Recommended Books

Irascible, unfiltered Bea Sickles is living happily ever after as a chain-smoking hermit in Napa Valley — until an amateur crook named Cash barges into her home and her life.

Cash’s get-rich-quick scheme: Steal a Betty Snickerdoodle manuscript, publish it, and pocket the proceeds. Bea's made millions off those syrupy holiday romance novels — and now Cash wants a piece of the action!

What Cash doesn’t know is that Bea’s no ordinary septuagenarian millionaire. She’s a fearless, wily ex-poker pro who loves nothing more than being underestimated. And now she’s concocted a high-stakes plan to teach Cash a lesson.

It’s a gamble that just might blow up in Bea’s face. Luckily, she has a friend in her corner — Angela Garcia, the brilliant, beautiful marketer who used social media to make Betty Snickerdoodle a publishing phenomenon.

Cash will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Can Bea and Angela stop him – and save their publishing enterprise – before it’s too late?

A secretive philanthropist books Betty Snickerdoodle's brand-new inn for her elite, ultra-private holiday poker tournament. With the hefty fee she's offering, it seems like Christmas has come early--especially since the inn's not even open yet!

But Bea Sickles--the savvy, 70-something ex-poker pro turned author behind Betty Snickerdoodle--smells trouble.

"It might be a gift from Santa," she says, "or we might be getting a scam in our stocking."

The set-up is undeniably odd. And as the tycoons settle in for their high-stakes vacation, the shindig starts to look even stranger. Bea's so certain there's something fishy about these fat cats and their game, she buys in for $50,000, just to keep an eye on them. But a shady game is hardly the only suspicious thing about these whales. Before long, accidents start happening--and Bea and Angela, her talented millennial business partner, start to wonder if what looks like an accident could actually be murder....

It’s opening day of the convention for Betty Snickerdoodle’s superfans. As fans arrive in droves, the woman behind Betty, Bea Sickles, drives away—in the back of a cruiser!

She’s accused of tampering with a crime scene—and possibly even murder! It’s true, Bea couldn’t resist nosing around a dead body. She’s convinced, though, that the “victim’s” death was an accident. So while she’s under lock and key, her best pals must prove there was no murder—and get Bea out of jail.

Top of the list is Angela, who runs their Betty Snickerdoodle, Inc. enterprise. With the convention underway, though, Angela’s juggling a lot—including a big baking competition, a high-maintenance chef, and the expectations of Betty’s devoted fans. Luckily, Angela’s got help from handsome tech whiz Aseem and Bea’s private detective friend, Pat.

Did the corpse Bea fiddled with die in an accident… or was it murder? And if it was murder, who was the killer? If they don’t find out fast, Bea might pay a steep price for a single moment of curiosity….

Bake It Like Betty is book three of the Betty Snickerdoodle cozy mystery series, which blends mystery, humor, and adventure.

When Rhonda Butts, self-described wedding planner to the elite, arrives at Betty Snickerdoodle's Christmas Inn & Ranch, she makes quite an impression. Despite numerous reminders, she can't seem to remember that Bea (aka Betty Snickerdoodle herself) actually owns the place. And she shocks Angela–the marketing whiz who catapulted Betty's sales into the stratosphere–by offering to "fix" the inn's business.

It's enough to make unfailingly sweet, polite-to-a-fault Angela call Rhonda an"oaf!"

But Rhonda makes Bea and Angela an offer that's hard to refuse: You host a mixer for wedding professionals, and I'll do all the work–and if it's successful, we'll make bank hosting big, 'high-end' weddings together.

So they decide to go ahead with the mixer, and at first, it's all sweetness and love and light - until dastardly secrets surface, and the wedding vendors start dropping like flies....

Mixed to Death is book four in the Betty Snickerdoodle Mystery series. It's full of laughs, heart, and mystery. And it even has four adorable puppies!

When Bea and Angela lend their ballroom for a local theater production of an old-fashioned whodunnit, it sounds like fun—until the accidents and squabbles and suspicious secrets start. Then when opening night arrives, so does the worst storm to hit the wine country in recent memory.

But the dangerous weather is just the prologue to misfortune. Because before the second act on opening night… somebody has been murdered!

Flooded roads and knocked out phones mean Bea, Angela, the cast, and their VIP guests are trapped at the inn with the killer.

Now it’s up to Bea and Angela, with a little help from their friends, to figure out which one of the eccentric theater types and sophisticated socialites in the audience is a murderer—without putting a target on their own backs.

Of Mice and Murder is book six in the Betty Snickerdoodle Mystery series. It’s an easy-reading, “salty and sweet” cozy mystery with no cursing, gore, or sexual content—but plenty of laughs, friendship, and twists. It can be read as a standalone, but you might enjoy reading the series in order more.