Murder at Velvet Cocoa: A Cozy Mystery Featuring a Poisoned Bite and a Killer with a Secret

She built a life from scratch. Someone just poisoned it.

Darby Quinn traded a prestigious Manhattan law career for hand-rolled truffles and the quiet streets of Birch Hollow, Vermont. Three years later, Velvet Cocoa—her meticulously run chocolate shop—is everything she has: proof that a woman who once weaponized language in corporate boardrooms can build something beautiful, honest, and hers.

Then Julian Thorpe walks in. The most feared food critic in America. A man whose reviews have bankrupted restaurants and destroyed careers. He reaches for the darkest truffle on the tray, takes a single bite—and collapses on her pine floor.
The poison was in one truffle. Not the batch. One. And it was placed there during the exact seven minutes Darby stepped away to sign for a delivery.

Now her shop is a crime scene, her customers are canceling, and someone in this picture-perfect ski town is a killer.

With her OCD spiraling and her livelihood hanging by a thread, Darby does what twelve years of corporate law trained her to do: she builds a case. Assisted by Bev—her seventy-two-year-old shop assistant who moderates the town’s most explosive Facebook group—and Sam, the quiet carpenter whose steady hands and painful past hide a gentleness she wasn’t expecting, Darby works to reconstruct the tasting night minute by minute.

But every suspect has a secret worth protecting. And when a second murder strikes and a melted truffle appears on Darby’s kitchen table, the killer’s message is clear: stop looking, or you’re next.

She’s not going to stop.

Murder at Velvet Cocoa is a full-length cozy mystery set in a snow-covered Vermont village during ski season. It features a compelling amateur sleuth with OCD portrayed with depth and nuance, a slow-burn romance built on mutual vulnerability, a locked-circle mystery with fair-play clues, and a heartbreaking villain reveal that asks: Who gets to start over—and what happens when the foundation of a new life is a lie?

Perfect for readers who love:
• Richly atmospheric small-town settings with cozy charm and real tension
• Amateur sleuths who are smart, flawed, and impossible not to root for
• Slow-burn romance that never overshadows the mystery
• A carefully constructed whodunit with clues hidden in plain sight
• Themes of reinvention, authenticity, trust, and second chances
• Chocolate. So much chocolate.