Greedy Bones

From Publishers WeeklyIn Haines's bone-rattling ninth puzzler (after 2008's Wishbones), Sarah Booth Delaney returns to Zinnia, Miss., and her ancestral home, Dahlia House, after the eruption there of a mysterious illness so scary agents from Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control must be called in. Tinkie Richmond, Sarah's best friend and PI partner, fears her husband, Oscar, is dying after a visit to the nearby cursed Carlisle cotton plantation infected with mutant boll weevils and a strange mold. Sounds like a horror movie, but it's no laughing matter as Sarah Booth sets aside her Hollywood honey, Graf Milieu, to help her former love interest, Sheriff Coleman Peters, solve a perplexing case that will eventually claim victims by such causes as shooting and hanging. Lending spectral advice is Jitty, Dahlia House's wonderfully wise haint, one of the best features of this light paranormal mystery series infused with Southern charm. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ReviewPraise for Carolyn Haines

“Wishbones is reminiscent in many ways of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels, only fresher, with a bit more of an edge and none of the pretentiousness. Light, breezy, and just plain fun. Call Haines the queen of cozies.”­---Providence Journal-Bulletin

“Haines’s warmth, wit, and authenticity come through in her characters. . . . Wishbones is a story about the bonds of friendship and the strength of Southern women and is also a good, old-fashioned, fast-moving whodunit.”--Mobile Register

“Entertaining . . . The chemistry sizzles between Graf and Sarah Booth.”“Stephanie Plum meets the Ya-Ya Sisterhood! Non-Southerners will find the madcap adventure an informative peek into an alien culture.”“Funny, ingenious . . . and delightful.”