An Angel to Die for

She's just a temp but guardian angel Augusta Goodnight knows how to comfort in this second winning cozy in Ballard's newest series (Angel at Troublesome Creek), a welcome addition to the growing subgenre of mysteries featuring benign otherworldly characters. It's a bleak February homecoming for editor Prentice Dobson. Both her estranged younger sister, Maggie, and their father have recently died. Her mother has left their Georgia farm, Smokerise, because it was too lonely. To top it off, when Prentice heads to the family graveyard to make peace with Maggie, she finds a gaping hole where her wicked Uncle Faris had been buried 25 years earlier. Stunned, she hurries back to the cold farmhouse to call the sheriffDand is greeted with a crackling fire, hot chocolate and cinnamon toast made by Augusta, a ""Dale Evans look-alike"" who smells of strawberries . Prentice badly needs Augusta's help, for Uncle Faris's casket turns up bearing the body of a bleached blonde and Maggie has left a baby somewhere in Tennessee. Prentice and Augusta race to find baby Joey before the estranged family of Maggie's husband can. Back at Smokerise, meanwhile, bodies are piling upDalong with skeletons from the family closet. While the book's plotting is almost too dense, the humor is breezy, the tone light and the emotions realistic. Readers will really care about Prentice by book's end. Agent, Laura Langlie. (Oct.)