Enchanted Bones — Carolyn Haines

In Carolyn Haines's Enchanted Bones, PI Sarah Booth Delaney comes to the rescue in a short mystery set in Zinnia, Mississippi, that will delight fans and new readers alike.

A lost little girl is just about the last thing Private Investigator Sarah Booth Delaney expects to see while horseback riding one evening in the woods, and her concern deepens when she reads the note pinned to the girl's outfit: it says she is cursed, and has consequently been abandoned.

Filled with concern for the child, Sarah Booth gets to work tracing her origins. The quest takes her and her partner, Tinkie, to a small nomadic community on the Mississippi River, where the answers to their questions lie. Sarah Booth must tread carefully, however, for danger awaits her there as well.