Mia Manansala has gained critical acclaim and legions of fans for her series of Tita Rosie’s Kitchen cozy mysteries. Combining crime, humor, family and food — with a heavy emphasis on the joy of eating — Manansala’s books focus on amateur sleuth Lila Macapagal’s efforts to solve murders occurring in her small town of Shady Palms, Illinois.
Lucky for readers, folks there have been dropping like flies since 2021, when Manansala debuted the series with Arsenic and Adobo.
Like many cozy mysteries, or “Hallmark movies for dead bodies,” as she affectionately refers to them, Manansala’s books revolve around a young woman who left town to pursue her dream — and returned when that dream went awry, only to be confronted with a shocking murder she is hell-bent on solving. But unlike many authors of the cozy genre, Manansala is a woman of color.
Manansala grew up in a large multi-generational Filipino-American family on Chicago’s northwest side. Her home served as a way station for immigrants — relatives, by blood or family connection — settling in the U.S. The kitchen table was the epicenter of family gatherings, with her father serving as cook, and food provided an essential connection to her Filipino heritage.
She now lives in Forest Park.
As a child, Manansala was a voracious reader —mysteries were her family’s favorites. She watched Matlock and Perry Mason and Murder She Wrote with her grandparents and was the eager recipient of her mother’s passed-down Mary Higgins Clark mysteries.
“Whatever book was in the house was fair game, not just books for kids,” Manansala said. “My mom and I buddy-read the Hannah Swensen series by Joanne Fluke, which combined our two favorite things — mystery and food.”
Manansala decided to try her hand at writing mysteries in 2015, after returning home from teaching English in South Korea for several years.
“I had my quarter-life crisis — I was almost 30 years old, living at home with my parents again and suffering their interrogations every time I left the house,” Manansala said, laughing.
Remembering how much she loved to write as a kid, she enrolled in a one-day mystery-writing workshop led by award-winning crime fiction author Lori Rader-Day. The idea for her first book, Death Comes to Comic Con, was sparked during the workshop. And, while Rader-Day, who was president of the Midwest chapter of the Mystery Writers of America, proclaimed her a natural mystery writer, and the finished book received some positive buzz, it was ultimately rejected by publishers.
Manansala believes some of that rejection was due to racial bias and discrimination.
“One publisher said that I had a great voice but no one was going to read me. Another said that the traditional mystery was for older white women and suggested I write young adult books because there was more diversity in that genre,” Manansala said.
Manansala persevered, building a writing community by attending professional meetings and connecting with writers who had established careers and those, like her, who were just starting their writing journeys. During this process, she met Kellye Garrett, multiple award-winning writer of the Detective by Day series, co-founder of Crime Writers of Color and former board member for Sisters in Crime. Garrett became an invaluable mentor.
“Because I had this community behind me, I wasn’t deterred by rejections. I met people who didn’t owe me anything but took the time to cheer me on, to read and critique my work and give me advice. Their encouragement kept me going,” Manansala said.
She hit it out of the ballpark with her next book, Arsenic and Adobo, which sprang from an idea she had while riding the Blue Line to work. The book, which was published in 2021, received the Agatha Award for Best First Novel, the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) Award and starred reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Perhaps most importantly, it earned her a three-book contract from Berkley/Penguin Random House and became the first of her Tita Rosie’s Kitchen series.
Four more books came in quick succession, Homicide and Halo-Halo, Blackmail and Bibingka, Murder and Mamon, and Guilt and Ginataan in 2024. Each of the books includes a glossary of Filipino words as well as recipes for delicacies mentioned in the novel.
Alas, the series is coming to an end later this year, with the publication of Death and Dinuguan in November. The book revolves around a series of attacks on women-owned businesses — this time the dead body is found inside the Choco-Noir chocolate shop.
However, fret not, dear readers — Manansala has tried her hand at the Young Adult (YA) genre. Death in the Cards will be released on May 13. The book focuses on a teenage tarot card reader and amateur sleuth and the impact an ominous reading may have had (or not) on a classmate who disappears shortly after the reading.
“I want to pursue ideas other than cozy mysteries — without deadlines. I will never be like the money doesn’t matter, because I need to pay the bills like anyone else, but I want to write what I want to write,” Manansala said.
Surprisingly, the YA genre is typically darker than cozy mysteries. Think Hunger Games. Titles explore coming-of-age themes such as identity, self-discovery and intense relationships. Manansala said that she enjoyed being able to include some swear words.
“I’m not trying to sound like a teenager because, at 39, I would sound ridiculous. I don’t want to be an old person trying to sound young. Besides, the slang would be outdated by the time the book came out. But it’s important to give the reader the feeling of what it’s like to be a teen, when everything is so heightened and personal and you feel so misunderstood,” she said.
Manansala will be reading from and signing Death in the Cards on Thursday, June 19 at 6 p.m. at The Pile Bookstore, 7117 Roosevelt Rd., Berwyn. The event is co-sponsored by the Forest Park Public Library, where Manansala once worked in the youth services department. Word on the street is there will be Filipino snacks and tarot card reading.