On her first morning back at work, Clare Cosi finds her young assistant manager unconscious at the bottom of the basement stairs. Coffee grounds are scattered everywhere. The police see an accident. Clare sees a trash bin in the wrong place. On What Grounds came out in September 2003 from Berkley Prime Crime and opened the Coffeehouse Mysteries, which now run to 22 books.
What Is On What Grounds About?
Ten years earlier, Clare left an unhappy marriage and the job she loved to raise her daughter, Joy, in the New Jersey suburbs. Her former mother-in-law, Madame, owns the Village Blend, a century-old coffee house in Greenwich Village. Madame wants Clare to come back and manage the historic Village Blend coffeehouse. She tempts her with a pot of Jamaica Blue Mountain and the rent-free apartment upstairs, Java the cat included.
Clare trades suburban life for the city and goes back to work. Then comes the fall on the stairs. NYPD detective Mike Quinn finds no sign of forced entry or foul play and calls it an accident. Clare is not convinced, and to prove it was an attack she has to team up with her ex-husband, the coffee buyer Matteo Allegro. The assistant manager, a dancer, turns out to have a past nobody at the shop knew about.
Our Review: Strong Coffee, Slow Start
The coffee is the star. You learn how beans are roasted and blended, how a good espresso is pulled, and why a coffee house feels like a neighbourhood living room. The book includes recipes and coffee-making tips at the back. Clare is easy to like: practical, nosy and a little bruised. Her prickly partnership with Matt and the slow flirtation with Quinn give the series its pull.
The pace of the mystery is the weak spot. The first two hundred pages move slowly, and some readers find the coffee detail heavy. One reviewer felt the killer came out of nowhere. The last part of the book is much livelier, and the later books are tighter. As a first visit to the Village Blend, it does its job.
The Coffeehouse Mysteries in Order
The authors say each book can be read alone, but Clare’s relationships and Joy’s story move on from book to book. Here are all 22 novels, from the publisher’s list:
- On What Grounds (2003)
- Through the Grinder (2004)
- Latte Trouble (2005)
- Murder Most Frothy (2006)
- Decaffeinated Corpse (2007)
- French Pressed (2008)
- Espresso Shot (2008)
- Holiday Grind (2009)
- Roast Mortem (2010)
- Murder by Mocha (2011)
- A Brew to a Kill (2012)
- Holiday Buzz (2012)
- Billionaire Blend (2013)
- Once Upon a Grind (2014)
- Dead to the Last Drop (2015)
- Dead Cold Brew (2017)
- Shot in the Dark (2018)
- Brewed Awakening (2019)
- Honey Roasted (2022)
- Bulletproof Barista (2023)
- No Roast for the Weary (2025)
- Eat, Drink, and Get Buried (2026)
For more on the series as a whole, see our Coffeehouse Mystery series review.
New Cozy Mysteries in 2026 From Cleo Coyle
This year brings two new books from the authors. Eat, Drink, and Get Buried, Coffeehouse book 22, came out in hardcover on September 22, 2026. In it Clare’s baristas cater a party that ends with a woman falling from a balcony. Kirkus noted that it ends with 45 pages of recipes. In March 2026, book 21, No Roast for the Weary, came out in paperback. On September 29, 2026, the tenth book of their ghost series, The Ghost and the Dead Librarian, followed. The next Coffeehouse book, number 23, has no title or date yet.
Haunted Bookshop Mysteries: A Paranormal Cozy Series by the Same Authors
If you want a paranormal cozy, our pick is the Haunted Bookshop Mysteries by Cleo Coyle, the authors’ other series. The Haunted Bookshop Mysteries first came out under the pen name Alice Kimberly. Penelope Thornton-McClure, a young widow, moves from New York to Quindicott, Rhode Island, to save her aunt’s failing book store. The renovation wakes the ghost of Jack Shepard, a hard-boiled private eye who was shot dead in the shop in 1949. He has been stuck there ever since, and now he helps her solve murders. The tenth book is out this year.
For more paranormal sleuths, see our list of paranormal cozy mysteries.
Who Is Cleo Coyle?
Cleo Coyle is a New York Times bestselling pseudonym for Alice Alfonsi, writing in collaboration with her husband, Marc Cerasini. Alice and Marc both grew up in western Pennsylvania in Italian families. They met in New York, the city of the series, and live there. She was a journalist; he was a magazine editor. Both also write media tie-in novels.
Is she the best author of cozy mysteries? That is a matter of taste. In our view the Coffeehouse books sit in the same top tier as Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swensen mysteries and Laura Childs’ Tea Shop series. They just have more grit and more New York. The record is strong too. According to the authors’ site, this first book was the number one paperback bestseller of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. The site also reports more than a million books sold and starred reviews from Library Journal and Kirkus. Booklist recommended the series among the best culinary mysteries for core library mystery collections.
Is On What Grounds Related to the Lacey Doyle Cozy Mystery Series?
No. Readers sometimes mix them up, but the Lacey Doyle Cozy Mystery series is by a different author, Fiona Grace. It began in 2019 with Murder in the Manor, in which a newly divorced New Yorker opens an antiques shop in an English seaside town. As of 2026 it has 16 books.
Quick Facts
| Title | On What Grounds |
|---|---|
| Author | Cleo Coyle (Alice Alfonsi and Marc Cerasini) |
| Series | Coffeehouse Mystery, book 1 of 22 |
| First published | September 2003, Berkley Prime Crime (paperback) |
| Setting | A historic coffee bar in New York City |
| Sleuth | Clare Cosi, the manager |
| Audiobook | Unabridged, 7 h 59 min (Blackstone Audio, 2011) |
| Extras | Recipes and coffee-making tips |
| Next book | Through the Grinder |
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Clare own the Village Blend?
No. She manages it. The owner is Madame, her former mother-in-law.
Are there audiobooks?
Yes. Rebecca Gibel reads this one, unabridged, and you can borrow it through Libby with a library card.
What should I read next?
For another food-themed series, browse our culinary cozy mysteries, or try a tea-shop sleuth in Death by Darjeeling.