The Alpine zen

"Tingles with all the mystery and allure that only Mary Daheim's brand of small-town life can provide. -- As an early summer heat wave beats down on Alpine, Emma and her staff are treading very lightly. For unfathomable reasons, the paper's House & Home editor, Vida Runkel, is in a major snit, refusing to speak to her colleagues. So when a peculiar young woman walks in claiming her parents have been murdered, and that she's in mortal danger, too, it fits right in with the rest of the craziness."@en
"Emma investigates the arrival and illness of a young woman who is searching for the mother who abandoned her, a case that is complicated by Vida's disappearance, a stalker, and a reclusive artist."@en
"As an early summer heat wave beats down on Alpine, Emma and her staff are treading very lightly. For unfathomable reasons, the paper's House & Home editor, Vida Runkel, is in a major snit, refusing to speak to her colleagues. So when a peculiar young woman walks in claiming her parents have been murdered, and that she's in mortal danger, too, it fits right in with the rest of the craziness. Then, to the utter bafflement of her colleagues, Vida vanishes without a word to anyone. And just when Emma and her husband, Sheriff Milo Dodge, start to unsnarl these tangles, a male body, dead too long to identify, surfaces at the town dump - making what seemed merely weird feel downright sinister."@en