Joan Hess

After a crossbow killing at a cheap roadside motel, Ozarks police chief Arly Hanks finds herself investigating her first murder case. Her marriage over and career gone bust, Arly Hanks flees Manhattan for her hometown: Maggody, Arkansas. In a town this size, nothing much ever happens, so Arly figures she's safe as the town's first female chief of police-until the husband of one of the local barmaids escapes from state prison and heads for town. And...

A renaissance fair is coming to the relatively quiet college town of Farberville, Arkansas. Though resistant to getting involved, Claire Malloy, local bookseller and mother of the perpetually petulant teen Caron, finds herself drawn into the strange inner workings of the group putting on the fair. But a dark mood falls over the festivities when one of the organizers is a victim of arson, and her body is found in the burned wreckage of her rented house....

Joan Hess, highly acclaimed author, is known for her wonderful sense of the bizarre and talent for spinning a web of intrigue. She perpetually packs her unique mystery series with murder and mayhem in the not-so-sleepy town of Maggody, Arkansas. Maggody Police Chief Arly Hanks is all shook up when she hears that her mother collapsed during a pilgrimage to Graceland and is in a Memphis hospital. Another member of the tour is pushed to her death from...

Finding what she hopes will be an ideal house to share with her new husband and teenage daughter, Claire Malloy learns that the property's previous owner died under suspicious circumstances and that a real estate agent has gone missing.

When the winner of the local golf tournament is found dead in his awarded bass boat, Sheriff Arly Hanks has a host of jealous suspects.

Claire Malloy balances her duties as single mother and bookstore owner against her part-time sleuthing when she investigates the murder of a local sorority girl.