Bake, borrow, and steal

Juliet ("Jules") Montague Capshaw works at Torte, her family's bakery in Ashland, Oregon, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She has just landed the biggest job of her career, catering the gala for the Southern Oregon Museum of Art's new exhibit of a recently discovered Shakespeare manuscript. Unfortunately, the job also involves creating a giant desk made out of chocolate, and she's no chocolatier. Despite that, everything is going well for Jules and her crew until a man is attacked at the gala, another man dies, and the manuscript disappears, leaving the museum's director as the chief suspect. At the request of the director's niece, Jules investigates, ultimately uncovering a sting operation. The charming, Elizabethan-themed Ashland is vividly described, and the details of baking and Shakespeare's life and work frame the story, as Jules and her husband, Carlos, reconnect after Carlos' secret tore them apart for almost three years. Fans of Diane Mott Davidson, Joanne Fluke, and Sarah Graves will relish the latest in Alexander's Bakeshop Mystery series, following Mocha, She Wrote (2021).