Showing results by author "Connie Shelton" in All Categories

Samantha Sweet is back at Sweet's Sweets, turning out her amazing cakes and pastries for the busy holiday season, when Emily Plankhurst, the new young librarian in town, stops in. Emily tells Sam a strange story involving a hidden niche in the library revealed to her in a vision, supposedly, by her dead grandmother. It turns out the hidden space contains a rare painting, The Ghost of Christmas, which was believed to have been destroyed in a fire twenty-five years ago at the luxury home of a hedge fund billionaire.

It’s Spring Break, and a trio of California college kids head out, not to the beach, but to the mountains of New Mexico, where they plan on a week of snowboarding, beer, and fun. But the instructions to reach their vacation rental are less than precise, and it’s late and snowy when they arrive at Taos Ski Valley. Days later, Casey’s sister is calling the only friend she knows in Taos—Kelly Sweet—hoping to get word to her brother that their mother’s condition has worsened and she doesn’t have long to live. No one has heard from Casey, and she urgently needs to reach him.

When Emily Plankhurst is visited by the ghost of Gabriel Graystone, and learns he was murdered, she knows she must find justice for him. The only problem is, Gabriel was killed a hundred years ago, shortly after he broke off his engagement to the daughter of a prominent Taos family, and there aren’t many other clues to go by in finding his killer.

Samantha Sweet breaks into houses for a living - all perfectly legal as a caretaker for the USDA. But her real dream is to open her own pastry shop, 'Sweet's Sweets.' Life is a little crazy for Sam right now. At one of her break-in properties, a dying woman insists that she take a small wooden box. Sam doesn't realize that the old woman was known locally as a 'bruja,' a witch, until she begins to feel some strange effects from the box.

Now that Samantha Sweet has a contract to provide her special handmade chocolates for the wealthy jet-set clients of Book It Travel, Sweet’s Sweets bakery is taking on a whole new dimension. It’s almost Halloween, and her pastry shop is bursting at the seams. She needs extra employees, but there is no place to put them. Right before the witching day, she comes upon a large Victorian house she can adapt for the business, but the mysterious, spooky noises at night are way more than the normal creaks and groans of an old building. Something else is going on.

A nearly flawless museum robbery, a missing million-dollar necklace, a stalled investigation. For the victim of the crime, the situation calls for desperate measures, and spunky 72-year-old Pen Fitzpatrick isn't going to sit by and do nothing. When the police have a dozen excuses why they can’t solve the crime, Pen does the only thing she can do - gather a group of friends to help catch the crooks and steal back the necklace. They call themselves The Heist Ladies.

Samantha Sweet is back at Sweet's Sweets, her bakery with a magical flair, while husband Beau is now a full-time rancher. When he hires a young cowboy to help out, no one suspects that Danny Flores comes with a lot of baggage until Lila, the girl he left behind, shows up. She says she has romance on her mind, but Danny finds her manipulative and domineering. He changed his number and moved out of state, but she has managed to track him down.

For John Carver, a simple Celtic woodworker, life is a struggle to feed his family. Then one summer day, as he walks past a near-dead alder tree, lightning strikes. With the shattered tree lying all around him, Carver pulls himself up and decides to make the best of it - he takes the usable pieces to his workshop. From the shards of that dead tree John creates three boxes. Then the unexplained happens - shortly after handling one of them, John's touch brings his young son back from the brink of death.

It's Halloween, one of the busiest seasons of the year for Samantha Sweet and the crew at her pastry shop, Sweet's Sweets. After baking a zillion pumpkin cookies, ghostly cupcakes, and an all-black cake for a young witch's wedding, the gang is looking forward to a gala costume party at the neighborhood bookshop. But when one of the guests is murdered and a rare book vanishes—practically in front of their eyes—the evening takes a whole different turn and Sam finds herself in the midst of another mystery.

Samantha Sweet's life is a little crazy right now, beginning with her daughter's wedding, which coincides with Sam's receiving a huge new contract for her chocolate factory. The day after the wedding, someone takes a shot at Sam, and she discovers the bad guys are back.

Samantha Sweet learns that an Irish great-uncle left her an inheritance, so she and Beau change their honeymoon plans and go to the Emerald Isle. Will the gift be something lavish and wonderful? Or is there no pot of gold waiting for Sam? Meanwhile, before Sam fully has the answers to her questions, a new mystery presents itself when a local charter boat is found adrift near the rocky Irish coast, its occupants missing. The family of the captain wants answers and when it looks like a group of Americans might be implicated, the Galway homicide detective in charge of the case enlists Beau’s help.

Charlie and her husband begin the winter with hopes for a honeymoon in a secluded New Mexico mountain cabin. But their plans are disrupted when police locate an old pawn ticket identifying the gun used in a five year old murder. They trace the ticket back to ski instructor Elroy Romero, who work's for Charlie's husband, Drake. Elroy swears he didn't commit the crime, even though the gun has been in his possession all along. And when it turns out the murder victim was Elroy's brother, a priest, Charlie really begins to question her client's story.

It's Christmas and a chocolatier shows up at Sweet's Sweets, offering to create a special line of hand-dipped chocolates for Sam's customers. He says he will work for no pay, just to prove himself. But she learns that he has connections to the wooden box that seems to give Sam her mystical powers, and discovers that certain evil people will do just about anything to take it away from her.

When a woman walks into Samantha Sweet’s pastry shop, claiming to have amnesia, it’s a puzzle that seems to have nothing to do with Sam’s new commission for a fantastic one-of-a-kind order of chocolates, although "Jane Doe" seems to know a lot about that. Sam calls Sheriff Beau to solve the mystery of who this stranger is and where she belongs. But Beau’s attention is occupied by other things: nearly his entire force is out sick with some kind of flu bug, and now a murder far from Taos requires his full attention. “Jane’s” forgotten memories become vitally important....

It's a freezing January day when Samantha Sweet finds herself facing the unpleasant task of going back to her old job of breaking into houses. Meanwhile, a customer who's just a little bit too nice seems to be worming her way into Jen's confidence. Sheriff Beau, on the other hand, is dealing with a car-crash-turned-murder, and somehow it all seems to tie together in a great big sticky situation.

This series looks sharply at those who perceive themselves as the rich - the elite, and revolves around expensive cars, clothes and posh country clubs. Fans of Sue Grafton, J.A. Jance, and Sara Peretsky will find Shelton's female sleuth captivating. Devout in her dedication for the underdog, Charlie Parker gets drawn into perilous predicaments while sticking her neck out for friends and clients in trouble. She proves a wily opponent for the evil she discovers.

Revenge is often a cold dish, but in the tiny northern New Mexico town of Sembramos emotions are running decidedly hot. When two men convicted of murdering a local girl are released from prison after serving only a few years, their convictions overturned, the town's old pain rises to the surface and tempers flare. Samantha Sweet has her hands full with Easter at Sweet's Sweets, while her husband, Taos County Sheriff Beau Cardwell, is charged with keeping order among the two hundred residents of Sembramos.

Sam is working hard to get her new pastry shop, Sweet's Sweets, open for business. Just when she's really got her hands full with that, she's assigned a new property to take care of as part of her contract with the USDA. The place is a hoarder's delight and Sam is feeling more than a little bit overwhelmed as she begins cleaning with a vengeance. When a blood-soaked garment turns up among some things Sam has dropped off at the thrift shop, Sam recommends that they call the Sheriff's office.

Things are crazy at the bakery, as Sam tries to replicate the magical chocolates that the quirky Romanian chocolatier introduced at Christmas-time. Meanwhile, there are lots of weddings, in addition to her own, and other pastry shop demands during this romantic holiday week. While Sam tries to keep up with it all, another mystery comes her way. Marla Fresques needs to find her missing son. The woman is dying and wants her son home to raise the daughter he left behind.

Upon returning to her New Mexico home after visiting her fiance in Hawaii, private investigator Charlie Parker discovers that her mother and father, a scientist at Sandia Labs, were killed in a suspicious small plane crash.