A.L. Herbert Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Mahalia Watkins Soul Food Mystery Books
| Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles | (2015) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
| Murder with Macaroni and Cheese | (2016) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
| Murder with Collard Greens and Hot Sauce | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
| Murder with Honey Ham Biscuits | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
A.L. Herbert is a published author of fiction known for writing cozy mystery novels. A. L. Herbert is a pseudonym for Patrick Sanchez.
Herbert grew up in Maryland in Charles County and Prince Georges County. She likes to write stories with plots that are engaging and full of twists and turns and includes some tasty recipes that fit the theme for comfort and soul food.
A.L. Herbert is the creator and the author of the Mahalia Watkins Soul Food series. This mystery series became available to readers for the first time in 2015, when the first book was released. The second came out in 2016 and the third book in 2019.
Murder With Fried Chicken and Waffles is the first book in the Soul Food series. If you love reading modern mystery stories set in unique fictional places, then you’re definitely going to want to check out this story!
Readers get to meet Halia Watkins for the first time, the main character in this story. She happens to be the proud owner of a place called Mahalia’s Sweet Tea. It is located in Maryland and is one of the best soul food restaurants around. This gem is a place where folks can go to get some of the best soul cooking ever. Halia is known for it and is famous for just providing that perfect meal for her customers.
Halia makes a lot of her famous dishes at the Sweet Tea. Her cornbread has always been a big hit, and her mashed potatoes are delicious and so creamy that they keep patrons coming back for more. The customers simply cannot get enough and the restaurant is never short of patrons that cannot wait to have some of that cornbread.
Halia may be adept at whipping up southern dishes for people to enjoy, but how good is she when it comes to solving mysteries? This soul food chef is about to find out, and it is going to be interesting. In the meantime, Halia finds herself kept plenty busy by hosting and cooking all of the time. On top of her job, she has to be sure that Wavonne (her young cousin) is not giving the customers too much sass.
Marcus Rand was an entrepreneur that used to talk fast and pop up into her kitchen all of the time. It was irritating, but now that Halia has seen what he looks like dead, she misses the old version. The chef discovers the corpse of Marcus laying on her tile in her restaurant dead and face down after opening hours. She has no idea what to do at first because no one would ever expect this to happen.
Everything about this death looks suspicious. Halia thinks that it’s fair to assume that Marcus did not kill himself and just happen to do that inside her eatery. He did have his fair share of foes. The frying pan made out of cast iron laying beside his dead body confirms that perhaps one of those back alley business deals just didn’t ‘pan’ out for him.
Maybe one of the deals just went off. It was bound to happen one of these times. Halia wants nothing more than to be able to keep the name of her restaurant from being brought up in conjunction with this. It is not going to be a good look for her business if people know that someone got killed there. It’s going to cause a connection and might even drive people away from coming there ever again!
Halia doesn’t want her restaurant to go under because of this. But no matter how much she tries, it seems that the effort she has put forth made Wavonne one of the main suspects in the case. She is going to have to catch the real killer before they come back to take another victim yet again. Featuring tons of great recipes from the author and Sweet Tea, including for casseroles and corn bread, check out this interesting mystery story to see what happens next!
The second book in the Soul Food Mystery series came out shortly after the first and is titled Murder With Macaroni and Cheese. The eatery that Halia runs in Maryland is known for having some incredible food on its menu. It is the type of soul food that you eat once in a lifetime and it is made with love.
Sweet Tea has always done well, despite some weird occurrences like murder happening around the restaurant. Halia does like to do some detecting on the side of her job as restaurant owner and main chef.
A reunion for a high school class goes terribly wrong and ends in murder. Can Mahalia be the one to solve this case? A mean girl may have breathed her last breath, and it appears that one of her old classmates may have been responsible for it.
When it comes to reunions, it turns out that her own is coming up soon. As it turns out, the organizing committee really needs some help when it comes to catering. Halia soon says that she will help them on the catering end and it is not too long before she is making her chicken wings and more for the classmates that she went to school with.
Since they all graduated, some of her peers have really come into their own. Some of them remain the same as they were in school, even if it might have been better for them to change. Raynell Rollins may well be one of those people.
The only problem is that now she is dead. The morning finds Raynell dead, but who did it? There are plenty of people that would have loved to see this former bossy girl with the perfect nails meet her timely demise. She had got into quite a bit after graduating, from scandals to affairs and secrets and more.
With some help from her cousin, this chef is ready to catch a killer. Can she do it in time? Read this book to find out if this soul food cook can track down a murderer before it’s too late!
Book Series In Order » Authors »
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I love the books and the pushy loving mother. When will Halia and the detective go out on a date. I was hoping it would have started after book three, but like her mother I am still waiting.
I read Murder w/ Fried Chicken and Waffles. I liked the story line, historical facts about Maryland and surprise killer ending. However, the narrator portrays the characters (except Halia) as deep southern speaking and she miss-pronounces Bowie, Maryland. it should sound like (Boo-we). While Marylanders have a slight accent, they do NOT sound like they’re from the deep-south. I may have to read the next book instead of listening to it.
Your books are so cool. You had crying I was laughing so hard. I knew every reference used with music, tv shows, and etc. I know we are close in age. You are a great n talented writer. Ngl I was ready to pop wavonna more than once lol. I hope you write more. I was truly entertained.