To Have and to Kill (Piper Donovan Series #1)

by Mary Jane Clark

Overview

“Clark has perfected the suspense novel.”
—Booklist

New York Times bestselling author and mystery writer par excellence, Mary Jane Clark kicks off her delicious new Wedding Cake mystery series with To Have and To Kill. A tasty departure from her thrillers featuring KEY News television anchor Eliza Blake (Dying for Mercy, It Only Takes a Moment), To Have and To Kill introduces readers to actress-turned-wedding cake decorator Piper Donovan, who discovers that the heat in the pastry kitchen can be hotter—and deadlier—that she ever imagined…and that her creative new enterprise is anything but a piece of cake. Foodies and fans of cable TV’s Amazing Wedding Cakes, as well as Faye Kellerman, Jayne Anne Krentz, and Diana Mott Davidson readers are going to eat this one up!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062017666
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	12/28/2010
Series:	Piper Donovan Series , #1
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	323
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Like Piper Donovan, New York Times bestselling author Mary Jane Clark has a mother who made customized cakes for the neighborhood kids when Mary Jane was growing up. After a career at CBS News and writing twelve media thrillers, the author is currently taking cake-decorating classes herself, having fun as she works on her baking skills and concocts her next novel.

Editorial Reviews

She understands how to hang on to her audience. Her characters are the sorts with whom many readers identify.” — USA Today

The number of characters with motive for murder keeps you guessing,and the action-packed short chapters keep the story moving. You’ll also learn a little about cake decorating, and there’s a sweet surprise at the end. — Library Journal

From the Publisher

She understands how to hang on to her audience. Her characters are the sorts with whom many readers identify.

USA Today

She understands how to hang on to her audience. Her characters are the sorts with whom many readers identify.

USA Today

Clark abandons long-suffering TV newscaster Eliza Blake (Dying for Mercy, 2009, etc.) to launch her new Wedding Cake Mystery series with this glossy tale of premarital homicide.

Glenna Brooks and Piper Donovan have both appeared on the soap opera A Little Rain Must Fall, but that's where the similarity ends. Glenna, continuing as the show's most popular star, is about to marry Casey Walden, a teacher at the Metropolitan School for Girls, which her daughter attends; Piper, who's been virtually unemployed since her character was killed off, is moving back in with her parents. Since everything about Glenna's wedding has to be perfect, she wants famous photographer Martha Killeen to snap the pictures and Piper's mother Terri, who owns The Icing on the Cupcake, to make the cake. But the course of true love doesn't run smooth, and murder interrupts a high-profile charity auction at which the cast has gathered to benefit the school. Was the killer Glenna's embittered ex-con husband Phillip? Casey's brother Arthur, a jeweler who's not about to share the proceeds of the family business? Casey's yearning ex-girlfriend Jessie Terhune, an opportunistic drama teacher? Soap-opera king Quent Raynor, scheming for a coup that will publicize his show's move to Los Angeles? Or Martha herself, whose financial woes have made her desperate for the sort of comeback she could achieve by photographing a murder in progress?

Rated PG-13 for brief violence. But no sex, no language, no detection—not even Piper's FBI friend Jack Lombardi does himself proud—and only a single recipe, which you can find on dozens of online sites.

Kirkus Reviews