Sara Hoskinson Frommer: 7 books

“I can't play the concert,” Sylvia Purcell said. “I have to sit in a tree.” Just before their big children’s concert, Joan Spencer, manager of the Civic Symphony in Oliver, Indiana, learns that she will be minus one of her best violinists. Sylvia is protesting a housing construction...

Joan Spencer’s daughter, Rebecca, falls for a virtuoso violinist at an international competition in Indianapolis, and Joan is drawn into a swarm of violinists, their host families, and their unspoken rivalries. When a rare Stradivarius is stolen, and the seductive violinist who owned it vanishes,...

Joan Spencer, the viola-playing protagonist of Frommer's small-town Indiana mysteries, doesn't look for trouble but it keeps finding her. A few days before her daughter's wedding, the last thing Joan needs is something else to worry about--but here it is, ready or not. Her ex-con brother Dave was...

The Oliver Civic Symphony is just another small-town orchestra, a gathering spot for local amateur musicians. It has weekly rehearsals, punch and cookies, and colorful gossip, and now… it has murder. An oboist suddenly drops dead of what turns out to be a rare poison. A flutist’s throat...

Joan Spencer, violist and manager of the Oliver, Indiana Civic Symphony, is busy with preparations for the group’s performance at the hugely popular annual quilt show. But when the body of show organizer Mary Sue Ellett is found under a quilt, the competition takes on a sinister tone. Joan...

The third in the delightful Joan Spencer mystery series combines a staging of a Gilbert & Sullivan production with murder in a small town. A tornado sweeps through the town of Oliver, Indiana, catching Joan Spencer and a little girl named Laura Putnam in its wake. Joan saves the little...

Things have finally calmed down enough for cozy heroine Joan Spencer and her new husband, Lt. Fred Lundquist, to take a long-delayed honeymoon to celebrate their three-month-old nuptials. Of course, it won’t be a traditional honeymoon, since they’ll have Joan’s teenage son, Andrew, in tow, and...