Ex-lawyer and herb-shop proprietor China Bayles is investigating the mystery of retired Texas Ranger shot dead with his wife's gun...and at the same time trying to sort out some mysteries about her own relationship after she overhears a suspicious phone conversation...

Between the herb shop, the catering business, and now a weekend paper-making class, China Bayles and her friends have as much work as they can handle. Of course, that doesn’t stop the rest of their lives from going on—or coming to an end, as the case may be. Meanwhile, China’s half-brother is opening up old wounds, trying to investigate their father’s supposedly accidental death. Although she can’t stop her husband from taking the case—after...

On an island on the edge of an immense sea there is a city, a forest, and a boy. The city is called Asteri, a perfect city that was saved by the magic woven into its walls from a devastating plague that swept through the world over a hundred years before. The forest is called the Barrow, a vast wood of ancient trees that encircles the city and feeds the earth with magic. And the boy is called Oscar, a shop boy for the most powerful magician in the...

Business is booming at China Bayles' newest venture, Thyme for Tea -- but she's too distracted to revel in her latest entrepreneurial triumph. When the former big-city lawyer isn't trying to spend more time with her new husband and stepson, she's worrying about Ruby, who just hasn't been herself lately. To further complicate matters, China has to round up a supply of mistletoe, the season's most popular herb. It seems an easy enough task -- until...

China Bayles tries to set aside her suspicions over Sally's motives when she shows up at China's herb shop over the Christmas season and claims she has nowhere to go, but when she begins to receive menacing phone calls at the shop and on her unlisted home line, China is curious about a possible connection between one of Sally's ex-boyfriends and her parents' murder ten years before.

China Bayles is shocked to learn that her friend Jo committed suicide, and she believes there is more to the case than anyone knows, but when she decides to investigate, she learns that someone is hiding a deadly secret.

"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 Hemlock House Library, a priceless collection of rare gardening books housed in a haunted mountainside mansion that once belonged to Sunny Carswell, a reclusive heiress. But the most valuable book-A Curious Herbal, created by Elizabeth Blackwell in the 1730s-is missing and Dorothea is under...

After a woman is killed in an arson-homicide, Jessica Nelson, an intern-reporter at the local paper, is assigned to cover the story. When Jessica disappears, China Bayles is determined to find her, before she becomes a headline herself.

"China and Ruby Wilcox are presenting their annual ''Not Just Plain Vanilla Workshop,'' always a huge hit with customers at Thyme & Seasons Herb Shop. But someone involved with the workshop is driven by a deadly motive, and China soon finds herself teaming up with the very pregnant Pecan Springs police chief Sheila Dawson to solve a vanilla-flavored murder. Sheila, happy to get out from behind the chief's desk, is investigating the death of a botany...

An opportunity to put aside the horrors of war is dashed when bodies begin to pile up at St. Peter's Fair St. Peter's Fair is a grand, festive event, attracting merchants from across England and beyond. There is a pause in the civil war racking the country in the summer of 1139, and the fair promises to bring some much-needed gaiety to the town of Shrewsbury-until the body of a wealthy merchant is found murdered in the river Severn. Was Thomas of...