Cosy Mystery China

It is Sunday afternoon, and Theodosia and Drayton are catering a formal tea at a hot-air-balloon rally. But as the sky turns gray and the clouds start to boil up, a strange object zooms out of nowhere. It is a drone, and it appears to be buzzing around the balloons, checking them out. As Theodosia and Drayton watch, the drone, hovering like some angry, mechanized insect, deliberately crashes into the balloon next to them. An enormous, fiery explosion erupts, and everyone watches in horror as the balloon plummets to the earth, killing all three of its passengers.

China and Ruby Wilcox are presenting their annual ''Not Just Plain Vanilla Workshop", always a huge hit with customers at Thyme & Seasons Herb Shop. But someone involved with the workshop is driven by a deadly motive, and China soon finds herself teaming up with the very pregnant Pecan Springs police chief Sheila Dawson to solve a vanilla-flavored murder.

Ex-lawyer and herb-shop proprietor China Bayles is investigating the mystery of a retired Texas Ranger shot dead with his wife’s gun...while also trying to sort out some mysteries about her own relationship after she overhears a suspicious phone conversation.

In a small Texas town, what starts as a little festive Halloween fun ends in a brutal murder. And lawyer-turned-herbalist China Bayles is even more shocked when her friend Ruby, a New Age expert in tarot and astrology, becomes the prime suspect after a minister accuses her of witchcraft. Now it’s up to China to unmask the real killer.

When a prominent animal researcher is found hanged in the midst of angry protests against his experiments, suspicion falls on biology professor Dottie Riddle. Known as the Cat Lady of Pecan Springs, Dottie's sympathy for strays—and the victim's distaste for them—gives the police reason to think she may be capable of murder. But China Bayles doesn't think so. She hires a lawyer for Dottie and starts looking around for clues. But she soon discovers that digging up old evil is a dirty and dangerous business...

China Bohannon, 1890s bookkeeper turned sleuth, is branching out…. Although still working with her uncle's detective agency, Doyle & Howe Investigations, she's almost given up on becoming a partner and is turning to providing security services, something her uncle, Montgomery Howe, and his partner, Gratton Doyle, aren't interested in.