It’s Christmas, 1934, and Darling, Alabama, is unwrapping a package of Christmas puzzles. Will the new bakery survive? Will Charlie Dickens learn his wife’s secret? Will the sheriff find out what’s brewing at the prison farm? But Darling folk have courage, respect for their neighbors, and dream of doing their best. There’s nothing puzzling about that!
China and Ruby meet a former resident of Pecan Springs and delve into an intriguing mystery from the long-ago past.
When the Lucky Four Clovers run into a string of bad luck, it looks like the music may have ended for Darling’s favorite barbershop quartet. And while liquor is legal again, moonshine isn’t, And as Sheriff Buddy Norris discovers when he confront Cypress County’s most notorious bootlegger, it helps to have a little luck in your pocket.
China Bayles and Mike McQuaid spend an unsettling weekend settling a few old scores.
China comes to the aid of a nurse who ends up in the hospital and uncovers a complex case of fraud and murder…
When AP political reporter Lorena Hickok–Hick–is assigned to cover Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the wife of the 1932 Democratic presidential candidate, the two women become deeply, intimately involved. Their relationship begins with mutual romantic passion, matures through stormy periods of enforced separation and competing interests, and warms into an enduring, encompassing friendship that ends only with both women’s deaths in the 1960s–all of it documented by 3300 letters exchanged over thirty years.
This Thanksgiving, be grateful for China Bayles—who teams up with a game warden friend to solve a complex case of theft and murder.
The Eleven O’Clock Lady ain’t no lady—at least, that’s what Sheriff Buddy Norris and the Darling Dahlias suspect. When she’s found strangled with her own silk stocking, the roots of the murder seem to twist around everything else in Darling, threatening the uneasy relationship between the town and the new CCC camp.
An artful crime and a crafty criminal teach China Bayles and her friends that death comes in many colors.
Moonshine and money. Two big problems are vexing Darling, Alabama, while troubles of the heart plague Verna Tidwell and Liz Lacy. Seems like other troubles don’t just go away when there’s a crisis. There’ll be no pennies from heaven, but if anyone can balance things out, folks can bank on the Darling Dahlias.
The Storm of the Century helps Ruby find the key to the very special gift she inherited from her grandmother.
The Little House books, which chronicled the childhood pioneer life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, are among the most beloved books in the American literary canon. Less well known is the secret, concealed for decades, of how they came to be. Now, Susan Wittig Albert tells the fascinating story of Laura’s daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, an intrepid world traveler and writer who returned to her parents’ Ozark farm, Rocky Ridge, in 1928. There she began a collaboration with her mother on the pioneer stories that would captivate over sixty million readers around the world.
The Texas Star herself—Miss Lily Dare, famous aviatrix and the “fastest woman in the world”—is bringing her Dare Devils Flying Circus to Darling. Unfortunately, she’s also bringing a whole lot of trouble. As the Dahlias prepare for the annual Watermelon Festival—where they will present Miss Dare with her own Texas Star hibiscus—rumors are…well, flying.
Police chief Sheila Dawson and China get snagged by several thorny mysteries. Life (and death) in Pecan Springs is never dull.
The Dahlias (the premiere garden club of little Darling, Alabama) are at it again, trying to solve a whole bouquet of mysteries. Verna’s in a terrible jam over money missing from the county treasury, Beulah must find out why Angelina Biggs’ hair is falling out, and Bessie is trying to solve the puzzle of Miss Rogers’ real identity. Just who is the Confederate Rose?
When a reporter gets involved too deeply with a story and disappears, China must find her–before she becomes headlines.
It’s the heart of summer in 1913, and Beatrix is eager to marry her fiancé, solicitor William Heelis. But there are a few obstacles blocking the happy couple’s path to the altar, including (of course!) opposition from Mr. and Mrs. Potter and the death of a carpenter who is working on Castle Cottage. The final book in the series.
The Darling hometown ladies (Liz, Verna, Bessie, and Myra Mae) meet Miss Lorelei LaMotte, the famous Ziegfeld Frolics dancer–in disguise. She is followed by a mysterious member of the notorious Al Capone’s gang. It looks like big-city crime is about to invade little Darling—and not even the indomitable Dahlias can stop it!
Bad-Penny Sally, McQuaid’s irrepressible ex, turns up in Pecan Springs–and turns a green Christmas blue.
An aeroplane is terrorizing the people and animals of the Land Between the Lakes—until the developer meets a nasty accident on Oat Cake Crag. But over in Near Sawrey, romance blooms. Wedding bells? Whose? And who (or as Professor Galileo Newton Owl would say: whoooo) is writing poison pen letters?
The 1930s are tough, but the ladies of the Dahlias Garden Club of Darling, Alabama, are determined to keep their chins up, their families fed, and their town beautiful. But before long, they find themselves searching for a buried treasure, an escaped prisoner, a stolen car, and clues to the mysterious death of Bunny Scott.
China and her friend Martha Edmond visit a Kentucky Shaker village and are pulled into a deadly crime and a bitter history of loss.
A burning haystack, a footpath closing, a mysterious ghost, and big doings at The Brockery, where the venerable Bosworth Badger begins to think about handing over the Badger’s precious Badge of Authority to the younger generation. And important developments in various village romances.
In An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days, novelist Susan Wittig Albert invites us to revisit one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory, 2008, through the lens of 365 ordinary days, when her reading, writing, and thinking about world issues—from wars and economic recession to climate change—caused her to reconsider and reshape daily practices in her personal life.
China and McQuaid team up to solve a mystery and put an old family skeleton (and a very fresh corpse) to rest.
An antiquities collector dies in what looks like an accident (but is it)? An intrepid badger takes a winter swim in Moss Eccles Tarn. And an ambitious teenage dragon discovers that there’s more to life than guarding a golden treasure. Meanwhile, the villagers are mystified by a tangle of intrigues–and Miss Potter is troubled by hints of a romance.
What happens when Ruby falls in love with a cloak-and-dagger man with a past life full of secrets?
An abandoned baby has turned up on the doorstep at Hill Top Farm and Miss Potter must find out who she is. Meanwhile, Jemima Puddleduck is mortified by the book Miss Potter has written about her. How would you like the whole world to know that you were so foolish as to lay your eggs in a fox’s back parlor?
In this beautifully written memoir, the author of the popular China Bayles mysteries meditates on what it means to be married to a person and a place while needing to be alone, in solitude. How do we balance our desire for private time with our need for community? How do we give ourselves fully and intimately to a place, while at the same time satisfying the desire to reach out to far horizons?
How do women experience the vast, arid, rugged land of the American Southwest? The Story Circle Network, a national organization dedicated to helping women write about their lives, posed this question, and nearly three hundred women responded with original pieces of writing that told true and meaningful stories of their personal experiences of the land.
The wrong kind of love leads to bleeding hearts, ruined lives, desperate fear—and murder.
Guglielmo Marconi’s new wireless telegraph is making news and wreaking havoc in the telegraph industry, so it’s no wonder that someone is out to steal his secrets and put him out of business. Charles Sheridan is on the case, while Kate has another mystery to solve. The book features the young Marconi, Oliver Lodge, and the gorgeous landscape of Cornwall.
Miss Potter is shocked to discover that her new home at Hill Top Farm is overrun with rats, while in nearby Far Sawrey, mild-mannered vicar Samuel Sackett also finds himself plagued with unwanted visitors: a cousin and his wife who have long overstayed their welcome. Rats, cats, fairies, and a lady with a mysterious past.
The bones in a cave have a story to tell, and hold a clue from the past that could help China solve an urgent mystery in the present.
Kate and Charles visit the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace. But all is not well, for the guest list includes the exotic, erotic Gladys Deacon, the Duke’s lover, and the party ends in an apparent kidnapping and murder. Featured: the Duke’s cousin, Winston Churchill, and a young Ned Lawrence, later known as Lawrence of Arabia.
Everyone in Sawrey likes Ben Hornby. So when Beatrix finds the shepherd dead in the meadow and suspects foul play, while the village animals are deeply concerned about the fate of Old Ben’s missing sheep. Although she’s distracted by duties at the farm and the sad plight of the young girl who lives at Tidmarsh Manor, Miss Potter must get to the bottom of this.
A dilly of a mystery, especially if you like pickles. And even if you don’t, you’re sure to smile (and maybe hiss) at China’s pickle jokes.
A bomb meant for England’s new King Edward and Queen Alexandra reveals a terrorist plot and raises the urgent question: in a world of spies and counter-spies, who are the real terrorists? When Jack London, American author and known Socialist, is drawn into this multi-layered plot, Kate and Charles have plenty of untangling to do.
Spiced with gentle mystery and peopled with earthy and endearing villagers, The Tale of Hill Top Farm introduces Miss Beatrix Potter at a time of crisis, just after the death of her fiancé, Norman Warne. With help from her little family of animal friends, Beatrix sets out to win the human hearts of the village she plans to make her home.
Colors to Dye For, a deep-dyed mystery, and a true-blue China & Ruby collaboration that helps to save historic Indigo from destruction.
