When veterinarian Rachel Goddard and Deputy Sheriff Tom Bridger take teenagers on an outing to clean up roadside trash in rural Mason County, Virginia, they make a grisly discovery: the plastic-wrapped body of a young woman. One teen peers at the face through the plastic and screams. The dead girl is her sister, Shelley, a…
Narrator Tavia Gilbert fully conveys the country twang and warmhearted nature of capable, hardworking vet Rachel Goddard. In her Virginia mountain town she investigates the troubling disappearance of local pets and struggles to capture and reform feral canines that are killing area livestock. Also dead-on is Gilbert’s characterization of Sheriff Tom Bridger, Goddard’s live-in beau,…
Two residents of Mason County, Virginia, Cam and Meredith Taylor, are murdered within hours of one another. Deputy Sheriff Tom Bridger is called in, along with his girlfriend, veterinarian Rachel Goddard, because she heard—but didn’t see—Cam’s murder. The daughter of the victims is Leslie, Tom’s former girlfriend. Leslie returns home to see justice done—and, frankly,…
When cats start getting sick, feline-loving freelance writer Theda Krakow suspects it’s accidental. But Violet, Theda’s shelter-owning rock-music buddy, claims the cats’ kibble was poisoned. When Theda starts looking at politics at the city shelter, she finds a number of people who could have happily committed the heinous crime. Meanwhile, the city shelter may be…
Former federal prosecutor Allison Leotta’s debut legal thriller Law of Attraction earned her a starred review from Library Journal and glowing comparisons to John Grisham. In Discretion, a young woman falls to her death from the balcony of the U.S. Capitol. When Assistant U.S. Attorney Anna Curtis teams up with FBI Special Agent Samantha Randazzo…
Tom Bridger, who is half Melungeon, thought he had escaped his mountain community’s lingering prejudice against the mixed-race group when he left to work for the Richmond, Virginia, Police Department. Tom was moving up the detective ranks when a family tragedy brought him back home and moved him into his father’s job as a county…
Young veterinarian Rachel Goddard’s world begins to crumble when a client rushes into the animal hospital with a dog struck by a car during a thunderstorm. The woman’s terrified child, drenched with rain, loses sight of her mother in the flurry of activity and screams, “Mommy! I want Mommy!” Instantly Rachel is hurled back in…
Tavia Gilbert presents a readily accessible interpretation of Clemens’s romantic mystery involving strong women in male-dominated professions. In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Stella Crown owns a dairy farm, says what she thinks, and rides a Harley. After a series of crimes against her women friends, she begins her own investigation, with the help of boyfriend Nick,…
When motorcycle-riding Stella Crown hires a new farmhand to help run her Pennsylvania dairy business, she gets more than she bargained for. A Mennonite widow arrives, burdened not only with grief but also by rumors of infidelity and murder. Stella herself is feeling deep sorrow over the loss of her longtime friend and employee Howie…
It has been years since Casey Maldonado visited her hometown, and the only reason she’s returning now is to get her brother, Ricky, out of jail, where he sits after being arrested for the brutal murder of Alicia McManus, his girlfriend of several months. Casey believes in her brother’s innocence, but proving that to the…