Mignon Franklin Ballard

One frosty morning in 1942, Charlie Carr and her fellow teachers are miffed with the school custodian "Christmas" Malone. The furnace hasn't been stoked and he hasn't emptied the wastebaskets. When he's found dead in a broom closet, it seems a heart attack may be to blame. But when beloved schoolmistress Miss Dimple Kilpatrick- who is as dependable as gravity- disappears, Charlie and her friend Annie Gardner begin to do some sleuthing on their own,...

"With the country in the midst of World War II, you can be sure the small town of Elderberry, Georgia, will pull together to find a missing child. And you can be equally certain that first-grade teacher, Miss Dimple Kilpatrick, will be in the search party--especially since Peggy Ashcroft is one of her students. Miss Dimple carves out a search path all her own and once again, the sharp-as-a-tack teacher is right on point. But she finds Peggy too sick...

After the sudden death of her husband, Minda Hobbs returns to Angel Heights, S.C., the home of her forebears, to seek peace and purpose in her life. Instead, she finds her n'er-do-well cousin Otto as cold and stiff as yesterday's grits in the ladies' room at the historic Minerva Academy. Shocked by her cousin's murder and still grieving over the loss of her husband, Minda has mixed emotions when she's greeted by her guardian angel, Augusta Goodnight....

Set in a small Georgia town during World War II, the Miss Dimple series features Miss Dimple Kilpatrick, longtime first-grade teacher at Elderberry Grammar School. Fastidious in her dress and distinctive in her manner, she is the epitome of small-town graciousness. Life in America during World War II springs vividly to life as Miss Dimple and her fellow townspeople battle valiantly against worry, rationing, and crime at home as well as abroad. It's...

"Aspiring actress Martha Virginia Brown was only twenty when she died in an apparent fall while appearing in summer stock in the North Carolina Foothills. Now, fifty years later, her great niece and namesake, Ginger Cameron, arrives at the quaint tavern in Fiddler's Glen to unearth the forgotten details of her relative's death, and to escape the menacing overtures of a former boyfriend."--Back cover.

"Searching for the mother who had abandoned her as an infant, Henrietta Meredith is drawn to Raven Rock, a small town in the mountains of North Carolina, and to the long-neglected Honeysuckle House where her mother once lived. Why did terrified Maggie Grey leave her baby with the kindly middle-aged Merediths promising to return, only to disappear forever? And what is the link between the faded snapshot of a group of young women and the dark period...