Damsels in Distress by Joan Hess
Copyright 2007 ISBN13-978-0-312-31501-6

A Renaissance Fair is coming to the relatively quiet college town of Farberville Arkansas, which is not the sort of news that usually sets local bookseller Claire Malloy’s heart racing.  But with Caron, Claire’s perpetually petulant teenage daughter, being pulled into volunteering (or face the horror of doing homework over the summer) and her fiancé, Police Lieutenant Peter Rosen, away, Claire finds herself drawn into the strange inner workings of the group putting on the fair.
But just as Claire has decided that her time might be better spent fretting over the details of her upcoming nuptials, one of the volunteers helping with the Ren Fair falls victim to arson, her body found burned in the wreckage of her rented home. Even stranger, none of the members of the local chapter of The Association for Renaissance Scholarship and Enlightenment (ARSE) – the group putting on Farberville’s first RenFair – had ever met the woman in the flesh and can’t provide any information about who she is and where she came from.  However, someone is definitely dead and the fire looks very suspicious – but is it murder?  When the fair opens, tensions expose the dark secrets and malevolent schemes that lurk beneath the superficial congeniality of the ARSE members.  The lords are leaping, the ladies are lying, and the knights are fighting–while someone is committing murder most heinous.  And with Claire’s dreams of a blissful wedding hanging in the balance, she has no choice left but to fling herself into the battle and match wits with the killer…

Busy Bodies by Joan Hess – A Claire Malloy Mystery
Copyright 1995
ISBN 0-525-93910-5

Leave it to Claire Malloy, owner of the Book Depot in Farberville, to start out having tea with retired schoolteacher Miss Emily Parchester and end up investigating a murder. An avant-garde artist who moved into a house on Willow Street has the whole neighborhood up in arms. His “interactive art”, complete with a nearly nude model and a coffin in the front yard, is attracting a mob of noisy gawkers.

Irate residents are worried about declining property values. The local mystery writer cannot meet her deadlines with the constant clatter. And when the artist’s estranged wife rolls up in a limo and announces to one and all that she intends  to have him committed to a mental institution, all of Farberville is in a dither.

But before the night is out, even stranger things happen: the volatile artist’s house goes up in smoke, a dead body is found inside the coffin, the artist is promptly arrested for murder… and Clarie Malloy, devoted amateur sleuth that she is, starts snooping where she doesn’t belong.

While local residents, including handsome police detective Peter Rosen, are ready to believe the crazy artist is capable of anything. Claire and Miss Parchester are convinced that, thought he had the motive and the opportunity, he lacks the necessary evil to have done the deed. Claire fully intends to exercise her right of creative expression by being the busybody who find the real killer.

Deep Dish by Mary Kay Andrews Copyright 2008

ISBN 978-0-06-083736-5

After years of hard work, Gina Foxton, chef extraordinaire and former runner-up Miss Teen Vidalia Onion, is hosting her own show, Fresh Start, on Georgia public television. She’s also dating the producer. But when Fresh Start goes bad—and her boyfriend is caught in flagrante delicto with the boss’s wife—Gina decides it’s time to pursue bigger dreams. Namely a gig on national television.

Gina knows she’s destined to be the Cooking Channel’s next superstar. But the execs also have their eyes on Tate Moody, Mr. “Kill It and Grill It” himself, host of the hunting, fishing, and cooking show Vittles. The ultimate man’s man, Tate is a tasty side of beef with a large, swooning female fan base. Gina’s loyal devotees consist of her free-spirited college-dropout sister and her mother . . . who calls every single day.

Mrs. Malory: Death of a Dean by Hazel Holt
0-525-94150-9
copyright 1996