Kirsten Weiss

When a contestant in the pumpkin pie contest is found crushed under an enormous pumpkin, Val Harris, the owner of Pie Town, wonders if this will be her last Halloween.

Val's new pies are foolproof-but not bulletproof. Old West ghost towns are as American as apple pie. So what better place to sponsor a pie-eating contest than the Bar X, a fake ghost town available for exclusive private events on the edge of Silicon Valley. Valentine Harris is providing the pies, hoping to boost business for her struggling Pie Town shop and become a regular supplier for the Bar X. But no sooner does she arrive in town than a stray...

When Maddie Kosloskis career flatlines, she retreats to her wine-country hometown for solace and cheap rent. Railroaded into managing the local paranormal museum, shes certain the rumors of its haunting are greatly exaggerated. But a new ghost may be on the loose. A fresh corpse in the museum embroils Maddie in murders past and present.

Maddie Kosloski is no fan of San Benedetto's Christmas Cow, a thirty-foot straw bovine that graces the town square every December. For one thing, the cow displaces her paranormal museum as the number one tourist attraction. Plus, every year, despite around-the-clock surveillance, the cow goes up in flames; and this yea one of the Christmas Cow guards has been found with an arrow in his chest.

When paranormal museum owner Maddie Kosloski stops by the artisan chocolate shop and finds the owner dead, she vows to catch the killer and silence the rattling of the haunted Mexican whisk in her Magic of Chocolate exhibit.