by Cleo Coyle
First published 2014
Clare Cosi decorates her coffee truck with a Jack and the Beanstalk theme for Fairy Tale Week in Central Park. Her ex-husband brings African coffee beans he claims have magical powers, and his eighty-year-old mother reads fortunes in the coffee grounds. Clare doubts the magic until she experiences a vision that leads her to discover a young model's corpse in the park woods. The police write off the death as a drug overdose, calling the victim their "sleeping beauty." Clare digs deeper and finds evidence pointing to murder instead of accidental death. Her investigation puts a killer on her trail and creates complications with her NYPD detective boyfriend. The case threatens to destroy her relationship and her safety. Clare must solve the murder quickly, or the magic beans may predict her own tragic fate.
Genres: romance, mystery, crime, fantasy, contemporary, adult-fiction
Vibes: atmospheric, charming, cozy-yet-suspenseful, fast-paced, whimsical-with-dark-undertones
Tropes: amateur-detective, found-family, love-triangle, magical-realism
Setting: Central Park, New York, Africa
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
416 pages · Hardcover · Berkley
Content warnings: death, drug-use, murder