Felicity Koerber’s bean to bar chocolate shop on Galveston’s historic Strand is expanding, as it has become a gathering spot for the community, despite having been the scene of multiple murders. Artists she met while doing a chocolate sculpture are now working out of the shop. So when Felicity is invited to tea by an eccentric art collector, she’s intrigued, especially when she gets asked to pose for a portrait done with chocolate on chocolate. Only, where there is a murder the next day at the same historic house where the tea was held, one of Felicity’s artist friends becomes the main suspect.
When the killer threatens that unless Felicity unravels the murder, one of her two love interests will be the next victim, she finds herself unwittingly at the center of a puzzle with a Sherlock Holmes-obsessed murderer who wants to be the next Moriarty – and wants to cast Felicity as Sherlock.
Felicity starts finding unexpected connections between her friends and acquaintances and must deal with the idea that someone who knows her is a murderer. At the same time, she has to keep her business running, despite construction dust and unruly customers – and an unexpected order for thousands of truffles.
Satchmo the retired police-dog-turned-therapy dog returns to help her sniff out a few clues, and the kidnapping of Ruffles, the quirky artist’s cat, helps lead Felicity into the puzzle. Can Felicity solve it in time to protect the people she cares about from becoming additional victims?
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Let’s Get Creative! Art and the Bean to Bar Mysteries
Guest Post by Amber Royer
The title for my newest mystery, A Study in Chocolate, is obviously a play on the classic Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet. And yes, the literary references abound. But I also wanted to riff on the word study in the artistic sense.
In the book, an important character challenges Felicity to find a favorite artist after she admits she doesn’t have one. There’s a lot in this book about creativity, and appreciating art, and expressing yourself through different media (be it yarn, chocolate work, sculpting, painting, or writing). I think a lot of that aspect of the book was me riffing on how creativity – both writing and otherwise – fits into my own life.
I’ve never considered myself great at painting, but it’s still fun to experiment with a medium I’m not perfect at. I do consider myself to have an eye for photography. So I’ve converted a couple of my favorite chocolate-related photographs into paint-by numbers for y’all to work with.
Painting not your thing? Here’s a page where you can find all three images as puzzles you can assemble on your digital device, as well as several others related to the previous books.
Amber Royer writes the Chocoverse comic telenovela-style foodie-inspired space opera series and the Bean to Bar Mysteries. She is also the author of Story Like a Journalist: A Workbook for Novelists, which boils down her writing knowledge into an actionable plan involving over 100 worksheets to build a comprehensive story plan for your novel. She also teaches creative writing and is an author coach.
Amber and her husband live in the DFW Area, where you can often find them hiking or taking landscape/architecture/wildlife photographs. If you are very nice to Amber, she might make you cupcakes. Chocolate cupcakes, of course! Amber blogs about creative writing technique and all things chocolate.
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This is fun! And I did enjoy the art element of the book — especially painting with chocolate ON chocolate! thanks for the post.
Thanks for letting me talk about art in my books. Felicity has done a lot of self-discovery over the course of the series.
Thanks for the review on this. It was very interesting