Susan Wittig Albert's bestelling China Bayles mystery series grows in an exciting new direction in Bloodroot. Although she's a plant lover, digging around the roots of her family tree has never been China's favorite pastime. The family plantation in Mississippi may be beautiful, but her memories of childhood summers there still haunt her. China hates her connection to the Old South and its injustices, so she hasn't been back in years. She wouldn't have agreed to go now, except her mother told her that her legal expertise was needed to keep Great Aunt Tullie out of jail. Tullie Coldwell is a difficult old woman at best (and she's seldom at her best).
Murder and Mayhem for China Bayles It's Christmastime in Pecan Springs, Texas, but in Susan Wittig Albert's newest herbal mystery, Mistletoe Man, the holiday isn't bringing much cheer for former lawyer China Bayles or any of her neighbors. Quite a bit is amiss: For starters, Ruby Wilcox, China's best friend and business partner, is suddenly and unusually irritable and secretive.
The Susan Lenox who sat alone at the little table in the dining-room window, eating bread and butter and honey in the comb, was apparently the same Susan Lenox who had taken three meals a day in that room all those years--was, indeed, actually the same, for character is not an overnight creation. Yet it was an amazingly different Susan Lenox, too. The first crisis had come; she had been put to the test; and she had not collapsed in weakness but had stood erect in strength.
Boston PI Sunny Randall is the daughter Robert Parker's series hero Spenser and his inamorata, Susan Silverman, might have had if they weren't so busy parenting Pearl the Wonder Dog. Like Spenser, Sunny is smart, tough, and fearless; like Susan, she's sexy, droll, and vulnerable; and like Pearl, Sunny's pit bull, Rosie, is the only character who's wise enough to hide when trouble comes knocking at the door. In Shrink Rap, Sunny's working as a bodyguard for a famous romance writer who's being stalked by her ex-husband, a psychiatrist engaged in extremely unprofessional conduct with his female patients.
Long ago, Susan Rodriguez was Harry Dresden's lover-until she was attacked by his enemies, leaving her torn between her own humanity and the bloodlust of the vampiric Red Court. Susan then disappeared to South America, where she could fight both her savage gift and those who cursed her with it.
