Susan Wittig Albert

"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...

China Bayles isn't anxious to leave her herb shop in the Texas Hill Country for two whole weeks. But her friends and family are urging her to get some rest, and a historic Shaker village in Kentucky seems the ideal place for it. At Mount Zion, China can assist her friend Martha with some herbal workshops while learning about the Shakers, famous for their peaceful ways. As it turns out, the modern version of the village is plagued by misfortune - and...

Herbalist and ex-lawyer China Bayles decides to take a respite from the stresses of her life by accompanying her wheelchair-bound boyfriend to a chili cook-off, but her burdens only get worse when judge Jerry Jeff Cody dies at the scene from a severe allergic reaction to a peanut that mysteriously made its way into a bowl of Texas chili.

"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...

"The Eleven O'clock Lady has always been one of garden club president Liz Lacy's favorite spring wildflowers. The plant is so named because the white blossoms don't open until the sun shines directly on them and wakes them up. But another Eleven O'Clock Lady is never going to wake up again. Rona Jean Hancock--a telephone switchboard operator who earned her nickname because her shift ended at eleven, when her nightlife was just beginning--has been...

The tiny town of Indigo, Texas, is the perfect setting for China Bayles to teach a “Colors to Dye For” workshop. With artists flocking to the countryside in growing numbers, Indigo is coming back to life. Only one person stands in the way of the town’s revival: longtime resident Casey Ford, who has decided to sell his profitable mining rights. Once the deal is done, Indigo will be dead and buried. But when Ford winds up dead himself—from a...

"In 1940, art-world icon Georgia O'Keeffe bought a house in a mountain-rimmed New Mexico desert, planning to live there for six months every year. To manage her remote household while she paints, O'Keeffe invited Maria Chabot-a young and naïve would-be writer-to join her. Their tempestuous relationship endured throughout the chaotic years of WW2; the death of Georgia's domineering, philandering husband (famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz); and...

When AP political reporter Lorena Hickok is assigned to cover Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of 1932 Democratic candidate FDR, the women become deeply, intimately involved.

It looks like the music has ended for Darling's favorite barbershop quartet, the Lucky Four Clovers - just days before the Dixie Regional Barbershop Competition. Another unlucky break: a serious foul-up in Darling's telephone system - and not a penny for repairs. And while liquor is legal again, moonshine isn't. Sheriff Buddy Norris needs a little luck when he goes into Briar Swamp to confront Cypress County's most notorious bootlegger. What he finds...

China Bayles investigates when a prominent researcher is murdered and suspicion falls on her friend, the Cat Lady, a biologist and animal rights activist.