Business is booming at China Bayles' newest venture, Thyme for Tea -- but she's too distracted to revel in her latest entrepreneurial triumph. When the former big-city lawyer isn't trying to spend more time with her new husband and stepson, she's worrying about Ruby, who just hasn't been herself lately. To further complicate matters, China has to round up a supply of mistletoe, the season's most popular herb. It seems an easy enough task -- until...

Herbalist China Bayles's latest adventure takes her to the mountains of North Carolina, where her friend Dorothea Harper serves as the director and curator of the Hemlock House Library, a priceless collection of rare gardening books housed in a haunted mountainside mansion that once belonged to Sunny Carswell, a reclusive heiress. But the most valuable book - A Curious Herbal, created by Elizabeth Blackwell in the 1730s - is missing and Dorothea is...