From her widow's walk, Bessie King, watches and waits for her husband, Adam. For many months, day after day, she climbs that ladder and looks out over the Texas plains. Her sons watch and see her pain and heartache. Andrew, thirteen, slips away early one morning to search for his stepfather. After a year of waiting, Bessie is certain she has lost them both. Now she is left to survive on the Texas panhandle with her son, Matthew, and an orphan Kiowa baby, she has named Ki. Matthew's anger grows each day as he sees his mother climbing down from the structure Adam built for her, with tears in...

A marital spat at a carwash turns deadly - and Mabel Wickles, Parson's Cove's amateur sleuth, isn't buying the claim that the victim's wife bashed him over the head with a brick. However, when the woman confesses to the murder, Mabel decides to investigate the crime herself - along with help from her best friend Flori, her cat Sammy, and a busload of senior citizens.

When Mabel Wickles decides to retire from being Parson's Cove's only amateur sleuth, she never dreams that she might be back to work on a cold case. However, there is no body - only a mother who left her husband and deserted her children many years ago. All Mabel has to go on is a young doctor newly arrived in town who seems to have too much money for a physician starting out, the missing woman's daughter who's recently secured a plush job at the local hospital, and her father, the local moonshiner. Besides being frustrated with the lack of clues about the missing Patterson mother, Mabel is...