Claire Malloy

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. Someone is definitely dead-but is it murder?

Claire Malloy, now a married woman of leisure, tries her hand at volunteering but instead lands right in the middle of another murder investigation.Longtime bookseller and single mother Claire Malloy has recently married her long-term beau and moved out of her less than opulent apartment into a sprawling, newly remodeled house. Her daughter, Caron, is making plans for college. All of this leaves Claire with something she hasn't had in quite a while: spare time.When her attempts to learn French cooking start getting mixed reviews, she agrees to help Caron and her best friend Inez fluff up their college applications by volunteering as an ESL tutor with the Farberville Literacy Council. But her modest effort to give back quickly becomes a nightmare when she's railroaded onto the board of directors of the troubled nonprofit. Vandalism, accusations of embezzlement, epic budget problems, and a cacophony of heavily accented English speakers are just the tip of the iceberg. Just as she decides that it might be best to extricate herself, Claire gets a frantic call from her husband, Deputy Chief Peter Rosen. One of the students, an older Russian woman named Ludmilla, famed for her unpleasantness, has been murdered in the offices of the Farberville Literary Council. For the first time ever, Peter actually asks Claire for her help.

Semiretired bookseller and former single parent to a challenging teen, the not-so-newly remarried Claire Malloy finds herself entangled in yet another case of felonious doings in this latest cozy. Claire Malloy, for as long as she can remember, has been the local bookseller and owner of the Book Depot and the widowed mother of teenage Caron, who frequently speaks in "all caps." But her life has changed dramatically in recent years. Claire has married her longtime beau, Deputy Police Chief Peter Rosen. Still the owner of the Book Depot, Claire has passed the day-to-day running of it on to her very efficient employees. With Caron inching ever closer to college, there's but one thing that remains steadfastly unchanged-Claire's astonishing ability to attract, find, or even just randomly stumble across trouble. Summoned for jury duty, Claire is humiliated when the prosecutor, harboring a grudge against her husband, dismisses her in a spectacular enough fashion to make the local news. As a result, Claire decides revenge will be the next dish she serves. She hunts down the defendant in the case, a woman accused of murdering her husband, and offers to help prove her innocence. And not just because Claire wants to humiliate the prosecutor. There are only two problems: One, the defendant is looking guiltier by the minute. Two, the worst day imaginable has finally come-Claire's dreaded new mother-in-law is coming to visit, and life in prison is starting to look good.