Hess, Joan

Bookseller Claire Malloy, unsuccessful in her attempt to talk Emily Parchester down from the tree the retired teacher has camped out in to protest a developer's plan to clear cut the land, decides to investigate when the developer is murdered and his daughter, a teenager mother, is accused of the crime.

Claire Malloy attends a mock murder weekend at the Mimosa Inn. The entertainment is interrupted by the discovery of a real corpse. Claire stumbles from one clue to the next determined to unravel the plot.

Arkansas bookstore owner Claire Malloy and her daughter Caron, forced out of their apartment by emergency repairs, are thrilled to accept an offer to stay at the palatial home of a customer who is traveling, but a series of unsettling events, including the recurring appearance and disappearance of a dead body, sets off Claire's sleuthing instincts once again.

Arly Hanks, chief of police in the town of Maggody, must use all her low-tech resourcefulness to quiet down the townfolks--already riled up over the installation of a computer lab at the new high school--when a dead body is discovered in an abandoned shack.

The peace is disturbed in sleepy Maggody, Arkansas when the historical society decides to fund a documentary on the town's role in the Civil War, and Police Chief Arly Hanks finds herself with chaos and murder on her hands when word gets out that a cache of Confederate gold is stashed in a local cave.