Jo Dereske Books in Order

Raymond Fibbey questions whether the old stories about Glom Gloom, the Gartergates, and the dangerous Weeuns are true. With eccentric Wicker Bugle and former enemies, he sets out to investigate legends his community has stopped believing.

After his father dies, a teenager takes responsibility for a light tower at an isolated outpost in space. He expects to manage alone, until two teenage girls and a group of aliens arrive and complicate his duties.

Ten-year-old Barbara and her younger brother Tommy visit their eccentric Uncle Rupert and Aunt Tofelia in 1955. Their stay becomes an exercise in coping with Terry Berry, the relatives’ spoiled poodle whose mischief dominates the household.

A body turns up among the fiction shelves at the library where meticulous Helma Zukas works. Joined by her artist friend Ruth, Helma applies her orderly habits and research skills to investigating the unexpected crime.

An anonymous letter persuades librarian Helma Zukas to consider attending her twentieth high school reunion. Further messages threaten her life if she follows through, turning a return to old classmates into a mystery she must investigate.

Helma Zukas joins Bellehaven’s demanding Snow to Surf relay as a canoeist. When her friend Ruth becomes a murder suspect, Helma searches for clues during the race, which stretches from the mountains to Washington Bay.

After a cataloger is murdered at Bellehaven’s new cultural center, Helma Zukas is asked to take over the victim’s work. A desperate letter written on the day of the killing draws the librarian into investigating.

Widowed after an accident that also injured her daughter, handwriting expert Ruby Crane leaves her Los Angeles police work for her Michigan hometown. A murderous scheme nearby forces her to use the skills she hoped to leave behind.

A woman’s strangulation exposes disturbing secrets in Ruby Crane’s quiet Michigan community and makes Ruby a killer’s target. An enigmatic former policeman across the lake offers help, though his own concealed past complicates their growing acquaintance.

Persuaded by Ruth to hike in the Cascades, Helma Zukas encounters a murder and a missing companion. A blizzard traps them in a cabin with suspicious strangers, leaving the librarian to investigate amid increasingly dangerous conditions.

Aunt Em’s visit begins with a stolen purse and grows stranger when the thief is found dead at Helma Zukas’s apartment. Helma investigates the killing while confronting a hidden episode in her beloved aunt’s past.

Ruby Crane’s estranged sister seeks help after a boy dies at a construction project she designed. Ruby examines allegedly altered plans for forgery, but a new murder and a stalker turn the sisters’ reunion into danger.

Serving community service at a homeless shelter, Helma Zukas looks into thefts affecting the facility. When a body is discovered and suspicion falls on her, the librarian must investigate a crime far more serious than stolen belongings.

A neighbor’s death interrupts Helma Zukas’s meeting with Police Chief Wayne Gallant’s children. When Gallant is attacked and a library book becomes evidence, Helma must weigh protecting a borrower’s privacy against pursuing clues with Ruth.

On her forty-second birthday, Helma Zukas faces library politics, compulsory counseling, and a missing cat. When two counseling participants die, she investigates despite her boss’s prohibition, while a new librarian complicates her relationship with Wayne Gallant.

A billionaire is killed at the site he promised for Bellehaven’s new library. Helma Zukas and Ruth approach his heirs to preserve the donation, only to find that family tensions may also hold clues to his murder.

Two paintings of Ruth’s former lovers, both mysteriously deceased, are stolen. Helma Zukas helps her friend investigate, encountering a resentful ex-wife, artistic jealousy, and local activists as questions about Ruth’s romantic history become increasingly dangerous.

Wayne Gallant proposes to Helma Zukas, but wedding plans are disrupted when her mother and Aunt Em are robbed. Helma and Ruth investigate the alleged robber’s puzzling fate while seeking Em’s stolen Lithuanian carving.

Ten stories examine family responsibility, betrayal, love, and the uneasy connections between living and dying. Twins face the consequences of saving a life, generations of women negotiate obligations, and other characters confront hunger, revenge, and fears that shape their choices.

Jo Dereske recounts returning to rural Michigan to care for an aunt and uncle with dementia. Her account combines the demands of caregiving and family change with entries from her aunt’s diaries from 1929 to 1933.