Once a Thief by Suzann Ledbetter

This is a first installment(I hope!) in a new series by this author, whose work I have not read before. Ramey Burke has lost both of her parents and her husband in the last three years. But, she is getting her life back together. She has found a job she likes--she is a home-stager, finding homes that have been on the market for a while and coming in to do a quick fix-up to try to sell, sort of like HGTV's Curb Appeal. She is living in her mother's childhood home, built by her Grandfather Dillinger, who made most of his money running liquor during Prohibition. And she and her older sister, Portia, have an ongoing battle over the house. Portia, a real estate agent, wants to sell it and Ramey wants to live in it.

Ramey's life changes when she opens the door one morning, expecting to find the UPS man, but instead is greeted by her two geriatric uncles and aunt-in-law, who had supposedly been incarcerated for life for a series of bank robberies during the 1930's. Uncle Ed and Uncle Archie and Aunt Melba Jane had been known as the "other Dillinger gang" and had been released early due to good behavior and prison overcrowding. Reluctantly, she takes them in, but when a dead body, with ties to the Dillingers' former career, shows up floating in her street one rainy morning, things start looking like her uncle is not only a thief but maybe a murderer. And Detective Mike Constantine makes it hard for Ramey to remember why she really doesn't want to date cops...

I really enjoyed this cozy, and hope she writes more about these characters. She has told us more information in this one than we needed to know--the kind of stuff that frequently comes out in subsequent installments!