Miss Julia Weathers the Storm

Bestseller Ross’s appealing 18th mystery set in the North Carolina town of Abbotsville (after 2016’s Miss Julia Inherits a Mess) takes Miss Julia Murdoch and her husband, Sam, on a beach vacation, along with assorted family members and friends. The Murdochs rent a big house on an island off Charleston, S.C., where little Latisha, a great-grandchild of their housekeeper, Lillian, is soon hunting for shells. Ominously, three beachcombers chasing down a load of currency that’s washed ashore seem to be inordinately interested in Latisha’s shells. The vacationers, driven back to Abbotsville by an approaching hurricane, are alarmed to find that it’s not just the storm that has followed them home. PI J.D. Pickens and Sgt. Coleman Bates of the Abbot County Sheriff’s Department lend a hand in dealing with the unwelcome visitors. As usual for this cozy series, the main pleasure lies not in the mystery, a comfortable puzzler, but in the time spent among engaging small-town characters as they cope with the joys and demands of day-to-day life. [em]Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents. (Apr.) [/em]