Books and Literature for Coffee Lovers

Mocha Magic Coffee is about to become the hot new product featured on Aphrodite’s Village, a popular online community for women. “Hot” in more ways than one: the mix of coffee, chocolate, and herbs is guaranteed to improve your love life. But as the international product launch for Mocha Magic Coffee approaches, trouble is brewing. And it’s up to Clare Cosi, manager of the Village Blend coffee shop and amateur sleuth, to sort it out.

Coffee shops around New York City are the targets of arson in Roast Mortem by Cleo Coyle, the ninth book in Coyle’s popular Coffeehouse Mystery series. Clare Cosi, the manager of the historic Village Blend coffee shop in Greenwich Village and an amateur detective with an impressive crime-solving resume, sets out to discover who’s setting the fires, before the Village Blend goes up in flames too.

Holiday Grind, the eighth book in Cleo Coyle’s popular Coffeehouse Mystery series, provides coffee-loving readers with a special holiday blend of murder and coffee. When Clare Cosi’s friend Alf Glockner, one of New York’s “Traveling Santas,” is found dead near the Village Blend, Clare doesn’t believe he was killed by a random mugger. The holiday season becomes increasingly sinister as Clare’s sleuthing puts her life in danger. She wants to find out who killed Alf, and why, but will she be able to do that without joining Alf as a casualty of Christmas?

In Espresso Shot by Cleo Coyle, the seventh book in the author’s Coffeehouse Mysteries series, murder hits close to home for coffee expert and amateur detective Clare Cosi. Clare’s ex-husband Matteo Allegro, who is also her partner in the Village Blend coffee business, is about to marry influential magazine editor Breanne Summour. As the wedding approaches, a girl who looks like Bree is gunned down while walking on the street with Matt. Although there's no love lost between Clare and Bree, Clare is worried that Bree is being targeted for murder, and she’s determined to prevent that, if only for Matt’s sake.

Coffeeshop manager and amateur detective Clare Cosi is again drinking lots of coffee and solving murders in French Pressed by Cleo Coyle, the sixth installment of Coyle’s Coffeehouse Mystery series. Although no one is actually murdered with a French press, the action of the story centers on a popular French restaurant in New York where Clare’s daughter Joy is working as an intern. When the restaurant’s kitchen becomes violent, Joy is the NYPD’s prime suspect, and Clare has to use all of her detecting skills — and Lieutenant Mike Quinn’s as well — to clear her daughter’s name.

Amateur detective Clare Cosi gets another chance to employ her sleuthing skills in Decaffeinated Corpse by Cleo Coyle, the fifth book in the author’s popular Coffeehouse Mystery series. The mystery begins when Clare discovers a body in the alley behind the Village Blend, the venerable coffeehouse that she manages in New York City’s Greenwich Village. It’s not a dead body, though. The corpse of the title will arrive later. The unconscious man is Brazilian coffee grower Ric Gostwick, who has developed a botanically decaffeinated coffee plant. As Clare knows, in the competitive coffee business, that may be enough to get him killed.

In Murder Most Frothy, the fourth book in Cleo Coyle’s best-selling Coffeehouse Mystery series, barista Clare Cosi takes a summer break from her beloved Village Blend coffeehouse in New York City. Clare has accepted an invitation from her wealthy friend David Mintzer to train the barista staff at Cuppa J, his new restaurant in the Hamptons. When someone is murdered in David's mansion, Clare jumps in to find the killer. With its Hamptons setting, Murder Most Frothy is indeed a bit “frothier” than the previous books in the series. But murder in the Hamptons, of course, is just as deadly as murder anywhere else.

In the opening chapter of Latte Trouble by Cleo Coyle, the Village Blend’s best barista, Tucker Burton, is not happy. “Men are pigs. They should die!” he exclaims in the middle of a Fashion Week party in the coffeehouse. And within a matter of minutes, one does, apparently poisoned by a lethal latte that Tucker served him. Tucker, of course, becomes the prime suspect, but Clare Cosi, the manager of the Village Blend, knows he’s innocent and vows to find the murderer. Clare’s investigation takes her from her familiar milieu of baristas to the exotic world of the fashionistas, giving readers an entertaining mini-tour of New York along the way.