But just as Claire has decided that her time might be better spent fretting over the details of her upcoming nuptials, one of the volunteers helping with the Ren Fair falls victim to arson, her body found burned in the wreckage of her rented home. Even stranger, none of the members of the local chapter of The Association for Renaissance Scholarship and Enlightenment (ARSE) – the group putting on Farberville’s first RenFair – had ever met the woman in the flesh and can’t provide any information about who she is and where she came from.  However, someone is definitely dead and the fire looks very suspicious – but is it murder?  When the fair opens, tensions expose the dark secrets and malevolent schemes that lurk beneath the superficial congeniality of the ARSE members.  The lords are leaping, the ladies are lying, and the knights are fighting--while someone is committing murder most heinous.  And with Claire’s dreams of a blissful wedding hanging in the balance, she has no choice left but to fling herself into the battle and match wits with the killer…

A Renaissance Fair is coming to the relatively quiet college town of Farberville Arkansas, which is not the sort of news that usually sets local bookseller Claire Malloy’s heart racing. But with Claire’s daughter, Caron, being the perpetually petulant teenager that she is, and her fiancé, Police Lieutenant Peter Rosen, away, she finds herself drawn into the strange inner workings of the group putting on the fair.

AND THE LADIES ARE LYING—DEAD.

Stranger still: A Ren Fair volunteer has just been found burned in the wreckage of a rented home. Who is this woman, and why haven’t any of her associates ever met her in the flesh? When the fair is set to open, tensions expose the dark secrets and malevolent schemes that lurk beneath the surface. Now, with Claire’s dreams of a blissful wedding hanging in the balance, she has no choice but to fling herself into the battle and match wits with the killer…

“If you’ve never spent time with Claire and her crew, I feel sorry for you. Stop reading this nonsense and hop to it. You’ll see wit and humanity all wrapped up in a nifty murder mystery.”—Harlan Coben, author of Promise Me

Stranger still: A Ren Fair volunteer has just been found burned in the wreckage of a rented home. Who is this woman, and why haven’t any of her associates ever met her in the flesh? When the fair is set to open, tensions expose the dark secrets and malevolent schemes that lurk beneath the surface. Now, with Claire’s dreams of a blissful wedding hanging in the balance, she has no choice but to fling herself into the battle and match wits with the killer…