LEMON DROP DEAD

A small Ohio town where both Amish and "English" people live attracts tourists, babies, and killers.

Bailey King is not Amish, but the grandmother with whom she runs Swissmen Sweets is, so she has a foot in both camps in Harvest. She also has a cable television show filmed in New York and a busy boyfriend in Deputy Aiden Brody, whom she’s helped solve several murder cases. Long ago, when her assistant, Emily Keim, was a teenager, the girl's family forced her to give up a baby she bore out of wedlock. Now that Emily’s pregnant again, her friends decide to have a baby shower, something Esther Esh, Emily’s grumpy sister, would never have thought of on her own. Soon after a stranger approaches Emily and says she’s looking forward to Emily’s baby meeting her older sibling, the stranger’s found dead in the family pretzel shop Esther runs. Bailey knows that she must investigate to protect Emily. A threatening letter from Esther that Aiden finds on the body identifies the stranger as Rosemary Weiss, from nearby Wooster. Although Bailey’s shaken by a job offer Aiden’s received from Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation, which would take him away from Harvest, she soldiers on. Tracking down Emily’s daughter, Hannah, is the easy part of her quest for the truth. The hard part is choosing the most likely suspect from among the many Rosemary’s past provides before the guilty party strikes again.

Quirky characters add depth to a romantic mystery that explores cultural divides.