Showing results by author "Carolyn Haines" in All Categories

Zinnia, Mississippi is rife with quirky characters, but the arrival of three sister witches - and their intention to open a Wiccan boarding school - sets the small town on its ear. And bodies begin to accumulate as a result. They're setting up their boarding school in an old dairy - a piece of property with tremendous development potential. And they're standing in the way of "progress", according to some in the town. When young Corey Fontana goes missing, Delaney Detective Agency is hired to find the youth - who's well known as a local hooligan. His mother believes the witches have abducted her son....

Meet Sarah Booth Delaney...an unconventional Southern belle whose knack for uncovering the truth is about to make her the hottest detective in Zinnia, Mississippi...if it doesn't make her the deadest. No self-respecting lady would allow herself to end up in Sarah Booth's situation. Unwed, unemployed, and over 30, she's flat broke and about to lose the family plantation. Not to mention being haunted by the ghost of her great-great-grandmother's nanny, who never misses an opportunity to remind her of her sorry state.

It's Halloween season in Mississippi as Sarah Booth and the gang gather to decorate and gush over Tinkie's new baby, Maylin. Sarah Booth is just about to refresh the cocktails when she hears a knock on the door and opens it to find a woman named Frankie, distraught at the disappearance of her daughter, Christa, a young journalist. Christa had been investigating the disappearance of young women in New Orleans over a five-year period—one every year around Halloween. Now Christa herself is missing, and Frankie fears it may be connected to a cult based in the Garden District.

Christmas is just around the corner, and Sarah Booth and Tinkie are preparing for a festive holiday season. After a turbulent season of solving cases, they're ready for some holiday cheer. Sarah Booth and Sheriff Coleman Peters have finally gotten together, and this is the first holiday they're celebrating as a couple. Sarah Booth busies herself with decking the halls and daydreaming about romantic Christmas nights with Coleman. Then her friend Cece Dee Falcon shows up needing Sarah Booth's help.

Sarah Booth has traded in hosting this Christmas season for a road trip with her besties. Each little Delta town has a special Christmas activity, and Sarah Booth’s BFF and detective partner, Tinkie, has arranged to rent a limo for the gang and drive to Columbus, MS, to stay in a B&B. Visions of Christmas shopping, parade floats, and romantic rendezvous are already dancing in their heads. But Christmas cheer soon turns to Christmas fear when, at one event after another, people keep getting hurt. Christmas karaoke gets ugly when one singer’s microphone gives her an electric shock.

In this 12th entry in the award-winning series, Carolyn Haines' intrepid PI Sarah Booth comes up against porn-star-turned-psychic Sherry Cameron, who runs a medium business from a haunted estate on the edge of town. After growing suspicious that Sherry might be exploiting her emotionally vulnerable - and extremely wealthy - clients, Sarah disguises herself as a maid and sneaks onto Sherry's estate. But what she discovers there is deadlier than she could have imagined.

Dr. Frank Hafner is an archaeologist working on excavating a new-found Native American temple site in the Mississippi Delta. He's also too handsome for his own good, and a bit of a flirt. Oddly enough, it's the first quality that gets him in trouble when he discovers the ritualistic murder of one of his archaeological crew. When Coleman Peters, Sheriff and Sarah Booth's boyfriend, takes Dr. Hafner in for questioning in the murder, the accused doctor hires Sarah Booth to clear his name.

She may be a Mississippi belle, but Sarah Booth Delaney is no pampered daddy’s girl. Unwed and over thirty, Sarah has her own set of problems - like coping with regular hauntings by her great-great-grandmother’s nanny, a busybody of a ghost who’s set on marrying her off to the first suitor who comes calling. But when an old friend is in trouble, Sarah Booth doesn’t hesitate to get involved.

Depressed after losing her unborn child, PI Sarah Booth Delaney distracts herself by checking out a beauty pageant with her friend and partner, Tinkie. This works fine—until the pageant’s top contender is poisoned. The prime murder suspect asks Sarah and Tinkie to investigate, and they agree—but their decision has grave consequences.

Winner of both the Harper Lee Award and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, Carolyn Haines has thrilled countless readers with her Sarah Booth Delaney mysteries. Here, Sarah investigates when two wealthy heiresses claim a four-million-dollar family necklace was stolen. All the evidence points to insurance fraud, but when Sarah starts poking into the family’s dark secrets, one of the heiresses disappears.

Award-winning author Carolyn Haines visits sleuth Sarah Booth Delaney and the Mississippi Delta in Buried Bones, the second novel in this popular series. Local legend Lawrence Ambrose knows the secrets of everyone in town, and he isn’t above spilling the beans in a tell-all biography. But when his biographer turns up dead and the manuscript goes missing, it’s up to Sarah to dig up the truth.

Private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney and her friends are celebrating New Year's Eve at the party of the year, a smashing Winter White Garden party at the newly renovated King Cotton Boutique Hotel. It's a dazzling success, until Frangelica "Sister" McFee walks through the door. Sarah Booth knew Sister in college, before Sister became a best-selling author and moved to New York, and fame and fortune don't seem to have tempered her arrogance and cruelty.

Christmas is six days away - and Sarah Booth Delaney has her hands full! To honor a group of international investors, Shaw, Mississippi, resurrects the old custom of drifting miniature, lighted Christmas floats down Silver Bayou. The Italian delegation from Venice may bring much-needed new jobs and commercial opportunities. Among the investors is notorious womanizer, Enzo Aceto. He is handsome, witty, and eager for new conquests. Then Enzo disappears. Rumors of murder are buzzing.

This entry in Carolyn Haines' best-selling "Bones" series finds Sarah Booth Delaney, a southern belle with a penchant for amateur sleuthing, back on the case. When black pianist Ivory Keys is murdered, Zinnia, Mississippi, divides along racial lines. The prime suspect is Scott Hampton, Key's protege, who is rich and white. Sarah is hired to prove Scott's innocence, but to do so, she'll have to navigate some treacherous waters.

When Dr. Alala Diakos, a visiting professor of Greek literature, comes to teach at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, it doesn't take long for controversy to follow. With her fervent feminist ideals and revolutionary leanings, she quickly earns the admiration of many - and the ire of others. During a speech in the park, in which Alala tries to organize the women of Zinnia to demand equal pay, the crowd gets unruly, with men heckling the professor. And then PI Sarah Booth Delaney finds a sniper rifle and scope in the bushes....

Sarah Booth and Tinkie are shopping with little Maylin when they see Sandra and Janet outside a bookstore, fur flying, and when Sandra vanishes from her own gala later that night, suspicion turns to Janet. Janet accuses Sandra of attempting to manipulate the media by a fake disappearance, but is it a stunt, or is something more sinister at play? Sarah Booth and Tinkie will have to dive deep into the history of Bay St. Louis, and even Al Capone himself, to get to the bottom of this case.

As Sarah Booth sees it, Easter weekend is a time to celebrate life in all its many forms. So when the newly-pregnant Tinkie invites her and Cece on a girls’ trip to Lucedale, Missisippi to celebrate that spring has official sprung, Sarah Booth can’t resist. Plans include facials, food, and a trip to the incredible Garden of Bones - a miniature Holy Land with recreations of all parts of the Middle East - for their Sunrise Easter Services led by biblical scholar, gardener, and creator of the Gardens Daniel Reynolds.

Sarah Booth Delaney and her friends can't help falling in love with Christmas this year, which they plan to spend celebrating the King of Rock n' Roll at the annual Elvis Festival in Tupelo. The main attraction is an Elvis impersonator competition, drawing impersonators from all over the world to honor the king. But before the revelry can get underway, a priceless jewel-encrusted belt once belonging to Elvis is stolen from its display case, and Sarah Booth and Tinkie are roped into the biggest heist in the history of Mississippi.

Sarah Booth Delaney knows the perfect way to begin recovering from both the recent attack on Scott Hampton's blues club and her broken heart. She's going to host a Thanksgiving feast for all of her friends at her ancestral home in Zinnia, Mississippi. But one bitterly cold night, with the holiday just around the corner, Sarah Booth awakens to the insistent ring of her doorbell. She opens the door to find a newborn baby in a basket sitting on her front porch - and a pool of blood slowly seeping out from the basket.

Sarah Booth Delaney's fiancé, Graf Milieu, has become depressed while recovering from a severe leg injury, but Sarah Booth knows just how to help him heal. She' s arranged a romantic getaway for the two of them at a lovely beach cottage on Dauphin Island off the Gulf Coast. On the first day of their island adventure, they take a historical tour led by Angela Trotter, a young woman well-versed in local lore, including rumors of pirate treasure hidden somewhere on the island.