The Great Christmas Jelly Cookie Hunt

By Rena Leith

For some women, having a gorgeous Irishman come for Christmas is like getting an unexpected gift. For Gina St. Ives, it was just another complication. Facing the loss of the family homestead, she wants to have a traditional holiday for the sake of little sister Emma. That includes finding a lost cookie recipe from their childhood.

Donal O'Brien is dismayed to find himself in the midst of sibling discord. Despite her brusqueness, Gina attracts him. And Emma is a kindred soul who believes in the supernatural. When strange things start happening, the St. Ives sisters and their handsome house guest have a mystery to solve. Is Nana's missing recipe the answer?

• Language: Unknown
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Oct 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781509237678

Rena Leith

I currently live in Cape May County in New Jersey after spending years in the San Francisco Bay Area with my Maine Coon cats Sierra and Ginger. I attended Clarion Writers Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy at Michigan State University and sold a story I wrote there to Damon Knight for The Clarion Awards anthology. I wrote technical manuals in Silicon Valley and also published several poems and science articles as well as a couple of chapters in Research & Professional Resources in Children’s Literature: Piecing a Patchwork Quilt. I’ve also taught English in high school and community colleges.

Book preview

May I help you, too? Donal asked hesitantly. I used to help my gran bake.

Gina paused to think. I have enough ingredients here to make the gingerbread people. You could help decorate them. A slow smile lit her face.

Donal smiled back, his eyes crinkling. People? I thought they were men.

Don’t be so sexist! Gina teased as she dug some cookie cutters out of a deep drawer and laid them out on the counter.

Donal poked around among the shiny metal forms. You’re right. I’ve never seen a gingerbread woman before.

You will today. Emma can be very creative with her designs. Gina tilted her chin up. I wonder if you can match her.

Is that a challenge? He raised an eyebrow.

Can you rise to it?

Oh ho! Surely, you’ve heard of the prowess of Irishmen in battle! He raised a cookie cutter as if it were a sword.

Allow me to help you into your armor. Gina slipped a flouncy pinafore-style apron over his head and tied it behind him. This’ll help you slay the dragon. She giggled. You look lovely!

He put one arm across his waist and bowed to her. Yer servant, milady.

The Cass Peake Cozy Mysteries by Rena Leith

Murder Beach

Coastal Corpse

The

Great Christmas Jelly Cookie

Hunt

by

Rena Leith

Christmas Cookies Series

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

The Great Christmas Jelly Cookie Hunt

COPYRIGHT © 2021 by Rena Leith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Debbie Taylor

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Edition, 2021

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-3767-8

Christmas Cookies Series

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

For Max and Emma

The Great Christmas Jelly Cookie Hunt

Where is it? Gina’s voice rose in frustration.

Every one of Nana’s cookbooks lay splayed out on the green granite kitchen counter in front of her.

How should I know? Her younger sister Emma jammed a glass into the ice and water dispenser in the front of the stainless-steel fridge.

For a few seconds, Gina’s rant was drowned out by crushing ice. She ground her teeth and waited for the noise to stop. You cooked with her all the time when she was alive.

That’s because she couldn’t read the small print anymore. Emma took a long swig. Berating me won’t make the recipe magically appear.

Gina sighed. Emma had adored her older sister when she was young and had followed Gina around like a puppy. Those days were long gone.

That’s my point. If you read all her recipes to her, you should either know it by heart or, at the very least, know where the recipe for her old-fashioned jelly cookies is.

Emma shrugged. Beats me. She put her headset on and danced out of the room, her long chestnut hair swinging out behind her.

Gina swore. Kid sisters! Where could it be? It wasn’t just socks that vanished in this house. She sighed and flipped through the cookbooks, hoping Nana had stuck the recipe between the pages. No such luck. Where else could she look? Weren’t there some old recipe boxes somewhere?

Elliot wouldn’t have a clue. Their brother should be arriving soon for Christmas. After a cursory search through the remaining cabinets and shelves in the kitchen, Gina headed up to the attic. Not her favorite place in the house, but Emma had enjoyed playing up there amid all the discarded bits and pieces of Nana’s life.

The house in Greenwich, New Jersey, which the siblings had inherited six months ago after Nana slipped away peacefully in her sleep on a warm summer night, was a squat 1920s Arts and Crafts house, once the color of a fine burgundy, with white trim. Now, with Nana’s death, it was as though the life had left the little house, which had taken on a rusty brownish look. Even the white trim had gone ecru. The overgrown garden in the backyard surrounded a murky pond that seemed to be partially frozen. Gina often wondered if anything lived in it. She’d spent many happy hours out there as a child, sitting among the beautiful pastel peonies