Guilt and Ginataan

September 1, 2024

This year, the Shady Palms Corn Festival is cosponsored with the neighboring town of Shelbyville, and Mayor Judy Reyes brings her wife. Filipino restaurateur Lila Macapagal and her friends Adeena and Elena, co-owners of the Brew-ha Cafe, have a booth at the festival. When Reyes's wife, Yvonne, gets a little confrontational with Adeena, the young woman handles it well. The incident is forgotten at the end of the day when Lila and her friends decide to compete in the corn maze to see who can find the end first. Lila is lost in the maze when she hears a scream; soon she and a security guard locate the source of a second scream. Yvonne is dead, stabbed to death, and Adeena is passed out with the bloody knife in her hand. With Adeena at the top of the suspect list, Lila rallies her friends and relatives to investigate. She usually relies on conversations and the community to help, but this time, for some reason, Elena is standing in her way. VERDICT There's less emphasis on Filipino culture in the sequel to Murder and Mamon, a slower-paced story, but cozy readers will still enjoy the food descriptions.--Lesa Holstine

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November 1, 2024
Lila Macapagal and the crew from the Brew-ha Cafe (last seen in Murder and Mamon, 2023) have a booth at the annual Corn Festival in the downstate Illinois town of Shady Palms. They're serving up variations on their eclectic Filipino menu, all of which are delicacies using corn. During the speeches, Shady Palms' mayor welcomes Mayor Judy Reyes from neighboring Shelbyville, but their rivalry is palpable, and tension oozes from Reyes' wife Yvonne when she visits the Brew-ha booth. Once they've sold out and cleaned up for the day, Lila and her partners Elena Torres and Adeena Awan challenge each other to a race through the corn maze. Yet, the race is interrupted by Adeena being found collapsed over Yvonne's body, a knife in her hand. Believing that Adeena is innocent, the Brew-ha crew--aided by the aunties from Tita Rosie's Kitchen next door, Lila's boyfriend Jae, and Jae's brother, a detective turned PI--spring into action. The small-town rivalries loom large during their investigation, but so do deceptions among friends. The plot has satisfying twists to go along with the mouth-watering food.

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October 21, 2024
Café owner Lila Macapagal attempts to clear her best friend and business partner’s name in Manansala’s diverting fifth cozy set in Shady Pines, Ill. (after Murder and Mamon). The town’s annual harvest festival takes a chilling turn when Yvonne Reyes, wife of the mayor of nearby Shelbyville, winds up dead in the corn maze. Suspect number one is Lila’s bestie, Adeena Awan, who wakes up next to Yvonne’s corpse with a bloody knife and a case of amnesia. Lila, convinced of Adeena’s innocence, investigates alongside her boyfriend, hunky dentist Dr. Jae Park, and Jae’s older brother, a former cop. The trio’s chief suspects include the mayor’s jealous assistant, a crooked state politician, and even the mayor herself. While the mystery plot is a bit paint-by-numbers, Manansala brightens the proceedings with mouthwatering Filipino recipes and winsome check-ins with Lila’s extended network of aunts, grandmothers, and female mentors. It’s a good bet for fireside reading on a fall night. Agent: Jill Marsal, Marsal Lyon Literary.

December 1, 2024
The 35th annual Shady Palms Corn Festival, co-hosted with neighboring Shelbyville, Illinois, kicks off with a murder that rocks both towns. Shelbyville is bigger than Shady Palms, with more storefronts and activities, but fewer homicides--at least until Yvonne Maldonado, the wife of Shelbyville mayor Judy Reyes, is found stabbed to death in, naturally, a corn maze. Which town has proprietary rights to the crime? For Lila Macapagal, the co-owner of the Brew-ha Cafe, that's less important than whether the cops will release Adeena Awan, Lila's best friend and business partner, who was found on the scene with a bloody knife in her hand. Fans of this ebullient series, along with anyone else who knows Adeena, will instantly assume that the knife was planted by the actual killer. But there seem to be precious few suspects: Her Honor herself, whose joint bank account Yvonne had been emptying; Zack, the loyal assistant who'd do anything for her; Quinn Taylor, Yvonne's best friend and partner in the Blue Violet Boutique; and Shelbyville Councilman Carl Foster, whose resolute opposition to Mayor Reyes has mysteriously abated. So, it's no wonder that when the mayor hires private eye Jonathan Park, the brother of Lila's boyfriend, physician Jae Park, to investigate the murder, his progress is so halting that there's plenty of time for the cast to consume the franchise's signature cuisine and wait for another body to drop, as indeed it does. The mystery is so-so and the denouement abrupt, but those corny recipes are to die for. Well, maybe not literally.

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