipe for murder, mayhem, and mystery.

"In this entertaining, sexy debut, Allie is a sharp Stephanie Plum paired up with a hot partner... The original voice, humor, and unusual premise will appeal to Janet Evanovich readers." -Library Journal STARRED review Lonely and broke, Cleveland divorce-survivor Allie Harper believes all her problems would be solved if she could find a nice, smart, hot guy and enough money to get her car fixed. The hot guy arrives first: he's in a crosswalk clutching a bag of groceries while a blonde in a Hummer is leaning hard on her horn, sending the man's groceries and white cane flying. How has this woman missed the fact that the man is blind? From the curb, an outraged Allie jumps to his rescue, rebagging the groceries as well. The money is in the bag. Literally-Thomas Bennington III, for that's who the handsome guy proves to be, has bought a MondoMegaJackpot ticket along with canned tomatoes. Allie takes him home and turns his groceries into dinner for two. Later that night, Tom hears the numbers announced. He's won. And he's less than thrilled. PhD Tom had gambled on the odds of losing (175 million to one) to prove a point to Rune, a kid from the projects he's befriended, that only losers buy lottery tickets. Instead, Rune, who'd helped pick the Mondo numbers, will share Tom's jackpot. Allie and Tom grasp two things: one, they're hot for each other, and two, the ticket is a hot target, and now so are they. Every scheming weasel in Cleveland will be after Tom's millions. $550 of them. Yes, once the Mondo ball drops, it's game on with killers and kidnappers as players. Allie and Tom need to get smarter about the threats all around them. On the run from one fancy hotel refuge to another and from one danger moment to the next, with only Allie's feisty landlady, Margo, and a couple of Cleveland cops for back-up, Allie and Tom evolve a strategy. First, turn in the ticket and claim the jackpot. Second, set up accounts to manage the millions. Third, stay alive to the end of the week...if they can. Too Lucky to Live debuts a talented writer in Annie Hogsett and a couple in Allie and Tom, a modern Nick and Nora Charles, who can power a compelling, amusing series with an excellent future. Somebody's Bound to Wind Up Dead series: Too Lucky to Live (Book 1) Murder to the Metal (Book 2) The Devil's Own Game (Book 3) Praise for Annie Hogsett: "Fast pacing, multiple plot twists, and humor, including a Stephanie Plum-like main character, enliven the story and keep the pages turning." -Booklist for Too Lucky to Live "The bittersweet mystery, with the open-ended threat of a villainous mastermind, is reminiscent of P.J. Tracy's early 'Monkeewrench' novels." -Library Journal for Murder to the Metal

"""Like Corinna's earlier adventures, this episode is cleverly written and chock full of charming characters, interesting puzzles and luscious descriptions of food with appended recipes."" —Kirkus ReviewsCorinna Chapman, owner of the bakery Earthly Delights, detests Christmas. The shoppers are frantic and the heat oppressive in Melbourne, Australia, where Christmas is a summer festival. Corinna is a perfect size 20 with a genius for baking bread. And while dreaming of air-conditioned comfort, she finds herself dealing with a rose-addicted donkey named Serena, a maniacal mother with staring eyes, a distracted assistant seeking the definitive glacé cherry recipe, her friend the fearless witch Meroe, and the luscious Daniel with whom she would like to spend a lot more time.But Daniel is on the track of two runaways, Brigid and Manny. Their Romeo-and-Juliet romance is not as straightforward as it seems, and the pair will go a long way to avoid being found. With the help of a troupe of free-spirited ""freegans,"" three very clever internet hackers, and a bunch of singing vegans, Corinna and Daniel go head-to-head with a sinister religious"

"To the usual delightfully quirky characters, lovingly detailed descriptions of food and surprising mystery, Greenwood adds several appended medieval recipes." -Kirkus Reviews Corinna Chapman, talented baker and reluctant investigator, is trying to do nothing at all on her holiday. Her gorgeous Daniel is only intermittently at her side (he's tracking down a multi-thousand dollar corporate theft). Jason, her baking offsider, has gone off to learn how to surf. And Kylie and Goss are fulfilling their lives' ambition auditioning for a soapie. But quiet reflection doesn't seem to suit Corinna. She's bored. So she accepts an offer from a caterer friend to bake for the film set of the soapie in which Kylie and Goss have parts. Soon complications that could only happen to Corinna ensue, involving cakes, sabotage, nursery rhymes, and a tiger named Tabitha. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a young woman is being unmercifully bullied by her corporate employers-who spend a lot of time cooking the books....

"Another mystery book from Kerry Greenwood, internationally bestselling author of the Phryne Fisher mysteries! Betrayal is a bitter pill to swallow...Rising at four o'clock every morning isn't Corinna Chapman's favorite part of running her Australian bakery, Earthly Delights, and the glowing light of dawn feels even harsher when a man collapses in her shop. When the man, a military veteran, comes around and reveals that his beloved ex-service dog is missing, Corinna and her longtime companion, Daniel, feel compelled to help. It soon becomes clear, though, that they have gotten involved in something much bigger and more complicated than they had bargained for... especially when threatening notes begin to appear in Corinna's apartment. And with recreational drugs rising in popularity, the sleuths suspect that a dangerous smuggling ring might be behind everything.Along with searching for the soldier's dog, dodging suspicious neighbors, and putting a stop to a string of local burglaries, Corinna has to keep her bakery running! It'll take everything she's got to crack the case and make sure delicious breads, muffins, and treats are still fresh and ready for her eager customers. Can she take the heat?Part culinary cozy mystery, part small town mystery, and full of twists and turns, this latest addition to the Corinna Chapman Mysteries has it all!"