ROCK-A-BYE BONES

A Mississippi detective must dig down deep into the roots of a town when a newborn is left on her doorstep even though her business partner may want to keep the baby for herself.

Sarah Booth Delaney already has plenty to deal with between taking care of her family home, Dahlia House, and attending to its pesky, preachy resident ghost, Jitty, who’s been on her to attach the Delaney name to something other than a detective agency. Now Sarah Booth has doubled her load by volunteering to cook Thanksgiving dinner for a large group of friends. Before she can get to the store to score some canned pumpkin for the pies she was supposed to make from scratch, she’s pulled into something altogether bigger than her cooking disasters: caring for a baby. Sarah Booth calls in Tinkie, her partner in crime and business, to help investigate, but Tinkie is interested in just one thing: the infant. While Tinkie tries to convince Sarah Booth that it might be best if the baby’s mother were never found, Sarah Booth does her darnedest to figure out what would make a mother abandon a newborn and why she’d leave the child on Sarah Booth’s porch. Though her investigation gets some additional help from three men vying to win her affection, Sarah Booth’s longtime adversary, Gertrude Strom, is spotted in town after skipping bail, leaving Sarah Booth trying to protect one party from danger while trying to stay out of trouble herself.

As usual, Haines crams a lot into her latest cozy (Bone to Be Wild, 2015, etc.), aiming at readers with a taste for levity rather than restraint.