Cleo Coyle

Cleo Coyle is the joint pen name of husband-and-wife writing team Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini, used for their long-running Coffeehouse Mysteries series, which follows Clare Cosi, manager of a landmark Greenwich Village coffeehouse, as she solves murders connected to the New York coffee and food world. Beginning with On What Grounds in 2003, the series has grown to more than twenty novels, each blending a cozy mystery plot with genuine culinary detail about coffee roasting, brewing, and cafe culture, complete with recipes included at the end of each book, a hallmark of the food-cozy subgenre the pair helped popularize. The couple also writes the Haunted Bookshop Mysteries, a supernatural cozy series begun in 2004 under the pen name Alice Kimberly; the series was revived in 2018 and is now published, along with reissues of its earlier Alice Kimberly-era titles, under the Cleo Coyle byline as well. New readers to the Coffeehouse series should start with On What Grounds to meet Clare and the Village Blend cast from the beginning. There is no film or television adaptation of the series to date. The Cleo Coyle byline remains active, with Alfonsi and Cerasini continuing to publish new Coffeehouse Mysteries installments regularly.