Death in the Cider Barn: A Small-Town Inheritance Cozy Mystery

About Death in the Cider Barn: A Small-Town Inheritance Cozy Mystery

Tessa Hart thought one flawless autumn wedding might finally quiet Sweetfern’s gossip and secure Hart’s Run’s future. Instead, it leaves a body in the cider barn. When county clerk Joan Merritt arrives to verify the marriage license for Hart’s Run’s most prestigious event, she uncovers something she should not have seen.

Minutes later, she is dead at the foot of the barn stairs, the ceremony is halted, and the whispers start all over again. But this time, the murder is not just bad for business. It is personal.

Before she died, Joan linked the wedding paperwork to Rose Hart’s estate file, and suddenly Tessa is facing a terrifying possibility: the ciderhouse she has fought to save may never have been legally hers at all. As two powerful families close ranks, Tessa digs into a twisted trail of corrected licenses, missing witness records, and old marriage documents that may have been used to move land for decades. The suspect list is packed with people who cannot afford the truth coming out: a controlling mother of the bride, a debt-ridden groom, a bitter ex-wife, a resentful officiant, a scandal-hungry genealogy blogger, and a polished lawyer who keeps insisting the problem is only a clerical mistake.

To catch a killer, Tessa will have to prove that in Sweetfern, a marriage certificate can be every bit as dangerous as a deed.