"Nightshade"
The 3rd and final book in a 3-part mystery delving into the death of China Bayles father and then 1/2 brother.
China Bayles is an ex-lawyer that runs an herbal gift shop in Pecan Springs. She is our main character and married to an ex-homicide detective who has started his own private investigation business. The case he is currently working on is the death of China’s father, along with her 1/2 brother. When the brother is found dead in his work’s parking garage, it appears there is much more to the equation than adds up.
Being her brother’s designated executor has given her a cache of clues to follow and a few old friends to lose. Of course, the list of suspects are extensive, given his work as a lawyer in a firm of nepotistic good ol boys.
I found some educational tips here, especially dealing with the father’s Cadillac (of which in he died) and of course, herbal-related remedies and lore.
This book was not as intense as the previous “Spanish Dagger” but still a good read.
The regular and expanding cast of characters are there, side-lining, with a few newbies. I try not to get attached to the latest introductions, as they may not make it through the story, sigh!
Each book has herbal tips and lore related to the titled plant, as well as recipes of mentioned meals and resources for further herbal ingestion.
"A Plain Vanilla Murder"
China Bayles is an ex-lawyer that runs an herbal gift shop in Pecan Springs. She is our main character and married to an ex-homicide detective who has started his own private investigation business. The case he is currently working on is the death of China’s father, along with her 1/2 brother. When the brother is found dead in his work’s parking garage, it appears there is much more to the equation than adds up.
Being her brother’s designated executor has given her a cache of clues to follow and a few old friends to lose. Of course, the list of suspects are extensive, given his work as a lawyer in a firm of nepotistic good ol boys.
I found some educational tips here, especially dealing with the father’s Cadillac (of which in he died) and of course, herbal-related remedies and lore.
This book was not as intense as the previous “Spanish Dagger” but still a good read.
The regular and expanding cast of characters are there, side-lining, with a few newbies. I try not to get attached to the latest introductions, as they may not make it through the story, sigh!
Each book has herbal tips and lore related to the titled plant, as well as recipes of mentioned meals and resources for further herbal ingestion.
"A Plain Vanilla Murder"
Sheila, happy to get out from behind the chief's desk, is investigating the death of a botany professor, a prominent researcher specializing in vanilla orchids. China is trying to help a longtime friend: the dead professor's ex-wife and a prime suspect in his murder.
However, there's no shortage of other suspects: a betrayed lover, a disgruntled graduate student, jealous colleagues, and a gang of orchid smugglers. But the lethal roots of this mystery reach back into the dark tropical jungles of Mexico, where the vanilla vine was first cultivated. At stake: a lucrative plant patent, an orchid that is extinct in the wild, and the life of an innocent little girl.
A Plain Vanilla Murder is a flavorful blend of mystery and herb lore, present sins and past secrets, and characters who are as real as your next-door neighbors stirred together in an absorbing novel that only Susan Wittig Albert could create.
”Mourning Gloria”
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Another good
one from this
Texas writer.
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While Pecan Springs, Texas bustles back to life in the warmth of spring, one woman's life is tragically brought to an end.
Herbalist (and former lawyer) China Bayles happens upon a burning house trailer and hears a woman screaming for help. The evidence leaves no doubt that it's arson homicide.
Jessica Nelson, an intern-reporter at the local paper, is assigned to cover the story. But she's gotten herself too deeply involved.
When Jessica disappears, China is determined to find her, before she becomes headlines herself.
"Holly Blues"
Christmas with herbalist China Bayles and a visitor who spells trouble.
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This is a Texas
author, whose
background was
at my alma
mater. Glad I
found her.
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When Mike’s former wife, Brian’s mom Sally Strahorn, turns up begging for a place to stay, China, a tough former trial lawyer, feels sorry for Sally, who has multiple-personality disorder and claims to be broke.
Things change when China starts getting phone calls from a polite but somehow menacing stranger who wants to see Sally and claims to have the car Sally says was repossessed.
Though a case takes Mike to Omaha and leaves China on her own, she can always count on her business partner Ruby and her friends, who include the chief of police and the county sheriff. Sally vanishes just before the police chief comes looking for her as a person of interest in her sister’s murder.
She pops up just long enough to phone China and beg her to get Mike to go to her hometown in Kansas, where the librarian claims to know who murdered Sally’s parents and perhaps lit the fuse to all her current problems. For the sake of Brian, China and Mike struggle to find the truth.
"Bittersweet"
How will Leatha manage if Sam can’t carry his share? She does have a helper, Sue Ellen Krause. But China discovers that Sue Ellen, who is in the process of leaving her marriage to the assistant foreman at a large trophy game ranch, is in some serious trouble. Before Sue Ellen can tell China the full story, her car veers off a deserted road and she is killed.
Meanwhile, when a local veterinarian is shot in what appears to be a burglary at his clinic, Mack Chambers believes his murder could be related to fawns stolen from a nearby ranch. As Mack follows the trail, China begins to wonder if Sue Ellen’s death may not have been an accident, and if there’s a connection to the stolen animals. But their search for the truth may put their own lives in danger.
When China’s and Ruby’s friend Karen Prior is mugged in a mall parking lot and dies a few days later, China begins to suspect that her friend’s death was not a random assault.
Karen was a filmmaker supervising a student documentary about the fifteen-year-old murder of a woman named Christine Morris and the acquittal of the man accused of the crime. Is it possible that the same person who killed Christine Morris targeted Karen?
Delving into the cold case, China learns the motive for the first murder may be related to a valuable collection of Mexican art.
Enlisting the help of her San Antonio lawyer friend Justine Wyzinski—aka the Whiz—China is determined to track down the murderer. But is she painting herself into a corner from which there’s no escape?
"The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush"
Desperate to avoid disaster, several town leaders—including Alvin Duffy, the bank’s new vice president—hatch a plan to print Darling Dollars on newspaperman Charlie Dickens’ printing press.
The “funny money” can serve as temporary currency so the town can function. But when the first printing of the scrip disappears, the Darling Dahlias set out to discover who made an unauthorized withdrawal.
Meanwhile County Treasurer Verna Tidwell questions whether she can trust Alvin Duffy—and the feelings he stirs up inside her. And Liz Lacy learns her longtime beau may be forced into a shotgun wedding. Seems other troubles don’t just go away when there’s a crisis. There’ll be no pennies from heaven, but if anyone can balance things out, folks can bank on the Darling Dahlias
"Loving Eleanor"
| When AP political reporter Lorena Hickok—Hick—is assigned to cover Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the wife of the 1932 Democratic presidential candidate, the two women become deeply, intimately involved.Their relationship begins with mutual romantic passion, matures through stormy periods of enforced separation and competing interests, and warms into an enduring, encompassing friendship that ends only with both women's deaths in the 1960s—all of it documented by 3300 letters exchanged more than 30 years. |
Now, New York Times bestselling author Susan Wittig Albert recreates the fascinating story of Hick and Eleanor, set during the chaotic years of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War. Loving Eleanor is Hick's personal story, revealing Eleanor as a complex, contradictory, and entirely human woman who is pulled in many directions by her obligations to her husband and family and her role as the nation's First Lady, as well as by a compelling need to care and be cared for. For her part, Hick is revealed as an accomplished journalist, who, at the pinnacle of her career, gives it all up for the woman she loves. Then, as Eleanor is transformed into Eleanor Everywhere, First Lady of the World, Hick must create her own independent, productive life.
Drawing on extensive research in the letters that were sealed for a decade following Hick's death, Albert creates a compelling narrative: a dramatic love story, vividly portraying two strikingly unconventional women, neither of whom is satisfied to live according to the script society has written for her.
Loving Eleanor is a profoundly moving novel that illuminates a relationship we are seldom privileged to see and celebrates the depth and durability of women's love.
Susan Wittig Albert has been a full-time novelist since she left her career as a university English professor and administrator in 1985.A New York Times bestselling author, her books include biographical fiction (A Wilder Rose) and mystery and historical fiction: the bestselling China Bayles mysteries; The Darling Dahlias; the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter; and the Robin Paige Victorian/Edwardian mysteries written with her husband, Bill Albert.
Working together, the Alberts have also written over 60 young adult novels.
Susan's earlier nonfiction work includes Work of Her Own, a study of women who left their careers, and Writing From Life: Telling Your Soul's Story, a guidebook for women memoirists. That book led to the founding of the Story Circle Network in 1997.
She has edited two anthologies for the Story Circle Network: With Courage and Common Sense (2004) andWhat Wildness Is This: Women Write about the Southwest (2007).
Susan's most recent nonfiction work includes two memoirs: An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days andTogether, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place. She serves as a co-editor ofStoryCircleBookReviews.
Susan says that she "grew up rural" and is proud to claim farming in her family heritage. She continues to live the rural life with Bill in the Texas Hill Country, where she writes, gardens, and raises a varying assortment of barnyard creatures. She has three children, eight grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
