Bøger af Nora Deloach

With Mama on the case, murder meets its match.... A tryst with a deadly twist. All I'd wanted to do back home in Otis, South Carolina, was whip up a wonderful thirty-fifth anniversary party for my parents. But we'd hardly picked the baker before Mama found herself volunteering her services for the one thing she did nearly as well as cook. And that is sleuthing. You see, Ruby Spikes was found dead in a motor inn with a gun in her hand, a suicide note, and a certified check receipt to a man no one ever heard of--not even the trio of Otis gossips who are Mama's rock-solid source of information. Neither they nor Mama, despite Ruby's tormented diary, were convinced she went to her reward willingly. But this was a young woman with an outsize bundle of secrets and enemies. And when Mama starts sorting them out, and sudden death makes a return visit, it looks like she'll uncover the truth only by making herself--and me--a killer's next target....

Two things Mama knows: sweet-potato pie...and murder. Old bones and buried secrets... I would have thought a bunion operation might slow Mama down, but I should have known better. We found ourselves knee-deep in somebody else's trouble even before the surgery, when we saw crazy old Miss Birdie at the grocery store with a baby that didn't belong to her. It wasn't twenty-four hours later that the baby's mother, a young woman with a wild reputation, was murdered--and the baby had vanished. And when my Daddy's wandering dog began bringing home old bones of the most shocking kind, no way Mama wasn't going to start snooping--with me doing her legwork. It's a good thing I still had two good feet, because before long, I was running for my life...as babies' cries and women's tears mingled in a crime fueled by motives as ancient as human memory--greed, jealousy, and old-fashioned revenge.

Mama's name is Grace, but folks call her Candi because of a golden-brown complexion that puts you in mind of candied sweet potatoes. Mama makes her living as a case manager for Social Services, but her talent for cooking up the best food in Otis, South Carolina, is well known. When things weren't working out for me in Atlanta, Mama suggested I come home. I soon knew I'd made the right decision when I found Nat Mixon on Mama's doorstep threatening to tell the whole town that Mama stole his inheritance. It seems that Nat's mother and Mama's neighbor, spiteful recluse Hannah Mixon, had just died and left a will naming Mama as her beneficiary - yet Mama had never spoken to the woman! Everybody in Otis knew Nat was one can short of a six-pack, but he was built like a tank and threatening Mama's reputation, which to Mama is as bad as threatening her life. When it turned out the bequest was 250 acres of land, and Miss Hannah had died of poisoning, a big drama was under way in a small town where inherited property is more valuable than gold. Mama couldn't see her reputation ruined - she had to discover why Hannah had left her the property and why the old woman had been murdered. And maybe that was exactly what Hannah Mixon expected her to do - why else had she left Mama a message to look for a missing envelope? In Mama Stalks the Past, Nora DeLoach offers up a suspenseful tale of how family ties snap like thread when a large inheritance attracts a brutal killer....

There's not a killer in the world who can hide from Mama.... Dark encounters and deadly lessons I was happy to volunteer a few days back home to help Mama distribute clothing to the needy. But I didn't expect big-city dangers to follow me all the way to Otis, South Carolina. Instead of doing good deeds and cooking up a storm, Mama was digging deep into shady secrets after young Brenda Long was discovered dead in a shallow grave. Someone wanted Brenda silenced bad enough to kill, and the list of suspects is long. But is the killer the drug-dealing teacher that Brenda threatened to expose? Or can it have been the man who was sent to jail after Brenda caught him stealing -- now paroled and bent on exacting his revenge? Everyone knows that Mama has had good luck as the town's unofficial sleuth. But as a maze of tangled relationships leads to dead ends and dead bodies, time is slipping away. For our worst enemies can masquerade as friends -- and even Mama's luck can run out....