The opening of a new restaurant is marred by two murders, and the detective working the case feels there are too many cooks in the kitchen when Jessica steps in to help.

A successful reporter - who is also Jessica's former student - returns to Cabot Cove with new evidence on a 30-year-old case involving two of the town's founding families.

When a powerful businessman is found dead, his battered wife appears to be the obvious suspect, but Jessica discovers a long list of people who wished him harm.

Crime strikes close to home when Jessica helps a woman who claims her son was fathered by Jessica's late husband.

Jessica travels to Texas to attend a wedding, but it's clear that there will be no walk down the aisle when the groom becomes the victim of a grisly crime.

The publishing world can be murder, which becomes clear to Jessica when she travels to Montana to commemorate the posthumous publication of a major American writer.

Jessica's life suddenly reads like a gothic novel when her famous Southern playwright friend confides that he is dying, proposes marriage, and later is found holding a gun while standing over a dead body.

Jessica comes to the rescue of her niece when the younger woman is forced out of her advertising job by a boss who expects her to sleep with their biggest client.  When the wealthy tycoon is found dead, Jessica's niece becomes the prime suspect.

Jessica travels to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but the good times can't roll when her cousin is suspected of murder.

It's the final curtain for a man found murdered backstage during the performance of a popular Soviet ballet troupe.