Posadas County, New Mexico, hugging the San Cristobal mountains separating it from Mexico, has very few mean streets. No city-slick cop shop either, but an earnest, elected Sheriff and his aging Undersheriff, William C. Gastner. Pushing sixty, and the girth of his Sam Browne uniform belt, widower Bill has no other life than in law enforcement -- and doesn't want one, even if he's being nudged gently towards retirement. Then big time trouble strikes. A...

"A Posadas County Sheriff's Department Dispatcher sticks a Post-It note on an incident report. What he meant to write was, "Not for news," hoping that the newspaper reporter who drops into the Sheriff's Office each morning would ignore the report. But what he unintentionally wrote was, "Note for news," and so the arrest of Quentin Torrez, nephew of Posadas Sheriff Robert Torrez, goes public. And Quentin, who has applied for a job with the NightZone...

What do you do when you inherit $330 million after taxes? If you're New Mexico rancher Miles Waddell, you build NightZone, an astronomy-based theme park. Waddell's dream begins to sour when two eco-terrorists make an opening statement by chain-sawing power lines that feed the development. One of the terrorists is killed by a bucking power pole. When fleeing conspirator is stopped by a cop and guns the lawman down, retired Posadas Sheriff Gastner becomes...

The 22nd Posadas County Mystery, is a prequel to the prequel of the series, One Perfect Shot. It explores the younger Gastner, introduces Sheriff Eduardo Salcido, and traces the development of series stalwarts. When the first Posadas County mystery, Heartshot, published in 1991, Bill Gastner was the county Undersheriff. Over time Bill became Sheriff, then retired, and Robert Torrez took over the top spot. But what were Torrez's first days as a rookie...

When Posadas Register reporter Linda Real barely survives her nighttime patrol with one of Undersherrif Bill Gastner's deputies who is killed by a more accurate shotgun blast than the one that ruins her face, Bill gets angry. Teamed with his intuitive, observant detective Estelle Reyes-Guzman and her usual sharp eye for physical evidence, Bill implicates Tammy Woodruff, the thrill-seeking daughter of the local Republican County Chairman, in the brutal...

Busy putting in stitches and bandaging lumberjacks' injuries, young Dr. Thomas Parks has no idea that his worst enemy is lurking in the sleepy village of Port McKinney in the spring of 1892. When one of the working girls at the Clarissa Hotel is brought to the clinic desperately ill, Thomas's newly arrived associate wastes no time in making the diagnosis--Asian Cholera has somehow found this back water near Puget Sound. The cholera strikes viciously...

"Good cops have no use for coincidence. When a driver slams his pickup truck-twice-into a tandem bike being ridden by Carlos Guzman and his fianc�ee, Tasha, in Briones, California, it's more than a simple hit-and-run; the driver clearly intended to harm them. Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman gets the call with the news of her son's accident and wastes no time racing to his side. She is greeted by Police Captain Eddie Mitchell, formerly of Posadas...

"Another great read. Buddy Steel is my kind of Sheriff." -Tom Selleck When legendary Sheriff Burton Steel summoned his son Buddy home from LAPD Homicide, a reluctant Buddy agreed. Burton is debilitated by ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease. While Buddy is to cover his back, not an assignment he wants, the clincher is it's his last chance to connect with his proud, overbearing parent. What Buddy didn't expect was to encounter crime in Freedom, a privileged...

When cats start getting sick, feline-loving freelance writer Theda Krakow suspects an accident is to blame. But her shelter-owning rocker buddy Violet claims the contaminated kibble was poisoned. When Theda starts looking at shelter politics, she finds a litter of suspects. The city shelter may be backing down from a healthy pet initiative, and a series of threatening letters suggests a darker motive. Old-fashioned jealousy may factor in as well....

Who murdered the handsome young actor? And why? In 1940, against the chilling backdrop of Hitler's rise and the specter of another war, Edna Ferber decides to follow an old dream: to act on the stage. Selecting The Royal Family, the comedy she wrote with George S. Kaufman, for her starring role, she travels to Maplewood, New Jersey. But her escape from the troubling daily headlines is short lived. Before opening night, a mysterious understudy is...