Chili Cauldron Curse

I started reading One Poison Pie that I checked out from the library. I had double checked to make sure it was the first book but when I started reading it didn't seem like it. When the police officer said something like “when there's a dead body around your always nearby” I thought that was a bad sign so I checked again and found this novella. Who starts a series with the novella?! sigh This was chock full of info that I needed to not feel like I was missing something and now I'm off to read One Poison Pie!