When Catrine Lafonte comes to New Orleans as one of King Louisas acasket girlsa during the onset of the French and Indian wars, she is filled with dreams of marrying her old love and finding a peace long denied her. But soon, her expectations are dashed in a way she never imagined, leaving her to long for escape from a new life of drudgery that has been shackled upon her. Now, her future will be decided between the hard-fisted old woman who holds her indenture, and two very different men. Caught in the clutches of a courier-de-bois she despises, rescued by a frontiersman she doesnat trust, and blinded by her own unquenchable desires, Catrine tries vainly and sometimes desperately to create her own happiness, while all the time it is God who is teaching her what it might mean to truly build her house upon a rock.

The New York Times bestselling Cackleberry Club series returns with three intrepid ladies who know their way around a kitchen—as well as a crime scene… Petra, Suzanne, and Toni may have lost their husbands, but they’ve found new life operating the Cackleberry Club café. It’s where the locals head for an amazing breakfast, the good company of friends, and a puzzling mystery or two… THIS KILLER IS TOAST Suzanne and Toni are off to Memorial Cemetery to help prepare for its 150th anniversary celebration. The ladies expect to find the historical society’s tent, but instead they discover the body of ex-prison warden Lester Drummond lying facedown in a freshly dug grave. Now, with the town peppered with suspects and the local authorities in over their heads, it’s up to the Cackleberry Club to unscramble the clues and sniff out a bad egg. Recipes Included!

A scandalous Parisian aristocrat. An enslaved girl with voodoo skills. A French widow with a dark secret. A free woman of color from Cuba. A criminal with an agenda. A shy country girl from rural France. And twelve Ursuline nuns. Together, they spend six months crossing the ocean, arriving at La Nouvelle Orleàns, France’s outpost in their colony at America’s South shores. The year is 1727. Regardless of the color of their skin or their social class, the Ursulines educate them at their convent where they find safety. But outside, they face criminals and sometimes commit crimes themselves. As they endure trials, their lives intertwine – and their pasts are revealed. The story of the Casket Girls – one of Catholicism and Voodoo, nuns and prostitutes, of pirates and smugglers, tragedy and redemption, and most of all survival – has never been told before. Rooted in historical facts and occurrences, some of the characters are based on real people. Their stories – told over the course of twenty years – however, are fictional.

Hercule Poirot, the world's most famous detective, returns in this ingenious, stylish, and altogether delicious mystery from the author of the instant bestseller The Monogram Murders. "What I intend to say to you will come as a shock..." With these words, Lady Athelinda Playford -- one of the world's most beloved children's authors -- springs a surprise on the lawyer entrusted with her will. As guests arrive for a party at her Irish mansion, Lady Playford has decided to cut off her two children without a penny . . . and leave her vast fortune to someone else: an invalid who has only weeks to live. Among Lady Playford's visitors are two strangers: the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and Inspector Edward Catchpool of Scotland Yard. Neither knows why he has been invited -- until Poirot begins to wonder if Lady Playford expects a murder. But why does she seem so determined to provoke a killer? And why -- when the crime is committed despite Poirot's best efforts to stop it -- does the identity of the victim make no sense at all? Addictive, ferociously clever, and packed with clues, wit, and murder, Closed Casket is a triumph from the author whose work is "as tricky as anything written by Agatha Christie" (Alexander McCall Smith, The New York Times Book Review).