When Meredith Morehouse, curator of the eclectic Imogene Museum, finds an empty ornate frame, the still-life painting hurriedly sheared from its moorings, she and Sheriff Marge Stettler scramble to identify the intruder.Not because his taste in art is questionable, but because the thief's intimate knowledge of the museum and its collections indicates much more is at stake.Is the thief a friend or stranger?It doesn't help that the population of Platts Landing, Washin...

Sockeye County has a lot of nooks and crannies. Combine a vast expanse of mostly wilderness with a sparse and fiercely independent populace, and—naturally—the sheriff's department is stretched thin. Which makes it a terrific place to commit a murder. And hide the evidence. In theory.Except there's a witness. One small for his age but remarkably resilient witness. Who's found shelter in an empty fifth-wheel trailer near a house where a nice couple named Pete and Meredith seem to be ...

Meredith Morehouse, curator of the eclectic Imogene Museum, stumbles upon the remnants of a stolen shipment of scary-looking wood figurines. Are they smuggled national treasures or clever fakes?While Meredith is sucked into the secret federal probe of the fishy figurines and their importer, her ex-fiancé—a man so annoyingly arrogant he could easily drive someone to murder—returns for another round of marriage proposals, and he won't take no for an answer. Just when her friendship w...

When asked to research old documents for a local family, Meredith Morehouse, curator of the eclectic Imogene Museum, jumps at the chance.As if she didn't already have enough to do. She's trying to hire a new gift shop manager while also keeping tabs on Rupert Hagg, the museum director who is remarkably blind to the wiles of a persistent, gold-digging newcomer. And she still needs to find time to see Pete Sills, the hunky tugboat captain she's just started dating.Then Meredi...

Meredith Morehouse, curator of the eclectic Imogene Museum, is suddenly short-staffed. Her favorite (and only) graduate student intern, Greg, is missing—without leaving behind so much as an empty pizza box, to say nothing of a note.Plus, a prowler has been rearranging the museum's brand new chamber pot exhibit. When Meredith's nighttime vigil to flush out the intruder results in witnessing a murder, she calls in Sheriff Marge Stettler.Soon nearly all the inhabitants of the ...

The middle of nowhere is often on the way from here to there. A thoroughfare, if you will. Nothing wrong with that.Usually the people who live in the unassuming, odd-name towns along a bustling interstate highway are happy for the trade, the small influx of income, and they tolerate the gas-hog semitrucks and their drivers and the corporate entities who make all that commerce possible.Until the most valuable form of commerce turns out to be nothing like the logos plastered ...

Everyone's talking about it. The heist of the century.Klickitat County hasn't seen an absconding of this sort since the days of stagecoaches and payrolls delivered in gold.Technology is the new gold, and believe it or not, it can go missing. Right off a railroad side rail in the middle of the night.And while everybody's talking, nobody's saying anything of substance. Which makes Jericho McElroy mighty glad that he's not the sheriff tasked with solving the theft....

Do small-town residents commit crimes? You bet they do!On a grand scale? Even better!If they can get away with it.But Rosie Trout hasn't dealt with corruption on the national stage just to miss it when it happens at the community garden club. There might be some fleecing going on, but no one's going to pull the wool over her eyes.Not while she has her wits about her. And not while she can rope Sergeant Flip Baylar into going undercover before someone else ge...

Stay up late tonight reading (and chuckling).When Nora Sheldon's husband is kidnapped while they're on their honeymoon, all her hopes and plans tumble into a nightmare. Then the FBI comes knocking. Turns out Nora doesn't know Skip as well as she thought she did, and the feds are equally anxious about his fate. Not to mention they sure did a shoddy job of keeping him under surveillance.But Nora has an advantage. She's not bound by the rules and procedures th...

Jericho McElroy can reflexively nail the make year of a classic Chevy just by the size of its vestigial tailfins, pinpoint the best locations to stash drugs inside a Honda Civic's door panels, winch anything out of any ditch anywhere, and find the perfect match for the crown molding in his old Craftsman fixer-upper. He generally cobbles together a living by converting just about any piece of trash into some kind of treasure. He also happens to be an expert at fending off the desperate adva...

When an expansion project results in the discovery of a priceless trove of stolen artwork, Nora Ingram-Sheldon learns just how personal her criminal fugitive husband's quest is. Clues are dropping into place just as even more pop up.But can she trust Skip to feed her the information she needs to keep the boys' camp at Mayfield safe, even as the number of boys under Walt Neftali's care increases? And what is she supposed to do with her newly-arrived, newly twelve-stepping mother-in-...

Families. Ugh.Well, not entirely. But just at this moment, Eva Malloy's family is being terrorized by an orange-haired bridezilla of a mother-in-law with gaudy taste in haute couture.But when their dress designer learns she's on the receiving end of an FBI investigation, Eva has to step in—to protect the young entrepreneur's reputation if not her own dignity when she walks down the aisle as matron of honor.It's a tangled web, and the young woman is almost petrified ...