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In this sixth book of the Augusta Goodnight series by Mignon Ballard, Lucy Nan Pilgrim finds herself in hot water again. Stone’s Throw, South Carolina, home of Lucy Nan and friends, has one major claim to fame: Sarah Bedford College. When Lucy Nan is hired to teach a hands-on course in the daily living skills of pioneers, her connections to the college help her solve the mystery of the missing student.

A year after meeting Augusta Goodnight, Lucy Nan is accustomed to her guardian angel, who smells of strawberries and is visible only to Lucy Nan and occasionally Ellis, Lucy’s best friend. When Lucy Nan meets and interviews the missing girl’s college roommate, she learns of a message sent to the girl shortly before her disappearance. A hidden manuscript, evidence of blackmail and a nine-year-old death eventually reveal a pattern of murders. But who is the killer? And where will he strike next?

Suspects abound, from the school maintenance man to professors to boyfriends. When the suspects begin to be eliminated, can even their deaths help Lucy Nan and her friends, members of the Thursday Morning Literary Society (which now meets on Monday Afternoons), called the Thursdays for short, figure out who did it?

What could verses from the Jabberwocky, a poem out of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, have to do with the murders? Old college yearbooks lead to the solution and help Lucy Nan and Augusta save Ellis’s niece from the killer.

Augusta Goodnight also has another gift: she cooks like a, well, angel. Find delicious recipes at the back of the book and on Mignon Ballard’s website. I enjoy these stories and recommend the series.

Lisa Lickel