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Christmas comes to Zinnia, Mississippi -- Sarah Booth Delaney must solve a case as the holiday approaches, in this new cozy mystery from Carolyn Haines.Christmas is just around the corner and Sarah Booth and Tinkie are preparing for a festive holiday season. After a turbulent season of solving cases, they're ready for some holiday cheer. Sarah Booth and Sheriff Coleman Peters have finally gotten together, and this is the first holiday they're celebrating as a couple. Sarah Booth busies herself with decking the halls and daydreaming about romantic Christmas nights with Coleman. Then her friend Cece Dee Falcon shows up needing Sarah Booth's help -- right now. She shows Sarah Booth a box that was delivered by courier and left at Cece's front porch. It contains a lock of hair, a photograph of a pretty young woman, very pregnant, and a note demanding ransom for the return of the teen. Cece reveals that this is her cousin's daughter, Eve Falcon, and that she'd lost touch with this part of her family years ago. Eve and Cece had been close, until the family had a terrible falling out, and banished Cece from their lives. The countdown begins as the kidnapper pushes for payment -- or else, he threatens, Eve will meet her maker. It's up to Sarah Booth and her friends to find the girl before something terrible happens on what should be the merriest day of the year.Carolyn Haines's trademark humor and lovable characters are back, in a heartwarming Christmas story that will enchant and delight readers looking for a suspenseful mystery wrapped in joyful holiday merriment.



About the Author

Carolyn Haines

When I was growing up in the small town of Lucedale, Mississippi, I had big dreams. I wanted to be a cowgirl, a writer, and Nancy Drew. Life has surely thrown me more than a few twists, but dreams are hard to destroy. Today, I'm all three-sort of. Of course the only mysteries I solve are in Zinnia, Mississippi. And I have the help of Sarah Booth Delaney, Tinkie, Cece, Coleman, Millie and a host of other characters. They'll be quick to tell you they do all the hard work-I'm just the writer.As to the horses, I have three. But no cows. I'm a little too tenderhearted. If I had a herd of cows, they'd live with me until they died of old age. But I do have the horses, Miss Scrapiron, a Thoroughbred, Mirage, a half-Arabian, and Cogar, a Thoroughbred-Connemara cross.In the dog department, I have my very own Sweetie Pie, a red tic hound; Maybelline, a tall beagle; Zelda, a husky; and Rosie, a red dog. All of the dogs are strays, as are the cats, Miss Vesta, Gumbo, Poe, Chester, and Maggie.A lot of people ask me how I started writing about the Mississippi Delta. My hometown, Lucedale, is way down in the Southeast corner of the state. That section is called the pine barrens, and it lives up to its name. Pine trees are a cash crop, and thousands of acres were once owned by the big paper companies. It's a world very different from the Mississippi Delta.My first visit to the Delta was as a photojournalist. I went to Parchman State Prison to do a newspaper story. Parchman was notorious at that time, and I can still remember the terrible desolation I felt when I looked out and saw mile after mile of heat and cotton. But the Delta also has fabulous wealth. And it has the blues. I knew then, at the age of 21, that I would one day write about that land of stark contrasts and strange beauty.Sarah Booth and Jitty came to me in tandem, arguing just as they do in the books. When such fully developed characters visit a writer, it's truly a gift. I didn't know Sarah Booth was a private investigator-in fact she didn't either-until I'd started writing the book (Them Bones) . Now, it's become my challenge to give her interesting cases to solve.Before I wrote fiction I worked for nearly a decade as a journalist. That experience has been invaluable as a writer. It was a fabulous life for a young woman, and I had some terrific adventures. I once covered an armed robbery on horseback and on another occasion had to climb a tree to cover a hostage situation in a graveyard. It's a good thing I was a tomboy growing up.Along with riding my bicycle, building forts in the woods with my brothers, playing baseball and touch football, and getting into mischief, I also spent a lot of time with my grandmother. She lived with us when I was a child, and she was a wonderful storyteller. She'd emigrated from Sweden when she was six, and she had a host of stories that kept me riveted for hours.Many of the stories my grandmother told were ghost



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