The Tri-County Summer Solstice Celebration has come to town, and even among local artisans, athletes, and marching bands, Hannah attracts fans of her own while serving lip-smacking lemonade desserts. But the mood sours when a body turns up, leading revelers to wonder if the festivities mark both the longest day of the year and the deadliest…..
A retired professional MLB player has met a terrifying end- and, considering the rumors swirling about his past, the list of suspects could fill a small stadium. Among them could soon be Delores, Hannah’s mother, who publicly held a grudge against the victim after the infamously dunked her in the tank at a previous county fair…
Now, with her mother’s innocence on the line, a life-changing announcement at The Cookie Jar, and a plethora of desserts to bake, Hannah can’t afford to strike out as she beings a dangerous investigation into the ruthless killer who’s truly in a league of their own…
Spencer Quinn – Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge
Mrs. Loretta Plansky, a recent widow in her seventies, is settling into retirement in Florida while dealing with her ninety-eight-year-old father and fielding requests for money from her beloved children and grandchildren. Thankfully, her new hip hasn’t changed her killer tennis game one bit. On night, Mrs. Plansky is startled awake by a phone call from a voice claiming to be her grandson Will, who desperately needs ten thousand dollars to get out of a jam. Of course, Loretta obliges-after all, what are grandmothers for, even grandmothers who still haven’t gotten a simple “thank you” for a gift sent weeks ago. Not that she’s counting. By morning, Mrs. Plansky has lost everything, and law enforcement says it’s hopeless to find scammers behind the heist. First humiliated, then furious, Loretta Plansky refuses to be just another victim. In a courageous bid for justice, Mrs. Plansky follows her only clue on a whirlwind adventure to a small village in Romania to get her money and her dignity back-and perhaps find a new lease on life, too.
Patrick Dewitt – The Librarianist
Bob Comet is retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior centre. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed. Behind Bob Comet’s straight-man facade is the story of an unhappy child runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Bob’s experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsized players to welcome onto the stage of his life…..
