Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle: **Signed**

Mama's back on the case, sniffing out dark, tragic secrets...and a killer.

Not much happens in Otis, South Carolina (pop. 5,000) that Mama, a caseworker for the Department of Social Services, doesn't know about.  Mama's given name is Grace Covington, but everyone calls her Candi--for the honeyed color of her complexion, not her cooking (which is second to none from Otis all the way to Atlanta, where I work as a paralegal).  I usually go home when I need some truly soul-satisfying eating.  But this time I was heading back to Otis to help Mama after her bunion operation.  I had no idea we'd end up knee-deep in somebody else's trouble....

It all seemed to start when Mama and I were shopping for groceries and crazy old Miss Birdie stole Cricket Childs' tiny baby, causing a scene between the two women everyone in town heard about.  It wasn't twenty-four hours later that Cricket, known as a lady who liked wild times and wilder men, turned up murdered in a fellow's bed.  Even worse, Cricket's baby had vanished.

To add to the chilling events, my Daddy's wandering dog Midnight dug up something shocking: an infant's skull.  And not long after Mama rushed it over to Sheriff Abe's office, Midnight brought home another.  Naturally, he couldn't tell us where he got them...and the mystery deepened.

So no way Mama wasn't going to start snooping.  And with the doctor ordering her off her feet, I ended up doing some legwork.  But it's a good thing I still had two good feet, because before long, I was running for my life...as babies' cries and women's tears  mingled in a crime fueled by motives as ancient as human memory--greed, jealousy, and old-fashioned revenge.

In Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle, Nora DeLoach captures the warmth of family life in the deep South...and the icy tingling of superb suspense.  And in Mama she has created a woman sleuth as filled with compassion as courage, wise in the ways of the human heart--and the criminal mind.

Nora DeLoach is an Orlando, Florida, native presently living in Decatur, Georgia.  She is married and the mother of three.  Her novels include three previous Mama mysteries.  She is at work on her fifth.