Benni Harper Mystery
Latest release: May 3, 2011
Series
12
Books
About this ebook series
Leaving behind memories of her late husband, Benni Harper is making a fresh start...Moving to the trendy California town of San Celina, she takes an exciting new job as director of a folk-art museum. While setting up an exhibit of handmade quilts, she stumbles upon the body of a brutally stabbed artist. Hoping to conduct an investigation on her own, she crosses paths with the local police chief, who thinks this short and sassy cowgirl should leave detecting to the cops and join him for dinner. But it's hard to keep a country girl down, and soon Benni uncovers an alarming pattern of family secrets, small-town lies--and the shocking truth about the night her husband died...
Fool's Puzzle
Book 1 · Jan 1995 ·
3.0star
Leaving behind memories of her late husband, Benni Harper is making a fresh start...Moving to the trendy California town of San Celina, she takes an exciting new job as director of a folk-art museum. While setting up an exhibit of handmade quilts, she stumbles upon the body of a brutally stabbed artist. Hoping to conduct an investigation on her own, she crosses paths with the local police chief, who thinks this short and sassy cowgirl should leave detecting to the cops and join him for dinner. But it's hard to keep a country girl down, and soon Benni uncovers an alarming pattern of family secrets, small-town lies--and the shocking truth about the night her husband died...
Irish Chain
Book 2 · Feb 1996 ·
5.0star
Meet Benni Harper...a spirited ex-cowgirl, quilter, and folk-art expert who's staking out her own corner of the contemporary American West. She's got an eye for murderous designs--and a talent for piecing together the most complex and cold-blooded crimes.
Benni's taking time from her job at the folk-art museum to sponsor a "senior prom" at San Celina's retirement home. During the dance, she's surprised to find herself waltzing with Clay O'Hara, the Colorado cowboy she had a crush on when she was seventeen. She's even more surprised when Clay's uncle and an elderly woman are found dead in one of the residents' rooms. Now Benni's trying to find a link between the two victims--and the common thread that bound them together in death...
Benni's taking time from her job at the folk-art museum to sponsor a "senior prom" at San Celina's retirement home. During the dance, she's surprised to find herself waltzing with Clay O'Hara, the Colorado cowboy she had a crush on when she was seventeen. She's even more surprised when Clay's uncle and an elderly woman are found dead in one of the residents' rooms. Now Benni's trying to find a link between the two victims--and the common thread that bound them together in death...
Kansas Troubles
Book 3 · Mar 1997 ·
4.0star
After a whirlwind marriage to San Celina Police Chief Gabe Ortiz, Benni Harper is excited to visit her Kansas hometown. At a rowdy backyard barbecue, she meets Tyler Brown, an aspiring country singer with a promising future--and a fascinating past. Once, Tyler had lived the simple Amish life. Now she's determined to make it on her own selling her exquisite handmade quilts. But Tyler's gifts--and her life--are cut short when she's murdered. Out of his jurisdiction, Gabe is frustrated to sit on the sidelines while his friends are investigated by his own sleuthing wife. And Benni realizes that her hasty marriage will be much like Kansas weather: unpredictable and bound to be stormy...
Goose in the Pond
Book 4 · Mar 1998 ·
4.7star
Benni Harper—spirited ex-cowgirl, quilter, and folk art expert—finds herself on the trail of a storybook killer in this mystery from Agatha Award-nominee Earlene Fowler.
Hoping to relax after solving a murder in Wichita, Kansas, Beni and her new husband Gabe Ortiz are back in San Celina, California. But while Benni is jogging in the park, she happens upon the dead body of a library storyteller. It's an odd and disturbing scene—the woman is still dressed in her Mother Goose costume, lying facedown in the lake.
Benni's investigation takes her inside the Storyteller's Guild, where she finds out that Mother Goose was telling more than fairy tales. She was capable of airing the kind of secrets that destroy lives—and inspire revenge...
Hoping to relax after solving a murder in Wichita, Kansas, Beni and her new husband Gabe Ortiz are back in San Celina, California. But while Benni is jogging in the park, she happens upon the dead body of a library storyteller. It's an odd and disturbing scene—the woman is still dressed in her Mother Goose costume, lying facedown in the lake.
Benni's investigation takes her inside the Storyteller's Guild, where she finds out that Mother Goose was telling more than fairy tales. She was capable of airing the kind of secrets that destroy lives—and inspire revenge...
Dove in the Window
Book 5 · May 1999 ·
5.0star
Benni and her relatives and friends are gathered for the family's annual barbecue and cattle roundup. Among the guests is Shelby Johnson, a young photography student from a wealthy Chicago family. In Benni she finds a favorite subject and a new friend. But when the young woman's body is discovered on the ranch the next morning, Benni's closest relatives suddenly develop into prime murder suspects...
Mariner's Compass
Book 6 · Apr 2000 ·
5.0star
To claim an inheritance that a mysterious stranger left her, Benni must delve into the secrets of her own past--and a place she once called home.
Seven Sisters
Book 7 · Apr 2001 ·
3.0star
Meet Benni Harper…a spirited ex-cowgirl, quilter, and folk-art expert who’s staking out her own corner of the contemporary American West. She’s got an eye for murderous designs—and a talent for piecing together the most complex and cold-blooded crimes.
When Benni’s stepson announces his plans to marry into the wealthy, influential Brown family, she and her husband are invited to the Browns’ sprawling ranch, Seven Sisters, to celebrate the engagement. But the party takes a tragic turn when a member of the esteemed family is murdered. While trying to unravel the feuding clan’s tangled past, Benni uncovers a shocking pattern of tragedy—and stitches a hodgepodge of clues into a very disturbing design. . .
Seven Sisters, a challenging pattern that features a single six-pointed star surrounded by six identical stars, was most likely inspired by an observation of nature—the Seven Sisters is a loose grouping of stars in the constellation Taurus. Although the stars in the cluster appear to be close together, they are, in fact, quite far apart.
Arkansas Traveler
Book 8 · Apr 2001 ·
0.0star
Soon after arriving in Sugartree, Arkansas—where she spent many lazy, languid childhood summers—folk art expert Benni Harper discovers that there's something seriously sinister brewing in this usually-peaceful town...
Steps to the Altar
Book 9 · Apr 2003 ·
5.0star
Ninth in the Agatha Award-winning series that's been hailed as engrossing, Steps to the Altar finds California folk art expert Benni Harper preparing for two upcoming weddings, digging up clues to a decades-old unsolved murder-and struggling with a very personal crisis of the heart...
Tumbling Blocks
Book 13 · May 2008 ·
5.0star
In the new novel in the “breezy [and] humorous” (Chicago Sun-Times) series, Benni Harper is carrying a bundle of holiday stress—as she unwraps the secrets of an elite and possibly murderous society…
San Celina’s most exclusive society suddenly has an opening and Benni Harper has been tapped—not to join, but to investigate. The upper crust, female-only “49 Club” is restricted to exactly that many members, and one must die before another joins. When the latest socialite de-pledges in her sleep, Benni’s boss wants the mystery solved—and naturally, it’s landed on Benni’s to-do list.
Reluctant at first, she profiles a few women whose social ambitions give them an obvious motive. But with a famously reclusive artist about to put Benni’s quilting museum on the map—and her daunting mother-in-law soon to arrive—Benni’s holiday is already hectic. Nevertheless, she’ll need to crack this exclusive circle of suspects, before one more gourmet goose gets cooked.
“Benni delves into the secrets of the town's elite with her usual flair, unraveling a plot that is as dangerous as the bulls on her father's ranch and as cozy as the quilts she reveres.”—Publishers Weekly
“The rich cast of secondary characters [and] plenty of humor…enrich this thirteenth in the long-running series.”—Booklist
San Celina’s most exclusive society suddenly has an opening and Benni Harper has been tapped—not to join, but to investigate. The upper crust, female-only “49 Club” is restricted to exactly that many members, and one must die before another joins. When the latest socialite de-pledges in her sleep, Benni’s boss wants the mystery solved—and naturally, it’s landed on Benni’s to-do list.
Reluctant at first, she profiles a few women whose social ambitions give them an obvious motive. But with a famously reclusive artist about to put Benni’s quilting museum on the map—and her daunting mother-in-law soon to arrive—Benni’s holiday is already hectic. Nevertheless, she’ll need to crack this exclusive circle of suspects, before one more gourmet goose gets cooked.
“Benni delves into the secrets of the town's elite with her usual flair, unraveling a plot that is as dangerous as the bulls on her father's ranch and as cozy as the quilts she reveres.”—Publishers Weekly
“The rich cast of secondary characters [and] plenty of humor…enrich this thirteenth in the long-running series.”—Booklist
State Fair
Book 14 · May 2010 ·
5.0star
"Each Benni Harper mystery is better than the previous" (Midwest Book Review)
Folk art museum curator, rancher, and sometime sleuth Benni Harper returns with a long-awaited new mystery that has her attending the San Celina Mid-State Fair-a place for caramel apples and 4-H calves, colorful quilts and homemade jams, and maybe just a little murder...
Folk art museum curator, rancher, and sometime sleuth Benni Harper returns with a long-awaited new mystery that has her attending the San Celina Mid-State Fair-a place for caramel apples and 4-H calves, colorful quilts and homemade jams, and maybe just a little murder...
Spider Web
Book 15 · May 2011 ·
5.0star
Folk art museum curator, rancher and sometime sleuth Benni Harper is back in an unforgettable new mystery, organizing a Memory Festival. But a sniper threatens to make it a day to remember in the worst way…
Benni and the ladies of her Coffin Star Quilt Guild are excited to display their Graveyard Quilt at the first ever San Celina, California, Memory Festival. The fair promises to be a moving event celebrating memories through quilts, crafts, scrapbooks, photographs, written word, oral histories, and tributes to loved ones.
But when a local cop is wounded by a mysterious sharp shooter with a vendetta against the police, Benni fears for her loved ones—especially her police chief husband, Gabe. Soon Benni is drawn into the search for the sniper, determined to make her hometown safe again…before their peaceful street fair becomes a shooter’s deadly target range.