Catering Hall Mystery (Maria DiRico) Books in Order

The Catering Hall mysteries are built on a smart cozy premise: every book starts with a celebration, and celebrations are perfect places for grudges to boil over. The series opens in Here Comes the Body with Mia Carina returning to Astoria, Queens, after her philandering husband's supposed death at sea. Back home, she lives with her nonna and oversized cat Doorstop, and starts helping run her family's business, Belle View Banquet Manor.

It is not the quiet reset she had in mind.

Belle View hosts weddings, bachelor parties, baby showers, holiday events, and the occasional wildly bad idea. That means the series always has a built-in crowd, built-in stress, and a reason for strangers and relatives to collide in public. When murder turns up, Mia usually has a practical reason to get involved, because the victim, the suspect list, or the gossip almost always lands close to home.

Home is complicated. Mia's father has a reputation that keeps the police interested, even when he is trying to run a legitimate business. Friends, relatives, and long-running neighborhood connections all feed the plot, and Astoria itself feels less like a backdrop than part of the cast. The planes overhead, the old family stories, the rivalry between event spaces, and the way everyone seems to know someone who knows someone all give the books their Queens texture.

Mia is a good guide through that world because she is funny, capable, and a little impatient with nonsense. She is rebuilding after a bad marriage, trying to figure out what adulthood looks like the second time around, and learning that going back home does not mean going backward. Across the series, her relationship with Shane adds a steady romantic thread, while the question of what really happened to her ex-husband keeps the longer personal arc moving.

Everything is personal in Astoria.

Each book tweaks the formula just enough to keep it fresh. One case may revolve around a bachelor party and a cake, another around competing baby showers, Christmas overload, reality TV nonsense, or a wedding expo gone wrong. The recurring setting ties everything together, but the event business gives the mysteries room to move from slapstick to heartfelt family drama without losing the cozy feel. That is what gives these books their charm. They are cozy mysteries, but not sleepy ones. The energy comes from family chatter, party logistics, neighborhood pride, and the low-level panic of trying to keep a business running while a killer is on the loose. If you like food, banter, and a heroine who has to juggle centerpieces, suspects, and relatives in the same afternoon, this series is easy to settle into.