Babycakes

Warm friendships and deep conversations form the backbone of Kaufmann’s third Cupcake Club romance. Kit Bellamy, who relocates to tiny Sugarberry Island to head up mail-order cupcakery Babycakes after her brother-in-law sells her family’s peanut pie business, becomes the newest member of the gossipy club. Morgan Westlake has arrived in town with his five-year-old niece, Lilly, to help her get to know her grandmother. Young Lilly also connects with others in the tiny Sugarberry community, most charmingly including the tattooed clerk at Cakes by the Cup, Babycakes’s parent company. Kit finds Morgan attractive, but his family link to the lawyers who helped destroy the business she loved makes her wary. The Cupcake Club members, inclined to romantic optimism after the events of Sugar Rush and Sweet Stuff, vehemently push Kit into pursuing Morgan despite her understandable reluctance to trust him or anyone; their nagging comes off as insensitive, even if it works out in the end, but series fans will probably forgive them. Agent: Karen Solem, Spencerhill Associates. (Nov.)