Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes

A Mystery

Sandra Jackson-Opoku

Minotaur · Print & ebook · July 29, 2025

A sparkling debut mystery set on the South Side of Chicago, featuring the quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, proprietor of a soul food café.

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Who it’s for
A playful cozy mystery with culinary comforts and a collector’s-friendly title.
Genres
Culinary Cozies, Black Mystery, Women Detectives
Published
Minotaur, July 29, 2025

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For younger readers: Scoop, Summer of a Thousand Pies, The Fat Lady's Ghost

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About this book

A sparkling debut mystery set on the South Side of Chicago, featuring the quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, proprietor of a soul food café. When Savvy Summers first opened Essie's soul food café, she never expected her customer-favorite sweet potato pie to become the center of a murder investigation.

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But when Grandy Jaspers, the 75-year-old neighborhood womanizer, drops dead at table two, she suddenly has more to worry about than just maintaining Essie's reputation for the finest soul food in the Chicagoland area. Even as the police deem Grandy’s death an accident, Savvy quickly finds herself—and her beloved café—in the middle of an entire city’s worth of bad press. Desperate to clear her name and keep her business afloat, Savvy and her snooping assistant manager, Penny Lopés, take it upon themselves to find who really killed Grandy. But with a slimy investor harassing her to sell her name and business, customers avoiding her sweet potato pie like the plague, and her police sergeant ex-husband suddenly back in the picture, will Savvy be able to clear the café’s name and solve Grandy’s murder before it all falls apart? After all, while Savvy always said her sweet potato pie was to die for, she never meant literally.

Cozy Comforts

A playful cozy mystery with culinary comforts and a collector’s-friendly title.

Come here for

  • food-forward comfort
  • playful cozy-mystery vibes

Expect

  • an amateur sleuth setup
  • steady, immersive reading

Where it sits

Culinary Cozies81%
Women Detectives72%
Black Mystery52%

Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.

Publisher categories

  • Women Detectives
  • Culinary Cozies
  • Black Mystery
Authors
Sandra Jackson-Opoku
Publisher
Minotaur
Published
July 29, 2025
Format
Print & ebook
Reading lane
Women Detectives