A delightful new treasury of ten mysteries featuring China Bayles, Ruby Wilcox, and their Pecan Springs friends, old and new. Also included: a Texas-size roundup of China's best recipes, craft ideas, gardening tips, and herb lore. A great take-along to the beach or relaxing fun after an afternoon's gardening!

Lovely short stories about China Bayles! It falls somewhere between Bloodroot and Indigo Dying. I recommend you read it where it belongs, because there are several plot points of previous books that are given away in this one, because it's assumed you read those books already. I loved the herb snippets in between, and honestly can't tell you which short story is my favorite. Very, very recommended! ( )

This is a collection of short stories with herbalist China Bayles and
crew as protagonists. While the China Bayles series of mysteries is one
of my favorites, I didn't care for this book at all. The stories were
too short, there was no time to develop a mystery at all, the solutions
were abrupt, and the entire volume was chopped up with sidebars on
nearly every page with little known facts and folklore about whatever
herbs were mentioned on that page, and recipes for each and every food
dish mentioned in the stories. Many of these took up an entire page and
all of them, without fail, served to distract me from the story at hand.
Horrible format, IMO. What a waste of time! I finished it, so I'll
give it a 1, but Ms. Albert is capable of so much better than this, I'm
embarrassed for her. ( )

Herbal lore, recipes and stories intertwine in this book of short stories featuring herb shop owner and amateur sleuth China Bayles.