When a rude telemarketer calls while Honey Santana and her son are having dinner she decides to teach him a lesson in good behavior. She lures him and his mistress with a pitch for Florida real estate and includes her ex-husband and 12-year-old son in her plot.

She's the Winnebago-driving, pistol-packing sixty-something-year-old-and she's back, with her mini-Dachshund Stretch. She's Maxie McNabb-and criminals from the frigid Iditarod Trail to the scorching Southwest had better beware. This time, before leaving New Mexico's lovely warmth, Maxie sets out to turn one on-edge town back into a peaceful pueblo.

While traveling to her aunt's home in Redbud by train and stagecoach, quiet young Emily and her turtle, Rufus, team up with Jackson, fellow orphan and troublemaker extraordinaire, to outsmart mean Uncle Victor, who is after Emily's inheritance.

Up north, the summers are brief -- and winter, like death, is cold and long . . . Recovering from knee surgery that will cause her to miss the upcoming dogsled racing season, champion "musher" Jessie Arnold feels empty and bored -- so she grabs an opportunity to fill her days manning the Iditarod booth at the Alaska State Fair. But murder becomes an attraction here as well -- an especially brutal one -- when the corpse of a small-time hoodlum...