When murders disrupt the peaceful town of Maggody, Sheriff Hanks and her slow deputy, Paulie, set out on a hilarious, hell-raising chase through the backwoods in search of a murderer.

Police Chief Arly Hanks finds her small town, Maggody, has some new inhabitants when she returns from vacation. Soon, Robin Buchanon, local prostitute and moonshiner, disappears, and Arly finds her bloody body at the edge of a marijuana field.

There's trouble in Maggody Arkansas, again, and Chief of Police Arly Hanks has her hands full. The trouble's name is Brandon Bernswallow, the local bank president's playboy son, who became the new head teller and bumped long-time employee Johnna Mae Nookim right down to minimum wage. The fighting-mad women of Maggody are over in Ruby Bee's Bar and Grill planning a sex discrimination protest and a scheme to give the male chauvinists their comeuppance. But they are just as appalled as the men folk when the bank—and Bernswallow—go up in flames. Preacher Verber is sure it's the devil's handiwork. Mayor Jim Bob blames the Commies. But Arly is determined to sift through the ashes ... and discover who cooked up this case of downhome murder.

When someone poisons the tamale sauce intended for the grand opening of Jim Bob's Super Saver store, everyone in Maggody, Arkansas, is certain there is a maniac on the loose, and Chief of Police Ariel "Arly" Hanks must investigate. Original.

For Arly Hanks, the Chief of Police in Maggody, Arkansas - population 755 - the trouble begins when a small production company picks the town as the site of its next film. However, it's not long before the only scene is the scene of the crime - and the crime is murder.

Chief of Police Arly Hanks can't even look at a postcard of Manhattan's skyline—which reminds her of a broken line graph—without feeling dizzy and nauseated. So the last place on earth she wants to be is back in the City of Bright Lights, with its towering skyscrapers, memories of her nasty divorce, and a most inconvenient murder. But when Ruby Bee wins an all-expense-paid trip to New York as a finalist in the KoKo-Nut Cooking Contest and is arrested for attempted murder, it looks like Arly to the rescue. Checking into the Chadwick Hotel, Arly finds herself sharing recipes with the good-looking, single Durmond Pilverman, whose talents go way beyond his skill at baking a KoKo-Nut Kream Pie. And when a dead body turns up in the hotel dumpster, Arly begins to suspect that too many chefs are spoiling the broth in this national cook-off. And the .38 she finds hidden in Durmond's dresser has her wondering if she's been sleeping with the enemy....

Chief of Police Arly (Ariel) Hanks is still hiding out in her hometown of Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755), the land of moonshine and Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill, country roads and Nashville on the radio, cheatin' hearts and, well, maybe murder. It all starts when Matt Montana, country music's number one superstar of the year, decides it's a great PR move to come home to Maggody for the holidays. For a town in the grip of a recession, the news means Christmas is bringing a savior. Mrs. Jim Bob Buchanan, the mayor's wife, quickly sets up the Matt Montana Official Souvenir Shoppe, the amply endowed Dahlia Buchanan drives tourists around in the "Matt-mobile, " and beer costs two dollars a bottle at the Matt Montana Hometown Bar & Grill. Only one thing is missing: Aunt Adele, Matt Montana's one and only living relative. The elderly lady has mysteriously disappeared from the local nursing home, and Arly - even with the loan of the Fayetteville's PD's tracking dog - can find neither hide nor hair nor corpse of her. Now Arly gets to peek behind the scenes at a singing star's very private life to discover the manager who isn't above using blackmail, the wife who may be willing to kill to keep her man, and the pretty young singer who is giving Matt Montana an achy breaky heart. Is one of them a killer? Why has Dahlia Buchanan confessed to murder? What did happen to Aunt Adele? And what does moonshiner Raz Buchanan's pig Marjorie have to do with it all? Since Arly is the smartest, spunkiest, most off-beat sleuth in the Ozarks, it's up to her to save Christmas and restore order to the wacky, delightful community of Maggody, where anything can happen - and usually does.

Anticipating a normal, uneventful summer in the sleepy town of Maggody, police chief Arly Hanks is stunned when hysterical reports of strange lights, crop circles, and a hairy creature precede the arrival of tabloid reporters. Reprint.

Chief of police Arly (Ariel) Hanks handles all the crime that comes her way in Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755), with the ease that Ruby Bee at Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill gets out her blue plate specials. Of course, most lawbreaking in this neck of the woods has to do with an illegal still or Raz Buchanon's pet pig getting loose. And the biggest crime, according to her mother and friends, is Arly's own unmarried state. But that's before the motorcade of televangelist and faith healer Malachi Hope rolls into town and sets up a tent revival that promises to put Maggody on the map...and put Arly on the hot seat.

Chief of Police Arly Hanks must bring order out of the chaos afflicting Maggody, Arkansas, after a widow allows a group of demented militarists to play war games in her woods in the middle of hunting season. Reprint.

"Delectable and continually surprising" (The New York Times Boos Review), Joan Hess' one-of-a-kind mystery series digs up murder and mayhem in the sleepy little town of Maggody, Arkansas. When beleaguered chief of police Arly Hanks hears that her mother, Ruby Bee, and best friend, Estelle Oppers, are headed for Memphis on an Elvis Pilgrimage, she thinks she may be getting a long-overdue break. But before she can say "Thank you, thank you very much," the trip is completely stalled by a variety of deadly doings. Estelle calls home to report that Ruby Bee has collapsed and is in the local hospital. And even before Arly's seen the delta dawn, one of the other clients on the tour takes a fatal plunge from the hotel balcony—which adjoins the room of a prominent Maggody citizen, who's now doing the Jailhouse Rock in the local pen. What's more, Estelle's all shook up that the tour van is being followed by ominous thugs. For Arly, it's now or never, because if her suspicious mind doesn't figure out what to do quickly, residents of Maggody may be returned to sender—in a hearse.

To the quirky and colorful residents of Maggody, Arkansas, population 755, "going online" is something one does at the DMV. So when the high school's new computer lab gains access to the Internet, the town is plunged into virtual chaos. Students are caught sneaking peeks at pornographic Web sites, and compromising photos of prominent Maggody citizens are being flashed across the display monitors. But when the body of a promiscuous young woman is found in an abandoned shack, a web of suspicion ensnares the community. Now, as cyber crime strikes Maggody, police chief Arly Hanks has to use all her low-tech resourcefulness to pull the plug on a murderer.

Enforcing law and order in the Ozarks just got tougher for Arly Hanks: chaperoning the church youth group, she must keep ten hormonally-challenged teens in line on a retreat to Camp Pearly Gates. It's a hellish assignment sure to have Arly and her fellow travelers—Mrs. Jim Bob Buchanon, the mayor's wife; the high school shop teacher; and preacher Brother Verber—praying for strength. But adolescent angst soon turns to shocking revelation when the body of a white-robed woman turns up on the campgrounds. She belonged to the quirky cult Daughters of the Moon—and now Arly, fishing for clues with a handsome angler named Jacko, must walk a narrow path to snare a killer who works in mysterious ways....

Under the benign watch of Police Chief Arly Hanks, things are pretty quiet in the sleepy Arkansas town of Maggody these days. Not even the prospect of a historical society-funded Civil War documentary on the locally touted (albeit historically insignificant) Skirmish at Cotter's Ridge of 1863 does much to stir up the denizens of this sleepy backwoods town. What does finally get the rumor mill buzzing, however, is the revelation that two saddlebags of Confederate gold were hidden in a local cave to keep them from falling into Yankee hands. Once word gets out that the saddlebags were never recovered, almost everyone in town has a plan to get their hands on the lost gold. Meanwhile, a colorful cast of outlanders has taken over Maggody. They include a dewy Charleston belle, a famous writer of historical romances, her ne'er-do-well son, and three dozen obsessive reenactors who have not yet acknowledged that the Civil War ended over a hundred years ago, as well as a documentary film crew and a handsome, if enigmatic, filmmaker with ties to Arly's past. Arly has more than enough on her hands trying to locate missing senior citizens and keeping the visitors from each other's throats, but when the genealogist of the Stump County Historical Society dies under questionable circumstances, and a member of the Buchanon clan is the victim of a vicious and fatal attack, Arly finds herself faced with the most baffling whodunit of her career, with a disgruntled ghost a possible prime suspect.

Apart from small-town feuds and church scandal, things have been so quiet in the little Arkansas town of Maggody that even police chief Arly Hanks has found time for a vacation. But she returns to find trouble brewing and tongues wagging at fever pitch. The local old-folks’ home has been sold to a mysterious outsider, and overnight the place has been transformed into the Stonebridge Foundation, an exclusive rehabilitation center complete with a stone-faced guard who doesn’t speak a word of English and an even nastier dog. Soon there are rumors flying of mental patients roaming the countryside at night, and every character in town is keeping a gun close at hand, just in case. Everyone is dying to know what goes on behind those inhospitable gates, with the exception of Arly, who has enough rural business to keep her satisfied. When the beautiful young receptionist found drowned in the garden pool is identified as a local girl from nearby Farberville, it’s clear the case may not only involve the suspicious characters who’ve recently moved to town, but also some of the citizens of Maggody, who may have a secret or two to hide themselves. There’s the doctor who can’t resist a dose of his own medicine and a roster of patients that reads like a who’s who of tabloid headlines, as well as the local pastor who gets his spiritual inspiration with a little help from the sacramental wine, and the mayor’s wife who makes it her business to know everything about everyone. Soon Arly finds herself on the trail of a killer and discovers she may be the only innocent person left in town.

Maggody, Arkansas (pop. 755) is perceived of as a two-bit hick town, filled with one-bit hicks. But Mrs. Jim Bob Buchanan seeks to change that perception with her latest scheme—a charity golf tournament. This presents a bit of a challenge, since no one in Maggody plays golf and there is no course. But when the prize for the first hole-in-one is announced—a top of the line bass boat—nearly everyone in town develops a new-found interest in the sport. The town goes golf crazy, trying to learn the sport in time to win the bass boat, with limited success and maximum domestic disorder. Sheriff Arly Hanks, who has better things to worry about, just wishes it would all go away. When a small-town golf instructor wins the bass boat on the first day of the tournament, it looks like all the excitement is over. But the next morning, when he’s found dead, sitting in the parking lot in the front seat of the bass boat, the prize is once again up for grabs and nearly everyone in town is a murder suspect.