Markets and Mysteries

Someone is stealing Europe's most beloved recipes - and calling them their own. Food blogger Sophie Brooks arrives at Vienna's legendary Christmas market with a Netflix documentary crew, a freshly signed book deal, and a warm coat she sincerely hopes the Austrian winter deserves. She's there to write about mulled wine, Vanillekipferl, and the artisan vendors who keep these centuries-old traditions alive. What she finds instead is a corporation called Marché Authentique SA - and a man named Hendrik Voß, whose gift for charm masks a methodical talent for theft. From Vienna to Prague to Cologne to Strasbourg to Paris, Sophie follows a trail of matte green tins, trademark filings, and legal threats landing on vendors whose families have been making the same recipes for generations. A grandmother in Alsace whose cookie recipe now belongs to a Paris corporation. A Czech baker whose grandfather's mulled wine is suddenly someone else's intellectual property. A pattern too precise to be coincidence - and a man at the center of every market who is very good at making people feel comfortable sharing their most valuable thing. With her irreplaceable best friend Oliver, documentary filmmaker Nate, and a growing coalition of vendors, lawyers, and investigative journalists, Sophie must expose the truth before the Christmas season ends and the story disappears into a Paris boardroom. Markets & Mysteries is the third book in the Sophie Brooks Culinary Mystery series - cozy mysteries filled with European travel, authentic food culture, slow-burn romance, and investigations that matter. Perfect for fans of Flavia de Luce, the Agatha Raisin series, and anyone who's ever stood in a Christmas market and believed that food is the truest kind of history.