A Pinch of Magic

A cookbook ghostwriter accidentally summons a spirit and must help with her unfinished business in this charming and cozy paranormal novel—full of small-town charm and a delightful cast of characters!

Cam Parker likes being invisible. As a cookbook ghostwriter, she lives a quiet, orderly life well behind the scenes. But when a storm smashes into her beloved grandmother’s house, she’ll do anything to pay for the repairs, even taking on a nightmare celebrity client and returning from Brooklyn to her coastal-Virginia hometown of Silver Cove and all its small-town drama. 

Before she can say boo, Cam’s predictable world collapses like an underbaked souffle. For starters, she’s developing inconvenient feelings for carpenter Ian McCabe, who’s equal parts charm and complication. And then there’s the actual ghost Cam accidentally summons from an old cookbook, who apparently needs her help to right a century-old wrong. Cam can barely keep all these plates in the air. But the chaos just might push her to question her cautious approach to life—and finally write her own recipe for happiness.

• Heil’s debut utilizes her national food reporter background to great effect, creating a compelling mystery behind Cam’s haunted cookbook, along with a cozy romance.
  Kellie Tilton, Library Journal
• Cam, a successful celebrity cookbook ghostwriter, leaves Brooklyn to stay temporarily in the small Virginia town of Silver Cove to facilitate necessary repairs to her grandmother's dangerously storm-damaged home. She hires single dad Ian, an appealing carpenter, but in order to pay for the work she has to stay on good terms with her current employer, a temperamental lifestyle guru who shows up unexpectedly. As the town gets ready to celebrate
  the one hundredth anniversary of its claim to fame, the classic children's book, Stormy of Silver Cove, Cam finds a haunted recipe book written by Ada, the book's author. Despite communication challenges, Ada's ghost makes it clear she needs Cam to find something hidden in her former home, which is now Silver Cove's museum. Heil, food reporter for the Washington Post, makes her romance debut with a sweet feel-good tale of friendship, family, small-town life, and righting a historical wrong that is also a thoroughly enjoyable combination of romance, mystery, and the paranormal.
   
  Diana Tixier Herald, Booklist