Elara Finch used to bake for kings. Now, she just wants to hide.

Fresh off a scandal that ruined her celebrated London pastry career, Elara returns to the only place that ever felt like home: Hollybrook, Vermont?the picturesque, perpetually snowy town where her eccentric Great-Aunt Clara ran the legendary *Gingerbread Heart* bakery. She inherits the shop, along with Clara's quirky old cat and a reputation for making the best Christmas cookies in New England.

Elara's plan is simple: keep her head down, keep the sugar running, and certainly **do not** get involved in any drama.

But Hollybrook is a town built on holiday traditions, and when the town's treasured, centuries-old antique cookie press?known as "The Hollybrook Heart"?vanishes just days before the annual Christmas Bake-Off, drama finds her. The town council blames the "new girl," and Elara is given an ultimatum: find the press by Christmas Eve, or lose the bakery forever.

Her only ally? Liam Sterling, the town's intensely handsome but frustratingly logical woodworker, who insists on seeing Elara as the irresponsible runaway she used to be. Liam is the co-chairman of the Bake-Off, and he needs the press back before the whole event crumbles.

As Elara digs through sugar-dusted clues, battles with faulty old ovens, and finds herself falling for the skeptical woodworker, she realizes the secret ingredient to her new life might just be solving a mystery?and maybe, just maybe, giving her own guarded heart a second chance at love.

Can Elara find the antique press, save the Bake-Off, and heal her own heart before the clock strikes midnight on Christmas Eve?

The Gingerbread Heart is the first book in The Hollybrook Bakery Mysteries. It is a clean, cozy culinary mystery featuring a slow-burn romance, a quaint small-town setting, and an original recipe included at the end!*l