Culinary Mysteries Books in Order
Part ofJosi Kilpack Books in OrderExplore Josi Kilpack's Culinary Mysteries in order, with Sadie Hoffmiller summaries, reading order, series background, and easy help on where to start.
Last updated: July 2, 2026
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Publication Order
13 books
English Trifle
by Josi Kilpack
2009
A holiday trip to an English estate turns grim when Sadie and her daughter find a dead body in the sitting room, only for it to vanish. Stranded at the manor, Sadie starts asking questions nobody seems eager to answer.
Lemon Tart
by Josi Kilpack
2009
When Sadie Hoffmiller's neighbor is murdered and her toddler son vanishes, Sadie cannot sit back and watch the police chase the wrong people. She bakes, snoops, and blunders her way into a dangerous search for the truth.
Devil's Food Cake
by Josi Kilpack
2010
Sadie is helping with a library fundraiser when a bestselling author's manager dies on stage. Brushed aside by police, she follows a trail of grudges and buried history that grows darker by the minute.
Key Lime Pie
by Josi Kilpack
2010
Sadie follows her friend Eric to Miami after news arrives about his missing daughter. What begins as support turns into a messy case involving forged documents, broken relationships, and questions about where Sadie's heart really belongs.
Blackberry Crumble
by Josi Kilpack
2011
After unwanted publicity at home, Sadie takes her first paid case and heads to Portland. Her client wants answers about her father's death, and Sadie soon finds a tangle of family secrets, greed, and old resentments.
Pumpkin Roll
by Josi Kilpack
2011
A fall trip to Boston with Pete should be all pumpkins, grandchildren, and cozy recipes. Instead Sadie gets pulled into a creepy neighborhood mystery when the boys across the street insist their eccentric neighbor is a witch.
Banana Split
by Josi Kilpack
2012
Sadie escapes to Kauai hoping rest will calm her rising panic attacks. Then a snorkeling trip ends with a corpse, and a grieving boy's plea draws her into one of her most personal investigations yet.
Tres Leches Cupcakes
by Josi Kilpack
2012
Trying to stay safe, Sadie goes undercover at an archaeological dig in New Mexico. Murders, missing artifacts, and the black market in antiquities soon make her temporary hiding place feel anything but secure.
Baked Alaska
by Josi Kilpack
2013
Sadie boards a cruise looking forward to family time, wedding plans, and a little luxury. But her son is hiding something, and when a fellow passenger collapses, the voyage turns into another sea bound mystery.
Rocky Road
by Josi Kilpack
2013
A girls' weekend in St. George is supposed to mean shopping and a fundraiser, not detective work. But when Sadie starts asking about a missing doctor, she uncovers a trail of money, motives, and carefully polished lies.
Fortune Cookie
by Josi Kilpack
2014
Weeks before her wedding, Sadie receives a letter that sends her to San Francisco and back into the life of the sister she has not seen in years. Reconnection quickly turns dangerous when murder and old secrets surface.
Wedding Cake
by Josi Kilpack
2014
Sadie wants her wedding to Pete to be quiet, happy, and drama free. Instead anonymous threats turn the final days before the ceremony into a race to stop an enemy who has been closing in for years.
The Candy Cane Caper
by Josi Kilpack
2019
Christmas brings Sadie back to sleuthing when a friend's priceless heirloom ornaments vanish from a care facility. Between holiday chaos and family gatherings, she has to solve the theft before a final cherished tradition is lost.
Series background & context
The Culinary Mysteries revolve around Sadie Hoffmiller, a home cook and amateur sleuth whose best qualities are also the ones that get her into trouble. She is generous, nosy, loyal, stubborn, and almost physically incapable of leaving a mystery alone once it lands in her kitchen. What starts in Lemon Tart as one murder next door grows into a long-running cozy series where Sadie keeps finding herself in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.
That is the fun of it.
These books are mysteries first, but food is never just decoration. Every installment is built around a dessert title, and Sadie's cooking is part of how she connects with people, calms herself, and sometimes gets answers that no police interview would ever uncover. Recipes appear throughout the series, so readers who like their crime fiction with an extra domestic layer usually feel right at home here. The tone stays approachable even when the stakes get serious.
The setting also keeps moving. Sadie starts on familiar ground, but the series does not stay still for long. Cases take her from Colorado to an English manor, Miami, Portland, Boston, Kauai, Santa Fe, and even a cruise ship. That travel gives each book its own flavor while still keeping the core appeal the same. Sadie asks one question too many, notices something she was not supposed to notice, and then has to keep going until the truth comes out.
Across the series, there is a gentle ongoing arc in Sadie's personal life as well. Her relationships with her grown children matter. So does her sometimes messy, sometimes sweet romantic life, especially once Pete Cunningham becomes a steady presence. Early books work well as individual cozies, but by the middle and later volumes there is more carryover in Sadie's emotional life and in the threats that follow her from one case to the next. If you like to watch a character grow while the mysteries keep coming, reading in order is worth it.
The overall feel is cozy, but not flimsy. There is humor, small-town gossip, family friction, a little romance, and plenty of baking, but Kilpack also lets the crimes have real consequences. Books like Pumpkin Roll, Banana Split, Tres Leches Cupcakes, and Wedding Cake show how the series slowly widens from neighborhood curiosity into something more connected and more dangerous. Then The Candy Cane Caper returns to Sadie for one more holiday mystery.
If you want a mystery series with recipes, a memorable amateur sleuth, and a lot of heart, this is probably the place to start. Sadie may not mean to investigate, but once she gets involved, she is hard to stop.
Edited by
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