Pelican Point Cozy Mystery Series
Welcome to Pelican Point, where the shrimp boils are legendary, the gossip is faster than Wi-Fi, and the secrets are piling up faster than Bandit’s stolen goods.
Sissy Belle Dawson came home looking for a fresh start. She inherited a leaky cottage, a raccoon with a theft problem, and a town that knew she was back before she’d finished unpacking. Then a dead man washed ashore.
Now she’s Pelican Point’s unofficial problem solver, armed with sharp instincts she can’t turn off, a trio of accomplices who cause almost as much trouble as they prevent, and one wildly unqualified animal sidekick.
Every book brings a new body, a fresh batch of suspects who’d be insulted if they weren’t included, and at least one spectacular disaster nobody saw coming. Maeve’s truck is still at the bottom of a fish pond. She brings it up daily. There will be collateral damage. There will be pie. There will be a raccoon on someone’s roof holding evidence in his mouth while the sheriff contemplates early retirement.
Perfect for fans of Jana DeLeon, Janet Evanovich, and laugh-out-loud cozy mysteries where the investigation goes sideways, the sidekicks steal the show, and the only thing sharper than the wit is the sleuth’s instincts.
She came home to fix a leaky cottage. Then a dead man washed up behind it.
Sissy Belle Dawson has been back in Pelican Point less than twenty-four hours when she finds local developer Craig Kinley facedown in the shallows behind her late aunt’s cottage. The sheriff calls it an accidental drowning. Sissy Belle would very much like to believe him.
Unfortunately, the dead man’s watch is forty feet from his body, one shoe tells a different story than the other, and Craig had been quietly buying up half the Pelican Point waterfront before somebody made sure he never came back from a boat ride. Then Bandit, Sissy Belle’s wildly unauthorized raccoon, steals a bag of evidence directly from a sheriff’s vehicle. Things deteriorate from there.
With her childhood best friend Maeve, professional gossip Loretta Poole, and Bandit contributing varying degrees of assistance, Sissy Belle starts asking questions nobody particularly wants answered. Soon she’s sorting through old grudges, suspicious real-estate deals, town secrets, and a growing list of people who had excellent reasons to want Craig Kinley gone.
Sissy Belle came home for a fresh start. Instead, she may have stumbled into murder.
Murder Washes Ashore is the first laugh-out-loud Pelican Point Cozy Mystery, packed with Lowcountry charm, sharp wit, eccentric neighbors, small-town secrets, and one raccoon with absolutely no respect for chain of custody.
The victim was eighty-four. The murder weapon is missing. And the raccoon just delivered the evidence in a tub of melted butter.
Sissy Belle Dawson came to Pelican Point, South Carolina, for a fresh start, a little peace and quiet, and the chance to fix up her late Aunt Odette’s cottage. Instead, she inherited a house that needs everything, a town where everybody knows everybody’s business, and a raccoon named Bandit who has absolutely no respect for private property.
Especially when that property sparkles.
When eighty-four-year-old Agnes Gallagher is found dead at the bottom of her back stairs, the sheriff has plenty of questions. Her jewelry is missing, her family has secrets, and half the town seems to know something the other half doesn't.
Then Bandit crashes the First Baptist oyster roast carrying a valuable garnet brooch that belonged to the dead woman.
A brooch he stole months ago.
A brooch Sissy Belle has been keeping in her aunt’s button crock.
And just like that, Pelican Point’s favorite raccoon has made his human the prime suspect in a murder investigation.
Now the church ladies are whispering, the casseroles have stopped coming, and Sheriff Cole Mercer wants answers Sissy Belle doesn't have. Clearing her name means untangling a mess of family grudges, missing jewels, suspicious boat business, and secrets that have been hiding in plain sight along the waterfront.
With her sharp-tongued best friend Maeve, the formidable Miss Loretta, and one sticky-fingered raccoon who keeps finding things nobody wants found, Sissy Belle is determined to uncover the truth.
But in a town where everybody knows your business, the most dangerous secrets are the ones nobody talks about.
Welcome back to Pelican Point, where the gossip travels faster than the tide, the church ladies never forget a scandal, and the raccoon is definitely going to do it again.
A Raccoon Made Me Do It is a funny, feel-good Southern coastal cozy mystery filled with small-town secrets, quirky neighbors, a mischievous raccoon, and a clever amateur sleuth. No graphic violence, no explicit language, and plenty of Southern charm.
Coming in February!
Amazon
She came home for a fresh start. The raccoon was already there.
At forty-two, Sissy Belle Dawson has a plan for everything. Then she gets fired from the job she’s had for twenty years, learns her aunt Odette has died, and inherits a leaky cottage nine hundred miles away in Pelican Point, South Carolina. So Sissy Belle does the sensible thing. She sells almost everything she owns, packs the rest into her car, and heads home to figure out what comes next. The trip does not go smoothly. There’s an accidental detour through a pecan orchard, a motel with questionable air-conditioning, and a raccoon who breaks into her car, eats her breakfast, and shreds her severance agreement into eleven pieces.
Sissy Belle assumes that fulfills her lifetime raccoon quota. She is incorrect. Waiting at Odette’s cottage are her childhood best friend Maeve, neighbor Loretta Poole, thirteen chairs of varying structural integrity, a coconut cream pie, and Bandit, Pelican Point’s resident thief, repeat offender, and apparently part of the property. Bandit has a collection of stolen silverware under the porch, an alarming understanding of screen doors, and absolutely no intention of leaving.
Sissy Belle would like to make one thing perfectly clear: She did not get a raccoon. She inherited a cottage. The raccoon was an existing condition.
Nobody in Pelican Point believes her.
How Sissy Belle Got a Raccoon is the laugh-out-loud prequel to the Pelican Point Cozy Mysteries, featuring small-town gossip, Lowcountry charm, old friends, questionable wildlife, and the beginning of one extremely unauthorized partnership. And this is all before the first body washes ashore.
Halloween in Pelican Point was supposed to be spooky. Nobody ordered an actual body.
Sissy Belle Dawson has finally settled into life in Pelican Point. Her late aunt’s cottage is slowly becoming a home, her childhood friendships are finding their footing again, and the town has mostly stopped introducing her as the woman who found a dead body. They’ve gone back to calling her the woman with the raccoon. Progress. Then Halloween arrives.
The morning after Pelican Point’s haunted-house festival, a woman is found dead inside the abandoned fish shed. Sissy Belle recognizes her immediately. The night before, the stranger had been frightened, evasive, and very interested in local politician Grant Phelan. There’s just one problem. The dead woman wasn’t who she claimed to be.
As Sissy Belle, Maeve, and Loretta begin unraveling her real identity, they uncover a secret Pelican Point has been politely avoiding for nearly forty years, one tied to an old political dynasty, a vanished young woman, and a family determined to control which version of its history survives.
Meanwhile, Bandit has acquired an old brass key that may belong to the dead woman, the murder weapon has disappeared, somebody has been digging through town records, and practically everyone involved seems to know one carefully edited piece of the truth.
In Pelican Point, secrets have a long shelf life. Unfortunately for the killer, so does the gossip.
Something Wicked Washes In is the second laugh-out-loud Pelican Point Cozy Mystery, packed with Lowcountry charm, Halloween chaos, eccentric neighbors, decades-old secrets, sharp wit, and one raccoon who continues to treat chain of custody as more of a suggestion.
She wanted a quiet Christmas. Pelican Point had other plans.
Sissy Belle Dawson has one goal for December: avoid the holidays. No tree. No tinsel. No festive obligations. And absolutely no strangers wandering through Aunt Odette’s half-renovated cottage. Then Miss Loretta Poole puts the house on Pelican Point’s Christmas Home Tour without asking.
Suddenly Sissy Belle’s quiet December is buried beneath cedar garlands, opinionated neighbors, sarcastic sugar cookies, and Bandit, the wildly unauthorized raccoon who has developed a particular taste for anything iced with MERRY ENOUGH.
But the morning after the tour, the Christmas cheer takes a decidedly less festive turn. The church’s green lockbox has disappeared from a locked office, taking thousands of dollars meant for the town’s Christmas toy drive with it. There’s no broken window, no forced door, and far too many people with access. A photographer is hiding pictures. A proud father desperately needs money. One of Pelican Point’s most respectable residents isn’t telling the truth. And a suspicious trail of glitter, fir needles, missing linens, and misplaced Christmas decorations seems to lead everywhere at once.
With Maeve supplying common sense, Loretta supplying information nobody asked her to obtain, and Bandit stealing enough evidence-adjacent objects to complicate matters considerably, Sissy Belle starts retracing the Christmas tour before someone innocent gets wrapped up as the perfect suspect.
Because in Pelican Point, even Christmas comes with secrets. And this year, something besides a creature is stirring.
Coming Summer 2027!
Ray Nesmith believed in doing everything twice. Two thermoses. Two fishing knives. Two cotter pins holding his boat's steering together. So how did both pins disappear before his final trip?
Spring has arrived in Pelican Point, South Carolina, bringing warm breezes, biting no-see-ums, and another mystery Sissy Belle Dawson would very much prefer to avoid.
She's finally settling into life in her late aunt's cottage, helping her best friend Maeve at Graves Marina, and attempting to convince the townspeople that Bandit, the neighborhood's most notorious raccoon, is an innocent woodland creature.
Nobody's buying that last part.
When local crabber Ray Nesmith disappears on a morning so calm the water looks like glass, everyone assumes a terrible boating accident. His skiff is found overturned near the south bar, and the close-knit waterfront community gathers to mourn a man who knew every creek, channel, and sandbar along the coast.
But Ray was meticulous about his boat. And when the wreckage comes home, something about his steering doesn't add up.
Neither do the strange, handmade fishing lures Bandit has been collecting.
As Sissy Belle and Maeve start asking questions, they uncover suspicious fishing activity, waterfront rivalries, old debts, and secrets that certain people would do almost anything to keep submerged. Meanwhile, Miss Loretta has opinions about absolutely everything, the church ladies are keeping score, and Bandit continues his one-raccoon crime spree against anything that isn't nailed down.
The deeper Sissy Belle digs, the more she realizes Ray may have discovered something dangerous before his final voyage.
And somebody made certain he wouldn't come back to tell anyone.
Welcome back to Pelican Point, where the sweet tea is strong, the gossip runs deep, and even on the calmest water, murder can be lurking just beneath the surface.
Dead Calm and Collected is a charming Southern coastal cozy mystery featuring a clever amateur sleuth, lifelong friendships, small-town secrets, a delightfully troublesome raccoon, and a mystery with plenty of twists. No graphic violence, no explicit language, and a satisfying conclusion.
Coming in April 2027!
Coming Winter 2027!
Coming Fall 2027!