Amazing Gracie Mysteries Series

An Iowa version of Miss Marple set in 1903 in Locked Rock, Iowa. Gracie Evans, a retired farmer, rents her farm out and moves into a retirement home. Gracie and Melinda Applegate spend their days rocking on the front porch. Boredom sets in. Gracie tears peek holes in the vines attached to the porch so they can snoop on the neighbors. Seemed like a harmless diversion until they see the killer of a woman across the street. Afraid to tell what they saw to the law, the women fear for their lives. The killer is stalking them and everyone in the Moser Mansion For Women Rest home wind up dead. Gracie takes matters in her own hands when she talks Melinda into going with her in the night to search for evidence in a shed on the killer's property. Can they sneak in and out of that shed without being seen or heard? Maybe if they can get past the killer's watch dog.

In this historical mystery set in Iowa, Gracie Evans isn't happy with all the excitment at the Moser Mansion for Women Rest Home in Locked Rock, Iowa. Molly Moser, owner of the mansion, is marrying the butter and egg man in the back yard. The residents can bring a relative to escort them to the wedding. Melinda Applegate puts a notice in a newspaper column to find some kin. A stranger shows up claiming to be her long lost nephew. Melinda believes Jeffrey Armstrong, but Gracie thinks the man is sneaky. She's sure he is up to no good and tries to warn everyone. They think Gracie is jealous, because Melinda ignores her now that she has a nephew paying attention to her. Molly leaves on a month long honeymoon and the upheaval gets worse. Gracie is determined to prove Jeffrey Armstrong is a crook, and he's after Melinda's money.

The Moser Mansion Rest Home For Women residents have been summoned to testify against Mavis Jordan, a former neighbor. She is on trial for killing the lady of the evening that lived across from the rest home. Molly Lang wants to make this a pleasant outing for the ladies inspite of the trial. Gracie isn't happy with being at the county seat and wishes she could go home. A mysterious man stalks her with the intention of killing her before she can testify. He would have succeeded if Gracie hadn't switched hotel rooms. Instead, the killer murdered another elderly woman in what had been Gracie's bed. Bad goes to worse when Gracie takes the stand and refuses to name men citizens of Locked Rock, Iowa that visited the lady of the evening. The judge rules Gracie is in comptempt of court and will remain in jail until she makes out the list. Gracie doesn't want to be a jailbird, but she thinks it's safer in jail for her than out on the streets.

Gracie Evans is tired of retirement at the Moser Mansion For Women Rest Home in Locked Rock, Iowa. She has the worse case of spring fever you ever saw. So she wishes she could go back to the farm just for a short time. She gets her wish when the renter asks her to farm set while he takes his wife and daughter to visit a relative near Ottumwa. A month on the farm sounded like just what Gracie needed to perk her up. She plans to turn back the clock by going fishing in the Iowa river and picking wild strawberries. What wasn't in the plan was the murder of a neighbor, roaming Indians in her timber, someone taking a shot at her when she's mushroom hunting, and little things like a goat that doesn't cooperate at milking time, getting locked in the outhouse and an old boyfriend that shows up too often to suit Gracie. Before her stay is over, Gracie is thinking she's going to be more careful what she wishes for.

Fay Risner entered the National November Write Month contest in November 2012 and made it over the 50,000 word finish line before the deadline. Poor Defenseless Addie, book seven in the Amazing Gracie Mystery series is the finished product of that effort. Though Gracie Evans is tired of listening to all the town gossips, she begins to worry when they talk about a stranger in town. The man is living with a friend of Gracie's, Addie Masters. Seems he is the elderly woman's son that none of the gossips knew about. When Addie stops attending church, Gracie and the other residents from Moser Mansion wonder if she's ailing. They decide to visit her. A first hand look at Addie's rude son and seeing a wicked bruise on Addie's hand gets Gracie and her friends putting two and two together. They come up with elderly abuse that they think should be reported to the law. Town Marshal Earl Bullock turns their complaint about Homer Masters over to Sheriff Ben Logan. He comes up with some disturbing information that has the sheriff and town marshal worried about Addie. They have to have proof that Homer is abusing his mother, or she has to confess which isn't going to happen. Beloved Aunt Pearlbee is suddenly taken ill and needs attention. The residents of Moser Mansion have to let Addie fend for herself. Gracie worries that by the time they get back to helping poor defenseless Addie Masters, she will be dead.

Moser Mansion in Locked Rock, Iowa became a spooky place right after the annual Halloween party. Libby Hook sees ghosts wandering around with her in the middle of the night. She unsettles everyone with her screams that are loud enough to wake the dead. Gracie Evans blames the hauntings on a southern contractor that is trying to buy the mansion so he can turn it into a hotel. The residents would have to find new homes if that happens. Seems the only one who knows what is going on is Moxie McEntire's pet parrot, Turkeyneck, who easedrops on all conversations. No matter how hard Gracie tries, the parrot won't tell what he knows to her. She voiced her dislike of Turkeyneck once too often.

Gracie Evans and the other elderly residents living at Moser Mansion Rest Home for Women in Locked Rock, Iowa aren't happy with the school board's pick for the new schoolmarm. The young woman has been seen dating Locked Rock's eligible young bachelors. Lois Harwood said Cecee Morgan claimed she caught the new teacher flirting with her husband. They live next door to the teacher. Lois Harwood drove past a buggy rocking back and forth late one evening in the country and recognized Hubert Hadden and the schoolmarm acting unseemly so she said. Lois spread the news, and from what she heard from others, she says the schoolmarm had been ridden more often than all the horses in the town's livery. The town's respectable ladies are up in arms enough to go to the school board members and complain before school starts. The board needs to fire Connie Greene and hire another teacher. Too late! The Moser Mansion women go for an evening walk and find the schoolmarm's body in a marsh outside of town. Now if that young woman was getting along so well with the men in Locked Rock, Who Killed The Schoolmarm?

Locked Rock, Iowa has a new preacher. Gracie Evans decides the man is way too young and inexperienced to be a preacher for elderly citizens set in their ways. Although, she admits he wasn't too bad at preaching a sermon. It was when he said good bye after church to the congregation, Gracie objected to his familiarity with the unmarried women as they filed out. He latched onto each young woman's hand and kept her talking to him as long as he thought he could get away with it. Gracie complained his behavior wasn't seemly, but Melinda didn't want to hear her bad mouth the preacher. She said so what if he was wife hunting. Nothing wrong with that. Gracie didn't intend to drop her opinion so easily. She vowed to keep an eye on the preacher to keep him from making a fool out of the young women in town. Some mysterious things started happening after Preacher Mayfield arrived that might prove Gracie right. A few young women whispered among their family and friends that their pantaloons disappeared from their bedrooms in the night. Weirder yet, expensive porcelain dolls were found on the porches of the young ladies the preacher flirted with. Dolls that looked just like the young women. All evidence to Gracie that the town's preacher's past should be checked. She just might be right about him being a Wayward Preacher.

Gracie Evans is going back to her Three Oaks farm again to farm sit for a month. After the problems she had the last time she farm sit, the Moser Mansion family is worried about her staying in the country alone. So this time she offers to take the Lang's daughter, Shana, with her. The girl needs to work off some excess energy now that school is out, and this will give Molly and Orie Lang a break from worrying about Shana wondering around town by herself. The last straw to their consenting to Shana's stay with Gracie was when Shana invited a hobo to Sunday dinner. Her parents fear Shana is going to wind up in serious trouble like some of Maude Brown's children. When Melinda worries about what might happen at the farm, Madeline talks Melinda into letting her do a tea leaf reading to see Gracie's future. According to Madeline's predictions, this visit to the farm isn't going to be any safer for Gracie than the last time. Someone with a level head needs to go along to keep her and Shana out of trouble. So Melinda invites herself along to watch out for Gracie and Shana. One evening on the farm, they are all nervous when they see lights flickering in Gracie's timber, headed for the Evan's family cemetery. In the dark, they hike to the cemetery and find a woman dressed in white, leaning down next to Gracie's baby brother's grave. She was patting the ground. Gracie yells at the woman, and she disappears into the darkness. A few days later, Gracie and Shana explore the woods for mushrooms. What they find is a small rectangular area of freshly dug dirt with wilting wild flowers planted on the spot. Off in the distance, the filmy, wispy figure of a small child flits into their sight and ducks behind the trees to disappear. Shana is scared and wants no part of being in the timber. She tells Gracie they saw the elusive spirit of a Will O Wisp haunting Gracie's timber.

According to the gossips, they haven't seen Florence Moffatt's husband, the town drunk, staggering home in the wee hours of the morning for days.. They ask Florence where Elmer is. Florence says he's away on business which makes Gracie Evans scoff that Elmer never worked a day in his life. One day Florence shows up at the Bible Study group in black widow weeds and announces Elmer passed away in Cedar Rapids. She's going to bring him home in a rented wagon. Women frown when Florence says her friend, Preston Terrell, is going on the trip with her. When asked what caused Elmer's death, she gives anyone who asks a different story. When she arrives back in Locked Rock in a week's time, an expensive, walnut casket trimmed in gold is in the back of the wagon. The town turns out to help Widder Moffatt mourn at a nice funeral for good for nothing Elmer Moffatt. From then on, Gracie and her friends see Florence spending her spare time by Elmer's grave, crying and praying. Gracie wonders what Florence's problem is and decides to find out. How could the Widder Moffatt be confused about how Elmer died? Florence should be so glad to be rid of him that she shouldn't have to play the part of The Grieving Widder Woman.