Hope County, Georgia, is a good old down-home place, where
southern hospitality and all it entails reign supreme.
MacLaren "Mac" Yarbrough, Hope County Magistrate and owner
of Yarbrough Feed, Seed and Nursery, is smack in the middle
of the big holiday season when she gets a call from the
director of the Hope County Library. Unable to dissuade
Alex James to postpone her immediate invitation for tea,
Mac shows up and gets more than she bargained for. The
actions of her good friend and renowned state bridge
champion, Edith Burkett, concern her employers and friends.
And they want Mac to do something.
Mac knew Edith was under tremendous stress because her
husband committed suicide. What she did not know was just
how much stress. With no money, a pile of debt and only a
thousand-acre pecan grove to her name with no one to really
work it, Edith has quite a few problems. The fact that
someone is trying to make her believe she's lost her mind
is adding fuel to a fire. However, someone's decided to
deal Edith a killer hand, spades high. Now it's up to Mac
to solve the mystery of who killed her friend and why,
while trying to save a good man in the process. Between
court cases and the holiday rush where she's fighting to
catch the lion's share of the business from a new corporate
superstore, Mac's up to her eyeballs in intrigue and retail
alike.
Welcome to the true South as Partricia Sprinkle paints a
charming picture of life, death and politics served up on a
platter of mystery and mayhem. MacLaren and company will
certainly leave their calling cards with the reader,
ensuring future visits with a good time to be had by all.
Time to sit on the veranda with a nice glass of lemonade
and enjoy this down-home mystery full of charming
characters and sparkling Southern witticisms.
State bridge champion and club woman Edie Whelan Burkett
has been dealt many a bad hand, but after being widowed,
the only things she has to sustain herself are a job at the
library and a thousand-acre pecan grove. And just when the
stress of it all seems too much, the grove's foreman
dies...followed by Edie-and not by natural causes. Now,
county magistrate Mac Yarbrough is on the case to prove the
foreman's son innocent of murder, and figure out who's
playing with a full deck-and who's not.