While visiting a friend's Western dude ranch, Benni Harper stumbles upon the remains of a long-dead murder victim buried in a shallow grave and embarks on an investigation to reveal the truth behind the terrible crime.

Forced to hide her grief when her married lover dies unexpectedly, museum curator Catherine Gehrig works in solitude to restore a nineteenth-century automaton and finds comfort in the journals of its adventurous commissioner.

Curator and occasional sleuth Chloe Ellefson is off to Minneapolis to help her friend Ariel with a monumental task. Ariel must write a proposal for a controversial and expensive restoration project: convert an abandoned flour mill, currently used as shelter by homeless people, into a museum. When a dead body is found stuffed into a grain chute, Chloe's attention turns from milling to murder. Back in Milwaukee, Chloe's love interest Roelke has been...