A BATTER LEFT UNSAID

Winter has settled over Maple Glade, and Zoey Hartwell’s cupcake shop is busier than ever as the town prepares for its beloved Sugar-on-Snow Festival. Between maple cupcakes, steaming cider, and the chatter of the Yarn Society in the window seat, The Sugared Maple should be the warmest place in town. Then a stranger walks in and orders only hot water. Dutch Roy is an old concrete man with shaking hands, a painful past, and a secret tied to the town’s most carefully buried scandal. Before he can reveal what he knows, a sudden whiteout sweeps across Miller Pond—and by morning, Dutch is dead on the ice. At first, the town is ready to call it a tragic accident. But Zoey knows better. A forged mug of mulled cider, a missing envelope, an old work log, and a tiny hand-knitted button all point to something colder than the Vermont winter: murder. As Zoey follows the clues through Maple Glade’s sugar houses, church halls, library records, and long-held family loyalties, she discovers that the truth has been hidden in plain sight for decades. And this time, the killer may not be a stranger at all, but one of the town’s most trusted voices. In a place where everyone knows everyone, some secrets are preserved like heirlooms—and some are deadly enough to keep buried under ice. A Batter Left Unsaid is a warm, atmospheric cozy mystery filled with cupcakes, maple syrup, small-town secrets, found family, and a heroine learning that reading people is a gift… but only if she learns when to trust it.