Murder Can Kill The Appetite There aren't many amusements in little Delphi, South Dakota—and that suits Tory Bauer just fine. Widowed, over forty, and somewhat exceeding the surgeon general's weight guidelines, she's content to sling hash at the locals in the Delphi Cafe and craves no additional excitement. Her oversexed fellow waitress and trailer-mate Delphine, however, is always hungry for a new thrill. So when young, good-looking Mormon missionary Charles Winston brings his soul saving fervor to the Cafe's table, Del's all over him like ketchup on fries, totally unconcerned about how her boyfriend—the dangerously short-tempered county deputy, Big Dick Albrecht—will react. And it's Tory who has to clean up the sloppy mess left behind—because it's she who discovers Winston's corpse stuffed in a mop closet several days later. Tory's large appetite for answers and natural talent for deduction are dumping her into a crockpot of lethal, long-simmering small town secrets. And if she's not careful, she'll wind up in the missionary's position: flat-out, stone-cold dead.

This sassy mystery introduces readers to Tory Bauer, a savvy 40-something waitress who knows what's cooking in a South Dakota town after murder is served up. When a carnival comes to town, Tory strikes up a friendship with a lonely carnie worker who is later found dead. Incapable of leaving well enough alone, Tory sets out to unmask the killer.

"In 1969, I, Tory Bauer, was a high school sophomore. For me, a Life and Death issue involved finding a date for Homecoming. The only thing I had in common with the rest of my generation was the notion that love was all we'd need and an unshakable confidence in our own immortality." "Unfortunately we were wrong on both counts." "It took a couple of decades, a few tragedies and betrayals, and a windy afternoon standing along the bank of the James River looking down at a dead body in the water for me to realize that the past has a long reach." "And that high school lasts forever."

Tory Bauer is the quintessential diner waitress, slopping up greasy food with a hefty side order of cranky attitude. In Mourning Shift the goblins are out for Halloween, and Tory is crabbier than usual. Is it a trick when a mysterious old man dies in the cafe's restroom? Or is it a treat to find out the juicy gossip that he's the cafe owner's long estranged husband? The reluctant heroine saves the day again by discovering the identity of a killer.

On New Year's Eve in Delphi, South Dakota, local waitress and amateur sleuth Tory Bauer investigates the slaying of visiting lothario Ian O'Hara, but her determination to solve the case could lead Tory into a much-too-close encounter with a killer who would do anything to keep from being caught. Original.

Ample-bodied, salty-tongued waitress Tory Bauer is no longer taking orders from anyone—now that she has become co-owner of the only cafe in tiny Delphi, South Dakota. And since corpses on the premises are bad for business, Tory is understandably peeved when a young Swedish member of a traveling international choral group keels over in one of the booths, leaving a suicide note behind claiming a sexual predator, the Reverend Clay Deibert, drove her to it. Now Tory knows Clay is the straightest of straight arrows—he's also Tory's cousin by marriage—and she suspects slutty Meg, the only Canadian in the chorus, is responsible for this mess in some way or another. But when a dead body winds up stuffed into Clay's closet, Tory realizes that clearing the reverend might be tougher than finding a sarong in Saskatchewan. Like the Mounties, however, Tory's determined to get her man (or woman) — unless the murdering he (or she) gets Tory first.