Emma Lord, the Advocate's editor, finds the body in the facial room of Stella's Styling Salon--anonymous under a mud pack, throat slashed. The victim turns out to be the sister-in-law of Sheriff Dodge's girlfriend, who had initially made the appointment for herself. Perhaps she was the killer's intended target. After all, no one in Alpine really knew the dead woman personally. Then rumors begin to fly, shady strangers turn up in town, and a young...

The picturesque town of Alpine in Washington's Cascade Mountains is decked out in holiday finery, but family troubles are brewing. Emma Lord is fretting over how her brother and son, both priests, will react when she confesses her affair with Sheriff Milo Dodge. Then Postmaster Roy Everson shows up with bones that may or may not belong to his long-missing mother. But the most disturbing holiday dilemma is the body found in the cave on Mount Sawyer...

A conclusion to the long-running mystery series finds Emma investigating the arrival and illness of a young woman who is searching for the mother who abandoned her, a case that is complicated by Vida's altered state, a stalker and a reclusive artist. "The picturesque town of Alpine in the foothills of Washington state's Cascade Mountains--home to Emma Lord and her weekly newspaper The Alpine Advocate--has long charmed and enthralled mystery lovers....

When the opening night of the Alpine Council Dramatic Club's latest production culminates in the murder of one of the actors, local newspaper editor Emma Lord assists sheriff Milo Dodge in solving the mystery.

In Emma Lord's newest outing, a fight erupts at the local tavern and a patron is murdered with a pool cue. What initially seems to be an open-and-shut case disintegrates with the contradictory and confused accounts given by the murder's many witnesses. Each one has an agenda behind the story - some of them committed enough to lie. And it's up to Emma and her longtime compatriot, Sheriff Milo Dodge, to figure it out.

"After a relatively calm and cozy holiday season, neither Emma Lord, editor and publisher of The Alpine Advocate, nor her husband, Sheriff Milo Dodge, are surprised when their new year gets off to a rocky start. A woman's body has been found in a squalid motel. Her driver's license shows that Rachel Jane Douglas was in her late thirties and lived in Oakland, California--and the only connection between that town and Alpine is their gold-mining and...