Frank Carlson Library

In this delightful prequel to the beloved Tourist Trap mystery series, lawyer Jill Gardner flees job burnout to take a vacation—and finds a brand-new life on the California coast.
Jill's family law career is in a rut. Watching a client go back to her abusive husband, yet again—and then learning she's been passed up for a partnership, yet again—finally prompts her to take a break. She'll have to dip into her emergency...

Head back to snowy Michigan just in time for the annual cherry pit spitting contest. It's all fun and games until the local drama professor chokes on more than just his pride.

Shiloh Bellamy can hardly believe it—for the first time in her family farm's seventy-year history, she has managed to score a highly-coveted booth at the Cherry Farm Market in Traverse City, Michigan. It's a huge win in her master plan to bring the

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Widowhood and weirdos, online and off, NORMA is so dark it smarts. It's a terrible freedom to linger unaccounted for. Norma is waking up and cracking up. Decades of marriage, housekeeping, and family responsibility: buried with her husband Hank. Now, she's free, gorging on an online riot of canceled soap operas, message boards, and grocery store focus groups. Transcribing chatter for fifty cents a minute. It's all of humanity-grim, funny, and desperate-wafting...

The third noir mystery featuring P.I. Lennox Cooper, a smart detective, a smart poker player, and one of today's boldest heroines in the sorority of lonesome gumshoes. Flinty ex-cop, poker-playing, private detective, Lennox Cooper stands alone in championing Tomek Jagoda, darling son of a Portland crime family, accused of murdering his high-living girlfriend. The cops have proof that will send Tomek to prison for life, and prosecuting the case...

The decision to help one small boy turns eight elderly women's lives upside-down. Danger becomes a way of life. If the women are going to save the boy and stay alive, they are going to have to use skills that have been dormant way too long.

"This fun romp covers it all-car chases, shootings, eccentric-uncles-turned-amateur-playwrights and end-of-the-world computer viruses."-Publishers Weekly Charley Fairfax-heiress, theatrical producer, newlywed-is intent on living happily ever after with her tall, dark, and sarcastic husband Jack. The only mysteries before her are which play to choose for next season and how to decorate her dining room. But when Jack is hired to investigate mysterious...

While the almost castle crumbles around them, Alicia desperately searches for the answers she wants and needs. Every creepy room demands a thorough search. Someone is trying to kill her, and she doesn't even know why, let alone, who. Each room she searches is a challenge and each is either fascinating or horrifying. The huge cat now follows her everywhere, even into closed rooms. If she can discover his secret before one of the murder attempts...

"Spices are flying off the shelves of Spice It Up!, and Piper Prescott couldn't be happier. It's that time of year again--time for the annual Brandywine Creek Barbecue Festival. Soon contestants and BBQ aficionados from all over the Southeast will converge on the town. Many of Brandywine Creek's citizens plan to participate in the week-long festivities and are busily concocting savory rubs and sassy sauces. Among the locals vying for the grand...

The battle is not over. After stopping the evil doctor Kessler, Gwen and Mickie have to cross over his victims to clean up his mess. But shadows are still lingering, engulfing spirits. That, together with a vision of Kessler talking to someone he addresses as "master" makes the supernatural duo understand the man they fought so hard to bring down is not the one in control here. To make matters worse, Gwen's mother who came back to life in the most...

The wealthy McNamara clan -- plus a few angry ex-wives -- gather on the eve of the city's centennial. When writer Olivia Wright tries to add flesh and blood to the memoirs of the family matriarch, she finds more blood than she bargained for.