I’m Cordelia West and I am, or at least I was, a librarian in Dallas, Texas. That is until my Aunt Penelope passed away, leaving me the sole owner of the Chickadee Motel. A bit of a surprise, considering I didn’t even know I had an Aunt Penelope. Her trust came with an unusual stipulation: I couldn’t sell the place until the current residents passed away or moved on. I hadn’t been back to Sarsaparilla Falls since my momma and I blew out of town when I was just ten years old, but I figured I owed it to the aunt I’d never met to check things out, so I headed back to my hometown to see just what I’d gotten myself into.

Aunt Penelope’s lawyer claimed the Chickadee was something of an institution in town, but he’d failed to mention one important detail. The motel was actually a brothel populated with three working girls in their sixties who called themselves the Chicks. Daisy, the sweetheart who loved spoiling men silly. Belinda Sue, the dominatrix of the group who handled the men who preferred a firmer hand. And Arline, whose talent mostly lay in her ability to take out her teeth.

It was their job to keep the husbands in town occupied so their wives could get on with living their best lives spending time with friends, gobbling up reality TV, and indulging in creative hobbies. They were beloved by just about everyone and provided a valuable service, but being a madam wasn’t exactly something I’d been prepared for, so I decided to turn the running of things over to the Chicks and wash my hands of the whole thing. Until the local pastor turned up dead of a heart attack in Daisy’s bed.

No one wanted the scandal or the gossip that would follow the pastor’s family, so we moved his body to the church so he could be discovered someplace more fitting of his position. Unfortunately, the pastor hadn’t had a heart attack after all. He’d been poisoned. And all clues were starting to point toward the Chickadee. With the pastor’s son, Archer—my childhood nemesis turned FBI agent too charming for his own good—hot on our heels, I had no choice but to stick around town and find the real murderer before Daisy went down for a crime she didn’t commit. So much for washing my hands of things. But what else is a madam to do?

THE BEST LITTLE MOTEL IN TEXAS
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Release: March 2026
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

A charming, edgy mystery about a young woman who unexpectedly inherits the best little motel in Texas – replete with a feisty set of golden working girls, a poisoned priest, and a sleepy hometown thrown into chaos.

After a childhood spent combing the dive bars of Sarsaparilla Falls to collect her fun-loving momma, Cordelia West now enjoys a simple, respectable life in Dallas. Then one phone call from the hometown she’s spent years trying to forget throws it into chaos.

Cordelia’s great-aunt Penelope has passed away, naming Cordelia the sole heir to the Chickadee Motel. She has no memory of a great-aunt and no interest in hospitality, but the will stipulates that the motel can’t be sold until its residents leave or pass away – so she reluctantly heads back down to Sarsaparilla Falls to figure out who’s living in the Chickadee, and how to get them out.

But upon her arrival, Cordelia discovers the Chickadee isn’t a motel—it’s a brothel, housing three women in their sixties known as the Chicks. For decades, Daisy, Arline, and Belinda Sue have entertained the men of Sarsaparilla Falls (with their wives’ blessings)—including the upright Pastor Reed-Smythe, who thunders against the town’s favorite sins when he’s not indulging. Cordelia doesn’t want to be a hotel manager or a madam, but she can’t just sell the only home the Chicks have known—especially not after the pastor is found poisoned in Daisy’s bed.

With the Chicks—and the town—on the verge of a breakdown, Cordelia steps up to mop up the mess. For a small town, there are plenty of suspects: could it be the obsessed nurse with access to arsenic? Developers eager to gobble up the land? The righteously angry town librarian? Things are heating up in Sarsaparilla Falls, and with the Pastor’s obnoxiously attractive son Archer—Cordelia’s childhood nemesis—investigating the Chicks and getting close, straightlaced Cordelia may just have to get a little dirty to make a killer come clean.

Meet the author
Lyla Lane is the pen name for author Sonia Hartl whose books have received starred reviews from BookPage and Booklist, and earned nominations for the Georgia Peach Book Award, YALSA’s Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, ALA’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project List, and ALA’s Rainbow Booklist, and was named an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Young Adult. When she’s not writing she enjoys board games with her family, attempting to keep her garden alive, or looking up craft projects she’ll never get around to completing on Pinterest.

Reach out to Sonia at her website: soniahartl.com and on Instagram.