Enchanted coffee, opinionated cats, and a past that refuses to stay behind me.
Most people in Larkspur Valley know me as the quiet woman who runs the cat café on Main Street. I remember your order, I keep the fire going, and I’ll talk you into adopting a cat before you finish your latte. That’s all anyone needs to know. Quiet is safe.
What they don’t know is that I’m a witch. I left my coven in the middle of the night and kept running until I landed in a little Colorado mountain town I couldn’t seem to leave. Something about this valley pulled at me the first day I saw it. It still does.
So I opened The Cozy Purrch. Dark wood, a stone fireplace, the hiss of the espresso machine, and cats draped over every chair, shelf, and windowsill that will hold them. My herbal lattes do a little more than taste good. Chamomile for the customer carrying more than she’ll admit. Lavender for the one who hasn’t slept in a week. Nobody has to know why they feel better when they leave.
I can also hear my cats. All of them, all the time. Gus mostly complains. The rest have opinions about everything from my love life to my detective work, and not one of them has ever kept an opinion to himself.
I came here to hide. I didn’t plan on finding a body. I didn’t plan on a sheriff who drinks my coffee every morning and notices more than I’d like. And I definitely didn’t plan on friends. Flo and her pastries. Thursday crochet circle. Friday game nights at the comic shop. People who show up when things go wrong, whether I ask them to or not.
Every time trouble finds Larkspur Valley, I have a choice. Keep my head down and my magic hidden, or use what I am to protect the people who’ve become my home. Every time I choose them, I let a little more of myself be seen.
And every time, I wonder who else is watching.
Because the coven I left behind hasn’t forgotten me. And Larkspur Valley has secrets of its own.
Perfect for readers who love:
- A witch in hiding who’s slowly learning she doesn’t have to do everything alone
- A cozy mountain cat café with a stone fireplace and a pastry case
- Cats with opinions, attitude, and very strong feelings about breakfast
- Small-town friendships, game nights, and a crochet circle that hears everything
- Gentle magic brewed into every cup
- A series-long mystery that rewards readers who start at the beginning
Start with Purrcolated Poison, and take them in order. The cats insist.
~ Alexis Belrose
Purr-colated Poison
A killer brew with a touch of magic.
Alexis Belrose has spent the past year building a quiet life in Larkspur Valley, Colorado, running The Cozy Purrch, a mountain cat café where she serves specialty drinks and finds homes for rescued cats. It’s the perfect place to hide from a dangerous past and the coven she fled. It also helps that nobody knows she’s a witch who can talk to cats.
Then her dear friend Hazel is found dead in the alley behind the café, staged to look like an accident. Alexis knows better. This was murder, and her cats saw it happen.
The problem? She can’t exactly tell Sheriff Iris Scott that her grumpy black and white cat Gus can identify the killer by scent. So Alexis starts digging on her own, with her cats as covert operatives, into a tangle of small-town secrets, bitter rivalries, and old grudges.
When threatening notes and break-ins follow, it’s clear someone wants her to stop asking questions. To protect the life and the community she’s come to love, Alexis may have to use the very magic she’s spent years hiding.
Purr-colated Poison is the first book in The Cozy Purrch Café Mysteries.
Catastrophic Brew
A cat-astrophic blend of murder and magic.
After months of searching, Alexis Belrose’s best friend Lily finally walks through the door of The Cozy Purrch. Lily escaped their dangerous former coven too, and with her settling into Larkspur Valley and working at the café, Alexis has someone who understands her secrets for the first time in years.
Then Founder’s Day turns to chaos. A priceless family heirloom vanishes from Florence Hendry’s celebration, and one of Florence’s cats saw the thief in action. What starts as a simple theft takes a deadly turn when one of the suspects is found murdered.
As Alexis and Lily dig into founding family feuds and grudges that span generations, Alexis has to keep her cover intact under the sheriff’s watchful eye, all while two very different men compete for her attention. Meanwhile, young Ella Hendry is showing signs of magic, and Alexis and Lily quietly begin building something new: a coven based on protection and love instead of power and control.
But far away, someone with dangerous magic has finally picked up Alexis’s trail. While she’s hunting a killer, she’s also being hunted.
Catastrophic Brew is the second book in The Cozy Purrch Café Mysteries.
Claws at the Falls
A dead body at the falls. A stranger asking too many questions. And a secret worth killing for.
When travel writer Grant Granger is found murdered near frozen Aspen Falls, Alexis Belrose knows it was no accident. Grant was a regular at The Cozy Purrch, always friendly and always guarded. Now dangerous strangers have descended on Larkspur Valley, searching for something he hid before he died.
With her apartment ransacked and threats closing in, Alexis has to find the truth before the killer strikes again. But she isn’t the only one with secrets. Park ranger Atticus Monroe is hearing things he shouldn’t, and Alexis may be the only person who understands why.
Between a love triangle that’s finally reached its breaking point and the magic she’s still trying to keep hidden, Alexis has never had more to lose.
In Larkspur Valley, the snow hides more than buried treasure.
Claws at the Falls is the third book in The Cozy Purrch Café Mysteries.
The Purr-loined Letter
A stolen manuscript. A silenced witness. And a past that refuses to stay buried.
When a priceless botanical manuscript vanishes from the Larkspur Valley Library, it looks like a professional job, meticulously planned. Then Bobbie Barlow, the librarian who witnessed the break-in, turns up dead, and Alexis Belrose can’t let her become a quiet death and a cold case file.
The trail leads into the library’s shadowy history, a web of stolen artifacts, forged replacements, and rivalries that reach back to the town’s founding families. The suspects include a pair of shady out-of-towners with a private deal in the works, a silver-haired board member with a razor tongue, and two women from Alexis’s past who have followed her all the way to Colorado.
With her opinionated cats offering commentary she didn’t ask for, Alexis races to untangle two threats at once. One could cost her her life. The other could cost her the careful solitude she’s wrapped around herself like armor.
And when the case is closed, a quiet evening at the café and a conversation she can’t put off any longer may change everything.
The Purrloined Letter is the fourth book in The Cozy Purrch Café Mysteries.
Fur-gotten Secrets
Everyone in Larkspur Valley is keeping a secret. Some were never meant to stay buried.
When Brenda Chapman is found at the bottom of the Elk Point Trail, the whole town calls it a terrible accident. Then her grieving son shows up at The Cozy Purrch with his mother’s two cats and nowhere else to turn, because the sheriff thought of Alexis.
The moment Brenda’s cats settle in, Alexis Belrose knows something is wrong. Her own cats sense it first: a strange chemical scent on a collar and an unease none of them can explain. Whatever Brenda left behind followed her cats through the café door, and someone is already searching for it.
The thread leads into the town’s respected Wilderness Foundation, a trail of money that doesn’t add up, and a growing certainty that Brenda’s fall was no accident. And the deeper Alexis digs, the closer the case creeps to the people she’s come to love.
Cozy café. Talking cats. A town full of people with something to hide. And a witch who is finally growing tired of running.
Fur-gotten Secrets is the fifth book in The Cozy Purrch Café Mysteries.
Coming Soon
Alexis has five cases behind her and four still brewing. Here’s what’s next on the menu:
- Book 6: Purr Under Pressure
- Book 7: Tail of Suspicion
- Book 8: A Purrfect Storm
- Book 9: Nine Purrfect Lives (the final book)
Covers and release dates will be revealed as each book gets closer. Want to be the first to know? Sign up for my newsletter for cover reveals and release news.