Goldy Schulz

About the Goldy Schulz series

Goldy Schulz (later Goldy Bear) is a divorced single mother turned professional caterer in Aspen Meadow, Colorado, whose gigs — country-club luncheons, church socials, ski-town society events — keep putting her at the scene of the crime, usually with a body cooling next to the canapes. Goldy cooks her way through every investigation, quite literally: each novel is packed with real, tested recipes tied to the story's menus, and her sharp tongue and hard-won independence (her first husband, referred to throughout as 'the Jerk,' is a controlling ex she escaped) give the series real edge under the culinary charm.

Diane Mott Davidson is widely credited with popularizing the recipe-laced culinary mystery format that Laura Childs, Cleo Coyle and dozens of others later built on. Her mysteries lean grittier than most cozy contemporaries — domestic abuse, small-town corruption and genuine physical danger show up alongside the food — while Goldy's remarriage to police investigator Tom Schulz gives the series an unusually well-integrated procedural thread. It's the series for readers who want the culinary-mystery format at its origin point: real recipes, a genuinely resourceful and hard-edged heroine, and mysteries with more bite than the cozy label usually implies.

How to read this series

Publication order, starting with Catering to Nobody. Goldy's escape from her abusive first marriage, her relationship with and eventual marriage to Tom Schulz, and her son Arch's growing up all develop continuously across the series, so publication order preserves those arcs as intended.

There is no separate chronological order — the series has not published a new entry since The Whole Enchilada (2013), so all 17 books can be read straight through without worrying about a moving target.