Farm to trouble

Shiloh Bellamy, the heroine of this sprightly series launch from Flower (the Magic Garden mysteries), returns to her hometown of Cherry Glen, Mich., after 15 years spent building her career as a TV producer in Hollywood. Her goal is to get her family's failing farm up and running again. To that end, she has signed a contract with entrepreneur Jefferson Crocker, who has agreed to invest heavily in her plan to convert the farm to organic growing methods. When her father, Sully, hears of her deal, he flies into a rage. It seems that Sully, like many Cherry Gleners, views Crocker as a heartless money grubber, intent on owning the town and filling the surrounding farmland with wind turbines. Shiloh, realizing she's made a mistake, goes to the farmers' market intent on convincing Crocker to let her out of their contract, only to find him dead. For the local police, she becomes the prime suspect. With a full complement of insecurities, along with a nice sense of humor, Shiloh is a winning lead. Flower ticks all the requisite boxes: a good man, a bad man, a mean woman, a small town, and family conflict. Cozy fans will be enchanted. Agent: Nicole Resciniti, Seymour Agency. (Feb.)

Flower turns from Amish matchmaker Millie Fisher, last seen in Courting Can Be Killer (2020), to budding organic farmer Shiloh Bellamy in this exciting series debut. Following the death of her fiancé in an accident, Shiloh fled her family farm in Michigan for a successful career in California. Now she's sold everything to return home and help her father rescue the farm he's long neglected. Because it's taken almost all her money to pay off the farm's debts, she's taken an investment from Jefferson Crocker to help her turn the farm organic. When she and her pug, Huckleberry, arrive home, her father flies into a rage over her interference. Things get even worse once she finds Crocker shot to death at the farmers market and she and her father becomes immediate suspects, even though Crocker was the town's most hated citizen due to his scheme to buy up a lot of property, including the courthouse, for a wind farm he had planned. On the plus side, sparks fly between Shiloh and Quinn Killian even though he still blames her for the death of her fiance, who was his best friend. The daughter he's raising alone takes a shine to Shiloh and Huckleberry. Shiloh's cousin Stacey, who inherited half the original farm, is eager to develop the local theater and take advantage of the town's new life as a tourist mecca. With some help from her high school buddies, Shiloh desperately investigates other suspects only to discover a morass of lies and deceit that make her next on the killer's list. Intriguing characters and local color help compensate for an obvious culprit. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.