Susan Wittig Albert

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...

"This Thanksgiving, be grateful for China Bayles who teams up with an old friend to solve a complex case of theft and murder in a South Texas ranching community. It's Thanksgiving in Pecan Springs, and China is planning to visit her mother, Leatha, and her mother's husband, Sam, who are enthusiastically embarking on a new enterprise turning their former game ranch into a vacation retreat for birders. She's also looking forward to catching up with...

A haunted house awaits a woman who just witnessed a bank robbery resulting in murder. China is just trying to make a deposit when the bank is robbed, the teller shot and killed. Now, unaware of the killers' identities, China's about to encounter the haunted house her friend has been investigating. It will take all that China and her friend have not to end up like the ghosts said to roam this bed and breakfast.

"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...

A richly characterized, witty, and suspenseful story of crime and passion in small-town Texas.

"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...

Set in the summertime splendor of 1913 England, this tale finds Beatrix eager to marry her fianc©♭, solicitor William Heelis. But a few obstacles are still blocking the happy couple's path to the altar like the troubled remodeling of Castle Cottage, Will and Beatrix's future home.

"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...

"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...

China Bayles is fit to spit when her husband's troubled ex-wife, Sally, shows up at her herb shop, claiming to be broke with nowhere else to turn. When she invites Sally to stay, China starts receiving menacing calls from an "ex" of Sally's, who seems to have a connection to the murder of her parents nearly a decade ago.