Miriam R. Crump

Just when feisty, full-figured Savannah Reid's life seems calm and peaceful, her spoiled, egocentric baby sister comes knocking. Atlanta is determined to become a star, and the Miss Gold Coast Beauty Pageant is her first step. Savannah's alarmed at Atlanta's growing obsession with her appearance. She blames it on the beauty pageant...where the competition has become so fierce that someone's been driven to murder.

>Goldy Schulz knows her food is to die for, but she never expects one of her best friends to actually keel over when she's leaving a birthday party Goldy has catered. At first, everyone assumes that all the fun and excitement of the party, not to mention the rich fare, did her in. But what looks like a coronary turns out to be a generous serving of cold-blooded murder. And the clever culprit is just getting cooking. When a colleague - a woman who resembles Goldy - is stabbed, and Goldy is attacked outside her house, it becomes clear that the popular caterer is the main course on a killer menu.

Tucked away in the rolling hills of rural western Virginia lies the storybook resort of Storyton Hall, catering to book lovers who want to get away from it all. To increase her number of bookings, resort manager Jane Steward has decided to host a Murder and Mayhem week so that fans of the mystery genre can gather together for some role-playing and fantasy crime solving.

Maggie Phillips hasn't had it easy. As the wife of retired Navy SEAL, and the adoptive mother of two little hellions, Maggie is constantly looking for ways to improve her family's financial situation. She accepts a cleaning position for her new neighbors (who redefine the term eccentric), never imagining she will end up as the sole alibi for a man with a fascination for medieval torture devices when he is brought up on murder charges.

Charlie's last case left her tired and emotionally drained, so her office staff convinces her to vacation in Kauai. Charlie is riding in a helicopter when she and the pilot spot a dead body lying on the rugged rocks of Kauai's NaPali coast. Mack Garvey, the owner of the helicopter tour company, is accused of the murder. Charlie wants to avoid the whole mess but is persuaded to help Garvey prove his innocence. As the tension builds, Charlie roots out the suspects one by one never dreaming that her own life is about to be snuffed out by sinister means.

As a new witch - not to mention owner of Savannah's most enchanting bakery - Katie Lightfoot is still getting used to casting spells, brewing potions, and mastering her magical powers. But that doesn't mean she can't find time to enjoy a picnic with firefighter Declan McCarthy . . . until she stumbles upon a corpse. The dead man's tattoo reveals he was a member of a secret society - and it turns out he's missing an object that was very important to the group.

Between brewing magically spiced treats at Honeybee Bakery and volunteering with a local conservation group, Katie Lightfoot barely has time to see her firefighter boyfriend, Declan McCarthy, much less delve further into her destiny as a witch. But avoiding her fate won't be as easy as whipping up a new recipe-especially when Katie finds herself once again mixed up in murder.

Samantha Sweet breaks into houses for a living - all perfectly legal as a caretaker for the USDA. But her real dream is to open her own pastry shop, 'Sweet's Sweets.' Life is a little crazy for Sam right now. At one of her break-in properties, a dying woman insists that she take a small wooden box. Sam doesn't realize that the old woman was known locally as a 'bruja,' a witch, until she begins to feel some strange effects from the box.

Establishing her own business as a private detective in San Carmelita, California, karate expert and sleuth Savannah Reid is hired by real-estate broker Brian O'Donnell to find his long-lost sister, but the case soon becomes complicated by murder.

Finding herself in over her head with a case involving a politician's infidelities, Memphis-born karate expert Detective Sergeant Savannah Reid is told that she must turn in her badge because she is overweight.