Fresh Grounds
Fresh Grounds
A cat who runs the register. A coffee that's to die for. And a body nobody in Harlow Cove wants explained.
When Tess Byrne inherits her late aunt's shuttered storefront in the tired harbor town of Harlow Cove, she does the only sensible thing a burned-out vet nurse can: she fills it with rescue cats, learns to pull a decent espresso, and reopens it as The Ninth Life — the town's first cat café. The unofficial manager is Chowder, a plush blue-grey British Shorthair with opinions and a staring problem. The coffee is good. The cats are adoptable. For the first time in years, Tess belongs somewhere.
Then Gil Hooten — the smiling "storefront consultant" who'd been circling half of Wharf Street, Tess's building included — turns up dead in the alley out back, facedown in a spill of her own house blend.
The police think Ruth Deng did it. Ruth is eighty-one, runs the launderette, was Aunt Vivian's best friend, and could no more strangle a man than skip her morning cup. So Tess starts asking the questions the detective won't — with a bookshop-owner best friend, a barista who knows everyone's order and half their secrets, and a cat who won't go near one particular customer.
Detective Milo Hart would very much like her to stop. He's new in town, unfailingly polite about it, and not nearly as good at hiding what he thinks of her as he believes.
Between the milk steamer and the murder board, Tess has three days, one closed circle of Wharf Street neighbors, and a nagging sense that the answer is sitting right there in the café — if she'd just look at who Chowder won't.
Fresh Grounds is the first Ninth Life Cat Café Mystery: a warm, witty, small-town whodunit with a competent amateur sleuth, a fairly-clued puzzle, a slow-burn worth the wait, and a cat who is absolutely not a detective, no matter what the regulars say. No gore, no cliffhanger cruelty, and no harm ever comes to a cat. Just good coffee, kind hearts, and one very solvable murder.
Join the Newsletter →