Murder is no laughing matter—especially when it comes to marriage. So before Luanne gets in too deep with her new flame, a dentist named Dick, she'd like her best friend to do a background check. Did Dick murder his two previous wives? That's what Arkansas bookseller and amateur sleuth Claire Malloy intends to discover... Everything Claire turns up on this would-be blue-beard keeps leading her down a slippery slope. The police are determined to prove Dick guilty of double homicide, but Claire's not so sure. Something about his story just doesn't add up. But if Dick didn't do the deed, who did? The only thing Claire knows for sure is that Luanne won't have a moment's rest until she finds out...

When Claire Malloy's best friend Luanne Bradshaw goes down with a badly sprained ankle, someone must fill in her shoes as Thurberfest beauty Pageant coordinator and usher a bevy of aspiring beauty queen through the two-day event. Enter Claire Malloy to the rescue. But this is one job Claire would gladly be fired from. Now, already fending off a hostile theater owner, and overly-agressive personal trainer, an incontinent show-dog, a fifteen-year-old daughter with more growing pains than she can count, and a talent contest in need of some talent, Claire must face one more problem--someone is trying to kill the reigning Miss Thurberfest. When a ghastly murder scene signals the culprit's success, Claire's investigative instincts take over, but when she digs too close to the truth, the race is on to discover the killer's identity before Claire herself is crowned the next victim...

Languishing from a fizzled love affair and keen for a lark during the holiday season, mild-mannered bookseller Clair Malloy visits a cabal of would-be Druids and Wiccans who find their wealthy benefactor murdered.

Joan Hess’s humorous cozy mystery series takes place in the small and colorful town of Farberville, Arkansas, where widow and single mother Claire Malloy struggles with keeping her small local bookstore in the black. But she also must deal with the drama of her young teenage daughter Caron (WHO SPEAKS IN ALL CAPS), being married to Deputy Police Chief Peter Rosen, and murder. Strangled Prose Mildred, author of a smutty new romance, is found murdered after a party at Claire’s bookstore. Claire is left wondering who could have hated Mildred with such passion, but soon finds that the romances contained as much fact as fiction—and perhaps hold the clue to the killer’s identity! The Murder at the Mimosa Inn Claire brings her petulant daughter Caron along to a mock-murder weekend at the charming Mimosa Inn. But fiction becomes alarmingly real as the mock-victim isn’t just playing dead—he’s really been murdered. More determined than ever to find the killer, Claire combs the grounds of the country inn for this most unwelcome guest. Dear Miss Demeanor The scandals mount in Farberville when a respected teacher is fired for pilfering petty cash and suggestive letters are sent to the local advice columnist. Claire Malloy, working undercover to investigate the possible embezzlement, finds herself in the thick of it all when the high school principal is murdered and the killer is still on the loose.

Claire Malloy runs a bookstore in the normally quiet college town of Farberville, Arkansas - an enterprise which provides the verging-on-meager living for her and her deeply sarcastic teenage daughter Caron. So when emergency work forces Claire and Caron to abandon their apartment for a few weeks, they are in no financial position to put themselves up in style and Claire is thrilled to accept a customer's offer to let them stay at her well-stocked, well-equipped palatial home while she is traveling. Of course, nothing is ever that easy. No sooner do Claire and Caron ensconce themselves than disquieting events start to occur - dubious people show up looking for the 'traveling' owner of the house; the owner herself turns out not to be who she claimed and is now seemingly on the run; and a dead body keeps turning up - and subsequently disappearing - around the grounds of the house. Determined, for once, to stay out of the mysterious doings, Claire's hand is finally forced when the disappearing body turns out to be only the first corpse to turn up...

A hilarious police procedural set in the strangest town in the Ozarks, where whip-smart sheriff Arly Hanks does everything she can to keep the peace. Nothing ever happens in Maggody, Arkansas, population 755. Aside from handling the occasional barroom brawl or exploding still, Chief of Police Arly Hanks spends her days sipping coffee and squashing flies. She returned to Maggody two years ago, licking her wounds after a bad Manhattan divorce, and she fell backward into the role of sheriff. From Hizzoner the Moron—also know as Jim Bob Buchanon, the pettily corrupt mayor—to Ruby Bee Hanks—Arly’s mother and the town’s foremost gossip—the people of Maggody are all crazy in their own ways, and that craziness is about to turn deadly. When Joanna Mae Nookim returns to work after giving birth, the bank manager bumps her down to minimum wage as punishment for taking time off. It’s outrageous, but there’s nothing Arly can do. But when the bank burns to the ground and the head teller is found dead, Maggody threatens to burst into an all-out revolution for the sake of women’s rights. Fans of comic mysteries have known for years that no small town is quite like Maggody. With its wild cast of characters and its no-nonsense female detective, Much Ado in Maggody is evidence of master of cozy mysteries Joan Hess at her best. Much Ado in Maggody is the 3rd book in the Arly Hanks Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

She would have killed for a bestseller--but someone beat her to it... Professor of Passion, the smutty new romance from Mildred Twiller--a.k.a. Azalea Twilight--isn't the kind of book Claire Malloy likes to hock at her bookstore, but Claire agrees to host a book party for her friend's trashy tale. As torrid as the novel is, it's nothing compared to the evening. After the party, poor Mildred is found dead in her home--stranged with a tightly knotted silk scarf. Now it's up to Clair to find Mildred's killer, and it won't be easy--the two-bit author had offended nearly every faculty member she worked with at nearby Faber College. But who could have hated Mildred with such smoldering passion? Find out in Joan Hess' first Claire Malloy mystery novel Strangled Prose.