A food critic drops dead mid-sip at a private tea tasting. The blend was hers. The grudge was public. And the detective thinks she did it.

Lila Hartwell has poured everything into Honeyleaf Tea Room – her savings, her grandmother’s recipes, and two years of stubborn belief that a tiny Cotswold village deserves great tea. So when her newly renovated shop hosts a grand reopening, complete with hand-blended Earl Grey and rosemary shortbread, she’s determined that everything will be perfect.

Then Gerald Ashworth walks through the door.

The celebrated food critic whose devastating review nearly destroyed Honeyleaf has come back for a second look. Lila grits her teeth, serves her best, and prays for a kinder verdict. Instead, she gets a corpse. Gerald collapses during the tasting, poisoned by a cup of her signature blend, and suddenly Lila isn’t just a shop owner – she’s the prime suspect.

With her business under siege, her staff rattled, and a sharp-eyed detective named Rowan Pierce asking pointed questions about her grudge against the dead man, Lila does the only thing she can think of: she investigates. Armed with her knowledge of tea blending, an eye for detail she can’t switch off, and the grudging support of her best friend Fern, Lila begins to untangle a case that is far more complicated than it appears.

Because Gerald wasn’t drinking from the right cup. The poison wasn’t meant for him at all. And the real target is still sitting at Lila’s table.

As Lila digs deeper – into forged reservations, missing tea tins, old rivalries, and a destroyed career that left someone with nothing to lose – she discovers that solving the murder means confronting the one thing she’s spent her whole life avoiding: the hard, direct, uncomfortable truth.

The Earl Grey Alibi is the first book in the Honeyleaf Tea Room Mysteries – a cozy mystery series set in the Cotswolds, featuring a tea-blending amateur sleuth, a cast of village regulars you’ll want to sit down and have a scone with, a will-they-won’t-they detective, and a ginger cat named Bramble who is not impressed by any of it. Perfect for fans of Joanne Fluke, Laura Childs, and anyone who believes that a good cup of tea can solve almost anything.

Includes recipes from Honeyleaf Tea Room and a reading group guide