A Family History Mystery Series

In this second Family History mystery, a professional genealogist realizes the family history she’s tracing may be repeating itself after her client’s son-in-law turns up dead. A killer makes his final cut. . . . If there’s one thing genealogists Sophreena McClure and Esme Sabatier have learned, it’s that every family has a black sheep— sometimes a whole flock of them. Their new client, Olivia Clement, is hoping to uncover the truth about her ne’er-do-well father, who disappeared before she was born. But Sophreena and Esme have barely begun delving into Olivia’s past when a present-day murder interrupts their schedule. Someone has decided to prune the Clement family tree by getting rid of Olivia’s domineering son-in-law, Blaine Branch. Even without Esme’s psychic gift, it was easy to sense the tension between Blaine and his put-upon wife, Beth. Suspicion quickly falls on a young filmmaker and family friend who’s creating a documentary about their small town. Yet Soph and Esme become convinced someone else wanted to edit Blaine out, permanently. Buried deep in dusty boxes of memorabilia and 1940s film reels are vital clues, but it will take all of Sophreena’s deductive skill to expose the truth—before another victim fades to black.

In this third cozy whodunit in the Family History Mystery series, a professional genealogist duo searches for the link between a death from long ago and a modern-day murder. As a professional genealogist, I’ve seen enough skeletons come dancing out of closets to get a respectable conga line formed up. But they’ve always been metaphorical skeletons. Until today. When genealogists Sophreena McClure and Esme Sabatier are called on by Detective Jenny Jeffers to help figure out who the corpse in the backyard of her father’s house is, they reluctantly agree. Known for figuring out the unusual, Sophreena and Esme do their best to uncover the mystery behind the corpse, and the glass coffin he’s buried in. Word soon spreads about the bizarre burial site, leading the people of Morningside to “adopt” the corpse and begin leaving mementos in memoriam for him. But when the body of a young woman is found near the memorial, the duo has another task on their hands: to dig into the past of the house’s previous owners. Could the clues to a recent murder finally help this soul rest in peace?

The charming genealogical gumshoes in the cozy southern Family History Mystery series give new meaning to the old saying “keep the home fires burning” when their investigation into a long-ago house fire leads to a modern-day murder. It’s not just politics as usual when genealogists Sophreena McClure and Esme Sabatier are hired to create scrapbook tributes for a former North Carolina senator’s intricate family heritage and illustrious career. Sifting through the ashes of his past, they discover his baby brother perished in a suspicious fire that burned down his childhood home. Still saddened by his late parents’ steadfast conviction—against all evidence to the contrary—that the fire was cover for a kidnapping, the senator wants this rumor put to rest once and for all. So with only snapshots of the evidence, Soph and Esme are determined to smother all speculation about the decades-old tragedy. The party lines are drawn when a shocking present-day murder turns up new candidates for the crime—including some suspects from the senator’s inner circle. Are the sleuthing scrapbookers trying to pin down a killer as adept at making laws as breaking them?

Piecing together the evidence . . . Genealogist Sophreena McClure is an expert at unearthing other people’s secrets. Using old documents and photographs, Soph and her business partner, Esme Sabatier—also a gifted medium—trace family histories and create heritage scrapbooks. Their latest client, Dorothy Pritchett Porter, is thrilled with their research into Morningside’s most prestigious clan. But before Dorothy can proudly display her new scrapbooks on Founders’ Day, she’s found murdered. It seems the ties that bind can also strangle, for Dorothy has been killed using the Pritchett family pearls. Pegged as prime suspects, Sophreena and Esme turn their investigative skills from the dearly departed to the alive and dangerous, hoping to pin down the real killer among Dorothy’s kinfolk. Sophreena’s scrapbooking club members, crafty in more ways than one, pitch in to help. As the Pritchett ancestral roots turn out to be more tangled than anyone suspected, Sophreena wonders just how many skeletons lurk in this family closet—and whether she and Esme are destined to join them. . . .