Penny Ellis writes cozy mysteries for people who like a little murder with their sweet tea.
She blames it on a misspent youth of library afternoons, where she worked her way through every small-town whodunit on the shelf and fell hard for clever clues, charming suspects, and the particular joy of trying to solve the case before the sleuth did. It only took her a few decades, and an unreasonable number of sticky notes, to write one of her own.
What she loves about a good cozy is the same thing she loves about a good puzzle. There's a mess, and there's an order hiding underneath it, and the fun is in the figuring it all out. She has never met a crossword she could leave half-finished, which is more or less how the Front Porch Puzzle Club came to be. Penny wanted to write the kind of mystery a reader could actually solve, so she tucked the clues right into the pages — crosswords, word searches, mazes, and word games woven through the story. You don't just read along with the club. You join it.
She believes the best mysteries are warm ones, that every small town is one casserole away from a feud, and that no porch is complete without a giant dog underfoot.