What is Mignon F. Ballard reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Mignon F. Ballard, author of Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble.

Her entry begins:

For Christmas my daughter gave me a copy of Rachel Joyce’s The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and I enjoyed it so much I’m recommending it for my book club. Set in England in the present, the story follows the peculiar adventure of a lackluster man in his early retirement years who sets off to mail a letter one early summer morning and decides to deliver it in person. The fact that the recipient of the letter is some 600 miles away is the carrot of the story that...[read on]

About Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble, from the publisher:

It's the summer of 1944 and the world seems mired in a war that will never end. On the home front, the people of Elderberry, Georgia, are doing everything they can to support the troops. Even with a war on, the peaches are ripe for picking. As veteran teacher Miss Dimple Kilpatrick and her colleagues work in the orchard, they hear frantic calls for help: An eighteen-year-old girl, Prentice, has been missing—and is later found murdered.

Miss Dimple and her fellow teachers-turned-sleuths are determined to find the killer. Although Prentice had recently broken up with her boyfriend, the most obvious suspect isn't always the right one: Prentice may have been keeping some secrets; and a local woman claims to have witnessed the whole abduction—except she also believes she is Scarlett O’Hara, that Nazi spies are pursuing her, and that she knows where the Confederate gold is buried. Figuring out what really happened to Prentice is sure to be a challenge. But Miss Dimple, who has taught the town's first graders for decades, has never been daunted by a challenge.

Mignon F. Ballard's newest edition to her Miss Dimple mystery series, Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble, is filled with period charm and a wonderfully brave band of amateur sleuths.

Learn more about the author and her work at Mignon Ballard's website.

My Book, The Movie: Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause.

The Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause.

Writers Read: Mignon F. Ballard (December 2011).

The Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Suspects.

The Page 69 Test: Miss Dimple Picks a Peck of Trouble.

Writers Read: Mignon F. Ballard.

--Marshal Zeringue