A Murder Between Mulled Wine and Gingerbread

First snow, hot mulled wine — and a body among the gingerbread stalls.

Advent is when the little German village of Lindenbrück looks its prettiest: fairy lights over the square, the smell of baked apples on the cold air, and right in the middle of it, the new market stall from the Squirrel Café. Hanna Förster has her hands full — mulled wine by the kettle-load, cinnamon stars by the tray, and a tomcat named Streusel who's decided the counter belongs to him.

Then, on opening night of the Christmas market, the man who wanted to sell the village a glittering, oversized "festival experience" — complete with a rival café — is found dead. A tragic accident in the cold, says the detective from the county town, and he's gone before the mulled wine cools. Hanna doesn't believe it for a second. Because she saw exactly who argued with him shortly before, and who went strangely quiet right after.

Between the Advent concert and the punch kettle, Hanna starts asking her own questions again: with the ever-resolute Edith (binoculars in hand, snow or no snow), the warm and wonderfully scatterbrained new choir director Hilde, Streusel the cat — and conscientious village constable Jonas Reuter, who finds it noticeably harder than usual to stay strictly professional over two cups of punch. Four suspects, two false trails, and a secret as old as a sealed letter tucked away in her late grandmother's things.

Because on the envelope, there's only one name: For Greta. And the deeper Hanna digs, the more she suspects her grandmother knew something about this village that someone would still rather leave buried under the snow.

A Murder Between Mulled Wine and Gingerbread is the second cosy case in The Squirrel Café Mysteries: a small village, a warm-hearted cast, not a drop of gore — just the smell of gingerbread, a cat underfoot, and a fair-play puzzle you can solve right alongside Hanna.

Works perfectly as a stand-alone — you do not need Book 1 to follow this one. Includes an original gingerbread recipe from the Squirrel Café at the end of the book; more from Hanna's kitchen is in the recipe collection.