Love Potion Number Gone

Matchmaker Macie Fisher-Thompson has bigger problems than her grandmother’s unsolicited botanical love poetry. Loretta Faye Combs, Clover Creek’s beloved herbalist, who has been selling her famous “heart-opener tonic” out of a converted tobacco barn for thirty years, is dead among her mason jars and dried lavender. And the cause of death is no accident.

Half of Clover Creek credits Loretta’s tonic with changing their lives. Two Fisher Perfect Pairs clients swear it’s the reason they fell in love. And Mamaw June Fisher, seventy-four years old, index card at the ready, is personally offended by the implication that anyone in this county needed a tonic when they had her. She will be inserting herself into this investigation. There is no stopping her.

As Macie digs into Loretta’s thirty-year-old formula and the suspicious reconciliation of a grieving niece who may have had more to gain from her aunt’s death than anyone realized, the case winds through a botanical supply trail, a pharmacy consultation that shouldn’t have happened, and a formula notebook hidden inside a barn wall. The only thing standing between the killer and a quiet getaway is Macie, her grandmother’s casserole, and the grumpy sheriff who keeps showing up, first at the crime scene, and later, in a rainstorm on Ridgemont Road, in a conversation that has nothing to do with the case.

Love Potion Number Gone is the third book in the Heartstrings & Homicides series — a warm, witty cozy mystery set in the Kentucky bluegrass, where small-town secrets run deep, the community feeds you whether you ask or not, and the best matchmaker in Burt County may also be its most unlikely detective.

Perfect for fans of: Diane Mott Davidson, Lucy Burdette, Ellery Adams, Jana DeLeon, and Southern cozy mysteries with slow-burn romance, unforgettable secondary characters, and a strong sense of place.