Death By Chocolate Mysteries Books in Order

The Death by Chocolate books bring Sarah Graves back to Eastport, Maine, but with a different kind of business at the center. Instead of focusing on Jake Tiptree's endless home repairs, this spin-off follows Jake and her best friend Ellie White as co-owners of the Chocolate Moose, a waterfront bakery known for rich desserts and small-town comfort. In Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake, the shop is just getting started. Naturally, a body turns up before the business can settle in.

That is the basic pleasure of the series. Jake and Ellie are still practical, funny, and stubborn, but the daily work now involves baking, catering, and keeping a local shop alive through storms, festivals, weddings, and tourist season. Each book ties its mystery to some Eastport event, like a Fourth of July rush, a wedding, a pirate festival, a cookie contest, or an arts fair. The bakery gives the series an easy rhythm and a strong sense of community.

This is Eastport with chocolate on top.

The friendship between Jake and Ellie is still the engine. Ellie brings family recipes, Jake brings grit, and both bring the habit of asking questions when the police settle too fast on the obvious suspect. Many of the cases start close to home. A victim dies in the bakery kitchen. A friend is jailed. A rival shop owner turns up dead. Someone at a catered party goes over a cliff. Because the women are so tied into the town, every investigation feels personal from the start.

The tone is cozy, but it still has bite. Graves likes trapped-house situations, bad weather, old grudges, and people who look harmless until they do not. Later books also widen the circle around the Chocolate Moose, bringing in more family life and, at times, familiar faces from Graves's other Maine fiction. The result is a series that feels warm and lived-in without becoming too soft.

Food matters here, but not in a fussy way. The desserts are tempting, the shop setting is welcoming, and the books usually include a recipe, yet the heart of the series is still mystery. Jake and Ellie are not celebrity bakers or perfect amateurs. They are working women running a business, protecting their people, and trying to stay one step ahead of trouble.

If you want Eastport with less drywall dust and more cocoa, this is the place to start. Reading from Death by Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake onward lets you watch the Chocolate Moose grow while the murders, rivalries, and seasonal chaos keep piling up around it. These books are lighter on renovation than Home Repair Is Homicide, but they keep the same mix of Maine atmosphere, loyal friendship, and danger arriving right on the doorstep.