The Tea Witch's Sleeping Orchard - The Tea Witch Series, #3

A perfect harvest can be the most dangerous kind of dream.

Hester Hale's orchard should still be weeks from harvest. Instead, its apples ripen overnight—red-gold, fragrant, and faintly glowing at dusk, with bees sleeping peacefully on their skins.

The first villagers who taste them wake refreshed after dreams in which every chore is finished, every customer satisfied, and every loved one secure. But soon the sleepers linger. Their flawless lives offer something more tempting than luxury: freedom from the fear of failing anyone.

As Bramblewick's most dependable residents begin slipping away from the waking world, tea witch Elowen Thatch turns The Steam & Thistle into a careful test kitchen. With the help of a sharp-eyed familiar, a meticulous archivist, a practical constable, and a village baker who understands how responsibility can hide inside an act of care, she must trace the orchard's magic before its roots spread farther.

Yet Waking Tea cannot force anyone home. To solve the case, Elowen must uncover not only what the apples are doing—but why an imperfect life has become so difficult to choose.

The Tea Witch's Sleeping Orchard is a warm, fair-play cozy fantasy mystery about harvest magic, hidden exhaustion, found family, and the courage to leave some work unfinished.

Reader Promise

Each Tea Witch Mystery contains a complete case and may be read on its own.