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.
