"1860: As the clash between the states rolls slowly to a boil, Elizabeth Packard, housewife and mother of six, is facing her own battle. The enemy sits across the table and sleeps in the next room. Threatened by Elizabeth's intellect, independence, and outspokenness, her husband of twenty-one years is plotting against her and makes a plan to put her back in her place. One summer morning, he has her committed to an insane asylum. The horrific conditions...

Can fear kill? There are those who believe so but Amelia Peabody is skeptical. A respected Egyptologist and amateur sleuth, Amelia has foiled felonious schemes from Victoria's England to the Middle East. And she doubts that it was a Nineteenth-Dynasty mummy's curse that caused the death of a night watchman in the British Museum. The corpse was found sprawled in the mummy's shadow, a look of terror frozen on the guard's face. What or who killed the...

Preparations are underway for Lake Eden, Minnesota's annual Winter Carnival--and Hannah Swensen is set to bake up a storm at her popular shop, The Cookie Jar. Too bad the honor of creating the official Winter Carnival cake went to famous lifestyle maven Connie Mac--a half-baked idea, in Hannah's opinion. She suspects Connie Mac is a lot like the confections she whips up on her cable TV cooking show--sweet, light, and scrumptious-looking, but likely...

Mary DiNunzio's teenage angst comes flooding back when her high school nemesis, Trish Gambone (dubbed "Trash" by Mary) comes seeking her help. It doesn't matter that Mary is now the rainmaker of Rosato & Associates. Trish's mere presence is enough to make Mary feel like she's at the bottom of the food chain. As it turns out, however, Trish's life has taken a horrifying turn. She is terrified of her live-in boyfriend, an abusive South Philly mobster,...

Reluctantly agreeing to organize a children's benefit at which a rock-star ex-lover is performing, Claire Danner Crispin finds her efforts complicated by her clashes with a fellow organizer, her best friend's catering mishaps, and a new relationship.

"The friendship between Jillian Lawton and Lesley Adamski begins in the postwar era of the 1950s. As they grow up, their circumstances, their choices - and their mistakes - take them in virtually opposite directions. Over the years and across the miles, through marriage, children, divorce, and widowhood, Jillian and Lesley remain close, sharing every grief and every joy. There are no secrets between friends..." -from cover

Susannah Simmons struggles up the corporate ladder while neighbor Nate Townsend stays home baking cookies and flying kites. He questions her values, she falls in love with him.

After an extravagant honeymoon, Hannah's eager to settle down in Lake Eden and turn domestic daydreams into reality. But when her mother's neighbor is discovered murdered in the condo downstairs, reality becomes a nightmarish investigation. Victoria Bascomb, once a renowned stage actress, was active in the theater community during her brief appearance in town . . . and made throngs of enemies along the way. Did a random intruder murder the woman as...

"Addie Greyborne loved working with rare books at the Boston Public Library--she even got to play detective, tracking down clues about mysterious old volumes. But she didn't expect her sleuthing skills to come in so handy in a little seaside town... Addie left some painful memories behind in the big city, including the unsolved murder of her fiancé and her father's fatal car accident. After an unexpected inheritance from a great aunt, she's moved...

Early in the Great War, men left Britain's factories in droves to enlist. Struggling to keep up production, arsenals hired women to build the weapons the military urgently needed. "Be the Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun," the recruitment posters beckoned. Thousands of women-cooks, maids, shopgirls, and housewives-answered their nation's call. These "munitionettes" worked grueling shifts often seven days a week, handling TNT and other explosives...