The author of more than a dozen novels, Carolyn Haines is the recipient of the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence. Depressed after losing her unborn child, PI Sarah Booth Delaney distracts herself by checking out a beauty pageant with her friend and partner, Tinkie. This works fine-until the pageant's top contender is poisoned. The prime murder suspect asks Sarah and Tinkie to investigate, and they agree-but their decision has grave consequences....

The unconscionable incident with Calvin Sharp caused Isabel Johansen to leave culinary school and flee to her family's home, Bella Vista, nestled in the Sonoma wine country. Isabel continues to hone her culinary skills while turning Bella Vista into a destination for food lovers. She even adds a cooking school and is eagerly planning Bella Vista's first major event, her sister Tess' wedding. But Isabel's hard-earned happiness is shattered when Calvin,...

"Married for eight years with no children to help fill her days, Heidi Troyer cooks up the idea of teaching classes in the art of Amish cuisine in her Holmes County, Ohio, home. But it is a recipe for drama when five very different men and women answer the advertisement. Charlene Higgins is engaged, but to the despair of her fiancé's family, she can't cook. Kendra Perkins, a teen estranged from her family, is facing an unwanted pregnancy alone. Loretta...

The Perfect Passion Dating Company at No. 24 Mouse Lane in Edinburgh's New Town is run by Katie Donald who has an innate instinct for bringing people together. She has developed a skill for finding out what it is that people really want. Along the way, Katie learns profound lessons about her own desires as she works at better understanding others. Although Katie has little in the way of direct experience, with the help of her amiable and handsome...

"Clementine Cooper is an ambitious 26-year-old sous-chef at a hot vegan restaurant in Santa Monica. Clementine has worked hard for her position and earned a promotion over a backstabbing fellow line-cook, but when an important food critic visits the restauarant, Clementine's rival sabotages her vegan cooking by adding butter to the recipe. When Clementine finds herself fired and blackballed in L.A., she decides to use the personal low as a chance...

Betts and Gram agree to help their friend Jake at the Broken Rope, Missouri, Historical Society by accommodating some foodie tourists for the night and occupying them with cooking lessons. It couldn't be worse timing when the pair encounters the ax-wielding ghost of Sally Swarthmore, one of the town's legendary murderers. Sally wants Betts to help find her diary, which could prove that Sally was not a villain. Then one tourist turns up dead and two...

Betts Winston inherited her Gram's ability to talk to ghosts of people that roamed the streets of Broken Rope, Missouri, in the days of the Old West. With their cooking school on spring break, Betts and Gram are at the cowboy poetry convention offering lessons on frying catfish over a campfire. But when a staged gunfight ends in real death and her brother Teddy becomes a prime suspect, Betts may be the one to jump from the frying pan into the fire....