Hope County, Georgia, is a good old down-home place, where southern hospitality and all it entails reign supreme. MacLaren "Mac" Yarbrough, Hope County Magistrate and owner of Yarbrough Feed, Seed and Nursery, is smack in the middle of the big holiday season when she gets a call from the director of the Hope County Library. Unable to dissuade Alex James to postpone her immediate invitation for tea, Mac shows up and gets more than she bargained for. The actions of her good friend and renowned state bridge champion, Edith Burkett, concern her employers and friends. And they want Mac to do something.

Mac knew Edith was under tremendous stress because her husband committed suicide. What she did not know was just how much stress. With no money, a pile of debt and only a thousand-acre pecan grove to her name with no one to really work it, Edith has quite a few problems. The fact that someone is trying to make her believe she's lost her mind is adding fuel to a fire. However, someone's decided to deal Edith a killer hand, spades high. Now it's up to Mac to solve the mystery of who killed her friend and why, while trying to save a good man in the process. Between court cases and the holiday rush where she's fighting to catch the lion's share of the business from a new corporate superstore, Mac's up to her eyeballs in intrigue and retail alike.

Welcome to the true South as Partricia Sprinkle paints a charming picture of life, death and politics served up on a platter of mystery and mayhem. MacLaren and company will certainly leave their calling cards with the reader, ensuring future visits with a good time to be had by all. Time to sit on the veranda with a nice glass of lemonade and enjoy this down-home mystery full of charming characters and sparkling Southern witticisms.

Book Summary

State bridge champion and club woman Edie Whelan Burkett has been dealt many a bad hand, but after being widowed, the only things she has to sustain herself are a job at the library and a thousand-acre pecan grove. And just when the stress of it all seems too much, the grove's foreman dies...followed by Edie-and not by natural causes. Now, county magistrate Mac Yarbrough is on the case to prove the foreman's son innocent of murder, and figure out who's playing with a full deck-and who's not.