For Benni, the annual San Celina Mid-State Fair is a much anticipated break in her normal routine of overseeing museum exhibits, temperamental artists and stubborn cattle. Even her police chief husband, Gabe Ortiz, takes time from his busy schedule to enjoy the fair's activities and exotic fried foods.

Forced to hide her grief when her married lover dies unexpectedly, museum curator Catherine Gehrig works in solitude to restore a nineteenth-century automaton and finds comfort in the journals of its adventurous commissioner.

Trying to leave painful memories behind her, Chloe Ellefson is making a fresh start. She's the new collections curator at Old World Wisconsin, an outdoor ethnic museum showcasing 1870's settlement life. On her first day, Chloe meets with an elderly woman who begs her to find a priceless eighteenth-century Norwegian ale bowl that had been donated to the museum years ago. But before Chloe can find the heirloom and return it to her, the woman dies in...

"Volunteered" to take over rehearsals of a children's play for the musical director of her church, Benni Harper's entertainment career comes to a dismal end when she stumbles upon the corpse of the church handyman in front of the altar.

As collections curator for Old World Wisconsin, Chloe delights in losing herself in antiques and folk traditions. When her friend's historic house is broken into, and a grisly murder takes place on the museum grounds, Chloe is drawn in to a case of plain, old-fashioned murderous greed.

"Sienna Murray was only fourteen when she pulled her neighbors out of a raging house fire. A decade later, she still can't explain what happened that night, how she knew to save them at just the right moment--or why she receives the same mysterious warning when it happens again... New member of the Krewe of Hunters elite paranormal team Detective Ryder Stapleton doesn't believe in coincidences. So when the suspicious fire he's called to investigate...

In a story sewn together as tightly as a traditional quilt, Agatha Award-winner Fowler delivers superior cozy entertainment in her ninth Benni Harper mystery (after 2001's Arkansas Traveler). In the California coastal town of San Celina, there are weddings and wished-for weddings, plus the threatened demise of Benni's two-year marriage to police chief Gabe Ortiz, brought about by the appearance of Gabe's former female partner, Del Hernandez. Just...

"Benni's taking time from her curator's job at the folk-art museum to sponsor a "senior prom" - with a Mardi Gras theme - at San Celina's retirement home. She hopes Police Chief Gabe Ortiz can get away from his job for at least one dance. But instead she ends up waltzing with Clay O'Hara, the Colorado cowboy she had a crush on when she was seventeen. Benni also finds herself refereeing an argument involving Clays' curmudgeonly uncle. Both events have...

Lindsay Danner is asked by the Chinese and American governments to find and authenticate bronze statues stolen from Emperor Qin's grave, drawing her into a nightmare world of conspiracy and betrayal with only infamous ex-CIA agent Jacob MacArthur Catlin to guide her.