Susan Wittig Albert

Best-selling author Susan Wittig Albert sets this cozy mystery in the small West Texas town of Pecan Springs. As the Christmas decorating season approaches, Thyme & Seasons proprietor China Bayles feels overwhelmed. While she tries to balance her new roles of wife and step-mom with the demands of her thriving herbal shop, her business partner-and best friend-Ruby mysteriously disappears. Soon China's cantankerous mistletoe supplier Carl turns up dead....

"In the newest China Bayles Mystery in the New York Times bestselling series, China comes to the aid of a nurse who ends up in the hospital... It's mid-April in Pecan Springs, and China is renting her guest cottage to Kelly Kaufman, who needs a temporary place to live as she contends with a very acrimonious divorce from her husband, Rich. One nasty point of dispute is her part ownership of the Comanche Creek Brewing Company, which she is refusing...

"Sheila Dawson has made history as the first female police chief in Pecan Springs, Texas. She's also cracked many a mystery in collaboration with local sleuth China Bayles--that's why everyone thinks she's such a smart cookie. Now, Sheila puts those smarts to work, sifting through secrets to find a killer on the prowl... Larry Kirk, Pecan Springs' computer guru, has been shot dead in his kitchen. At first Police Chief Sheila Dawson believes it to...

"When China's and Ruby's friend Karen Prior is mugged in a mall parking lot and dies a few days later, China begins to suspect that her friend's death was not a random assault. Karen was a filmmaker supervising a student documentary about the fifteen-year-old murder of a woman named Christine Morris and the acquittal of the man accused of the crime. Is it possible that the same person who killed Christine Morris targeted Karen? Delving into the cold...

"It's the spring of 1933 and times are tough all over. The only businessman not struggling is moonshiner Mickey LeDoux, though he still has to steer clear of federal agents. But banks are closing all over the country, and the small town of Darling is no exception. Folks are suddenly caught short on cash and everyone is in a panic. Desperate to avoid disaster, several town leaders--including Alvin Duffy, the bank's new vice president--hatch a plan...

"Spring, 1935 finds the little Alabama town of Darling excited about their new local radio station, WDAR. But there are problems brewing at the newspaper, where a trio of new hires causes headaches for editor Charlie Dickens.That's not the worst of it, though, as the Dahlias discover when the newest resident at Bessie Bloodworth's Magnolia Manor is found dead. She had overindulged in a large and very rich chocolate cake - but was something else baked...

It looks like the music has ended for Darling's favorite barbershop quartet, the Lucky Four Clovers - just days before the Dixie Regional Barbershop Competition. Another unlucky break: a serious foul-up in Darling's telephone system - and not a penny for repairs. And while liquor is legal again, moonshine isn't. Sheriff Buddy Norris needs a little luck when he goes into Briar Swamp to confront Cypress County's most notorious bootlegger. What he finds...

"From Susan Wittig Albert, the New York Times bestselling author of A Plain Vanilla Murder, comes a tightly crafted novel that juxtaposes the disappearance of a rare, remarkably illustrated 18th-century herbal with the true and all-too-human story of its gifted creator, Elizabeth Blackwell. Herbalist China Bayles' latest adventure takes her to the mountains of North Carolina, where her friend Dorothea Harper serves as the director and curator of the...

"It's Labor Day weekend, 1935, and members of the Darling Dahlias--the garden club in little Darling, Alabama--are trying to keep their cool at the end of a sizzling summer. This isn't easy, though, since there's a firebug on the loose in Darling. He--or she!--strikes without apparent rhyme or reason, and things have gotten to the point where nobody feels safe. What's more, a dangerous hurricane is poised to hurl itself in Darling's direction, while...

China Bayles teams up with an old friend to solve a murder in a South Texas ranching community.