Nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, the charming little hamlet of Alpine is welcoming Thanksgiving with open arms, while Emma Lord, editor and publisher of The Alpine Advocate, feels her spirits sink. With no family or friends to share the day, Emma wonders how she managed to screw up her life so badly. But on the Monday after the holiday, a call from Sheriff Dodge concerning a trio of alarming unsigned letters leaves Emma no time to...

Members of the Burl Creek Thimble Club, a quilting circle in small-town Alpine, Washington, are planning a fete to welcome back Genevieve Bayard, who left Alpine, decades ago. But Gen's homecoming is cut decidedly short when she dies at a dinner party. Emma Lord, owner and publisher of the local newspaper arrives on the scene to report the incident and sleuth her way to the truth.

As an early summer heat wave beats down on Alpine, Emma Lord and her staff at the Alphne Advocate are treading lightly. For unfathomable reasons, House & Home editor Vida Runkel refuses to speark to anyone. So when a peculiar young woman walks in claiming her parents have been murdered and she's in mortal danger, it fits right in with the craziness. When Vida vanishes without a word and a male body, dead too long to identify, surfaces at the town...

"After a relatively calm and cozy holiday season, neither Emma Lord, editor and publisher of The Alpine Advocate, nor her husband, Sheriff Milo Dodge, are surprised when their new year gets off to a rocky start. A woman's body has been found in a squalid motel. Her driver's license shows that Rachel Jane Douglas was in her late thirties and lived in Oakland, California--and the only connection between that town and Alpine is their gold-mining and...