Mists, Mycelium & Murder: A Witchy Garden Cozy Mystery
About Mists, Mycelium & Murder: A Witchy Garden Cozy Mystery
Briarhaven loves a tidy ending. Ivy Marlowe’s problem is she keeps dragging the ugly truth into the light. Fresh off the wreckage of her arrest, Ivy is back at Moonroot Conservatory on a leash of legal restrictions, public suspicion, and officials who act polite while sharpening paperwork.
Then a new eco-project meant to clean floodwater becomes the town’s next obsession: a mushroom lab that promises safer water, smarter systems, and a future that looks good in grant photos. It also becomes a crime scene. A renowned climate scientist is found dead inside the lab’s misty grow rooms, and the scene is staged like an occult warning, complete with symbols designed to spark fear.
Briarhaven turns feral on schedule. People want someone to blame. They already have Ivy’s name ready.
Verdant Mirror steps in with soothing language about safety and “biosecurity,” while quietly tightening its grip on permits, storm relief, and who gets protected when weather turns violent. Ivy knows what the town refuses to admit: panic is profitable. If you can control the story, you can control the money, the locks, the cameras, and the rules everyone lives under.
With Mina and Otis holding the line beside her, Cal Hart fighting for scraps of integrity inside a compromised system, and Saffron, the one-eyed black cat who shows up exactly where secrets collect, Ivy follows the real trail. It runs under Briarhaven itself through a hidden network of tunnels and grow corridors where mycelium spreads like a living map. Everything connects.
And someone is poisoning the roots on purpose. When the killer triggers a “bio-scare” lockdown and seals the exits, Ivy has one way out: reveal a truth that will shatter Briarhaven’s comfort. The town’s beloved benefactor is not a savior.
He is a predator. And just when Ivy thinks she can breathe, the case delivers the hit she has been dreading. Proof the dead scientist was contacted two days before the murder by someone using Lark’s trail.
Which means Lark is alive. Close.