Kaitlin Singer needs time off—from a philandering husband, from a writing career stalled on a buzzard as a main character, and from the stash of chocolate in her lingerie drawer. Her decision to return to her childhood home might seem like the perfect way to get her life back together were it not for her mother foisting two visitors on her, guests who claim to be guardian angels. Perhaps not all is lost, for the angels might just be the companions she needs to help her solve the murder of a local newspaper columnist. To uncover clues to the crime, Kaitlin takes over the dead woman’s work, writing the column as well as volunteering in the senior center, moves that put her in the path of the killer. She and her guests will need assistance from a pot-bellied pig and some pool skills to bring the murderer down.

Emily Rhodes came to rural Florida for the cowboys, the cattle, and to do a little country two-step, not to fall head first onto a dead body in a dumpster. Ah, the golden years of retirement in the sunshine state. They’re more like pot metal to Emily Rhodes, who discovers the body of the county’s wealthiest rancher in the Big Lake Country Club dumpster. With her close friend accused of the murder, Emily sets aside her grief at her life partner’s death to find the real killer.

She underestimates the obstacles rural Florida can set up for a winter visitor and runs afoul of a local judge with his own version of justice, hires a lawyer who works out of a retirement home, and flees wild fires -- hand-in-hand with the man she believes to be the killer.

Angela Baker should be thrilled at having given birth to her third baby, but her mother always finds a way of spoiling the moment. This time Mom takes a cruise specializing in plastic surgery and ends up overboard, murdered and leaving Angela to identify the body. But is it Mom? Angela isn't certain but, then again...who would be? The woman has become unrecognizable as a result of too many little "procedures."

Pushed by a detective determined to close the book on the murder, Angela does her own investigating and turns up more than one mother as well as the knife-wielding doctor from hell.

A new short story from our Fingerprints line and the author of MURDER WITH ALL THE TRIMMINGS.