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.
Coming in 2027!
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 in 2027!
Coming in 2027!
Coming November 2027!
Coming in 2027!