Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755) is perceived as a two-bit hick town, filled with one-bit hicks. But the mayor's wife, Mrs. Jim Bob Buchanon, seeks to change that perception with her latest scheme: a charity golf tournament Which presents a bit of a challenge, since no one in Maggody plays golf and there is no course. But when the prize for the first hole-in-one is announced-a top-of-the-line bass boat-suddenly Maggody goes golf crazy...with limited success and maximum domestic disorder.

Besides the townspeople, there are several outside figures who actually know how to play the game. Among...

Claire Malloy loves her life. But how did it go by so fast? A bookstore owner, part-time sleuth, and full-time single mother, Claire is about to turn the big four-oh Good thing her teenage daughter, Caron, has just been recruited by the Kappa Theta Eta girls-whose sorority house is next door to the Malloys'-to be a consultant for the cosmetics empire My Beautiful Self, Inc. At the very least, Claire can get a little help with those fine lines around her eyes...but at what cost?

Turns out there's a high price to pay to look one's best. After a series of dangerous and suspicious...

Things that go bump in the Bayou...
For bookseller and amateur sleuth Claire Malloy getting a root canal beats going to a Malloy family reunion. But it is time her fifteen-year-old daughter Caron visits her deceased father's relatives. Now Claire and Caron have arrived at Malloy Manor, a run-down mansion in Louisiana's bayou country...where the mosquitoes are big enough to barbecue, the swamp is crawling with alligators, the butler looks like he stepped out of a teen slasher movie, and the wheelchair-bound matriarch, Miss Justicia, races around the grounds cackling like a...

THE GIFT THAT GIVES ON GIVING. . .
With Farberville's college on holiday break, Claire Malloy's bookstore is quiet . . . deadly quiet. Breaking the silence is a little old lady looking for volumes on pagan rituals, applied magick, and Celtic mysticism. Claire is intrigued and-miffed that her lover, Farberville police Lieutenant Peter Rosen, says she's in a rut-happily accepts an invitation to welcome the winter solstice at dawn.

HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Showing up at the Sacred Grove, Claire expects wild chanting or even nude dancing. Instead she ends up sitting on a stump...

When Claire Malloy's best friend Luanne Bradshaw goes down with a badly sprained ankle, someone must fill in her shoes as Thurberfest beauty Pageant coordinator and usher a bevy of aspiring beauty queen through the two-day event. Enter Claire Malloy to the rescue. But this is one job Claire would gladly be fired from. Now, already fending off a hostile theater owner, and overly-agressive personal trainer, an incontinent show-dog, a fifteen-year-old daughter with more growing pains than she can count, and a talent contest in need of some talent, Claire must face one more problem--someone is...