Greedy Bones (Sarah Booth Delaney Mysteries)
In Haines's bone-rattling ninth puzzler (after 2008'sWishbones), Sarah Booth Delaney returns to Zinnia, Miss., and her ancestral home, Dahlia House, after the eruption there of a mysterious illness so scary agents from Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control must be called in. Tinkie Richmond, Sarah's best friend and PI partner, fears her husband, Oscar, is dying after a visit to the nearby cursed Carlisle cotton plantation infected with mutant boll weevils and a strange mold. Sounds like a horror movie, but it's no laughing matter as Sarah Booth sets aside her Hollywood honey, Graf Milieu, to help her former love interest, Sheriff Coleman Peters, solve a perplexing case that will eventually claim victims by such causes as shooting and hanging. Lending spectral advice is Jitty, Dahlia House's wonderfully wise haint, one of the best features of this light paranormal mystery series infused with Southern charm.(July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.