Scrapbooking Mysteries

About the Scrapbooking Mysteries series

Carmela Bertrand runs Memory Mine, a scrapbooking shop tucked into New Orleans' French Quarter, where she sells paper, ribbon and rubber stamps to a clientele of Garden District society ladies, tourists and Mardi Gras krewe members. Widowed young and fiercely independent, Carmela is the kind of amateur sleuth who can't walk past a body without picking through the evidence herself, usually alongside her best friend and shop assistant Ava Gruiteux, who runs the voodoo-and-antiques shop next door. Ex-husband-turned-love-interest Detective Edgar Babcock provides the official investigation Carmela routinely runs circles around.

What sets this series apart from Laura Childs' other cozy lines is its setting: New Orleans supplies parade routes, cemetery tours, jazz clubs, plantation homes and Cajun cooking as a rotating backdrop for each mystery, alongside genuine scrapbooking and papercraft technique woven into Carmela's amateur detective work. Starting with book fourteen, Crepe Factor, Childs began co-writing the series with fellow cozy novelist Terrie Farley Moran, who is credited alongside her on every entry since. The mysteries stayed brisk, gossip-fueled whodunits built around French Quarter institutions — antique shops, restaurants, festivals — rather than dark or violent crime, keeping the emphasis on atmosphere, friendship and Carmela's knack for turning up where she isn't wanted.