Some like it hot
"Delightful . . . Ms. Pickard has given the protagonist a new least on life!"-The New York Times
When Eugenia Potter receives an urgent phone call from the manager of her ranch near Tucson, she's only too happy to drop everything and fly home. Something inside of her is calling her back to the desert. Why else would be preparing spicy Mexican meatball soup at her cottage in Maine when the menu clearly calls for clam chowder?
But once she arrives home, Mrs. Potter discovers that her ranch manager and his granddaughter are missing from her ranch, Las Palomas, and feared dead. When a guest at a dinner gathering thrown by Mrs. Potter is food poisoned-apparently from eating her famous 27-ingredient chili-she knows she must act quickly before the murderer strikes again. And it doesn't hurt to have the help of a long-lost beau to spice up the danger with romance . . .

Nancy Pickard is a four-time Edgar Award nominee, most recently for The Virgin of Small Plains. She is the winner of the Anthony Award, the Macavity Award, and three Agatha Awards. Her short stories have also won numerous accolades. Pickard has been a national board member of the Mystery Writers of America and the president of Sisters in Crime, and she is a member of PEN America. She lives in Merriam, Kansas.
The late Virginia Rich is the author of three previous Eugenia Potter mysteries, and, with Nancy Pickard, of The 27-Ingredient Chili con Carne Murders. Like her heroine, Mrs. Rich lived on a cattle ranch in Arizona and also had a cottage off the coast of Maine.