"Aurora is a small town nestled in the ancient forest alongside the shores of Minnesota's Iron Lake. In the summer of 1963, it is the whole world to twelve-year-old Cork O'Connor, its rhythms as familiar as his own heartbeat. But when Cork stumbles upon the body of a man he revered hanging from a tree in an abandoned logging camp, it is the first in a series of events that will cause him to question everything he took for granted about his hometown,...

Looking back at a tragic event that occurred during his thirteenth year, Frank Drum explores how a complicated web of secrets, adultery, and betrayal shattered his Methodist family and their small 1961 Minnesota community.

When one of her famous Red Velvet cupcakes is thought to have caused the death of her rival--a scandalous Lake Eden legend who was trying to steal her boyfriend--Hannah Swensen becomes the unlikely suspect in a murder investigation and must whip up the real killer before someone else gets iced.

While competing in a fishing tournament in a remote area of northern Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a call from Lucas Davenport to investigate a murder at a nearby resort, where a woman has been shot while kayaking. The resort is for women only, a place to relax, get fit, recover from plastic surgery, and commune with nature. Which makes things all the more complicated for Virgil, because as he begins investigating, he finds a web of connections between...

While Hannah speeds through a lengthy holiday checklist, drama in town grows like Santa's waistline on Christmas Eve. Her sister Andrea wants to stave off the blues by helping out at The Cookie Jar, Michele's love life is becoming complicated, Lisa needs Hannah's advice, and Delores has a Christmas secret she's not willing to share. But nothing dampens the holiday mood more than the chilling mystery surrounding the man found near death in an abandoned...

Life in tiny Lake Eden, Minnesota, is usually pleasantly uneventful. Lately, though, it seems everyone has more than their fair share of drama--especially the Swensen family. With so much on her plate, Hannah Swensen can hardly find the time to think about her bakery--let alone the town's most recent murder. . . Hannah is nervous about the upcoming trial for her involvement in a tragic accident. She's eager to clear her name once and for all, but...

Hannah's popular bakery, The Cookie Jar, located in Lake Eden, Minnesota, is best known for its tempting confections--until best-selling cookbook author and television personality Connie McIntyre is murdered in its pantry while baking a special treat for the town's Winter Carnival. Despite police warnings to steer clear of the case, Hannah is soon chasing down a bevy of suspicious characters.

Summoned by Lucas Davenport to investigate a pair of murders in which the victims are found with lemons in their mouths, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers struggles to find a connection that could prevent additional killings.

"When Hannah learns that her sister Michelle's boyfriend, Detective Lonnie Murphy, is the prime suspect in a murder case, she goes straight from a movie studio sound stage to the Los Angeles airport. Back in frigid Minnesota, she discovers that proving Lonnie's innocence will be harder than figuring out what went wrong with a recipe. Lonnie remembers only parts of the night he went out to a local bar and ended up driving a very impaired woman home....

"At the local state university, two feuding departments have faced off on the battleground of PC culture. Each carries their views to extremes that may seem absurd, but highly educated people of sound mind and good intentions can reasonably disagree, right? Then someone winds up dead, and Virgil Flowers is brought in to investigate...and he soon comes to realize he's dealing with people who, on this one particular issue, are functionally crazy. Among...