Jericho McElroy can reflexively nail the make year of a classic Chevy just by the size of its vestigial tailfins, pinpoint the best locations to stash drugs inside a Honda Civic's door panels, winch anything out of any ditch anywhere, and find the perfect match for the crown molding in his old Craftsman fixer-upper. He generally cobbles together a living by converting just about any piece of trash into some kind of treasure. He also happens to be an expert at fending off the desperate adva...

It's a cause avid foodie and enthusiastic eater, Eva Fairchild, can really get behind—the launch of a CSA (community-supported agriculture) farm in the small town of Fidelity, Oregon. But when a tractor plows up a WWII-era bomb in the back forty, things get dicey. Turns out there's more lurking under the surface than anyone expected.As a marketer and publicist, Eva wants nothing more than to help her friends and clients protect the reputation of their farm, but to do her job proper...

That soft, timid knock late at night. A hoarse mayday in the dark.When you live in Marten's Marina, your doorstep is an international shipping lane. So when a half-drowned refugee washes ashore, Eva Fairchild-Malloy and her neighbors scramble to the rescue.Their castaway is fleeing—from something almost too terrifying to put into words. But the Promised Land isn't really, not if she doesn't have the right paperwork and the right connections.While Eva and her detecti...

Sockeye County has a lot of nooks and crannies. Combine a vast expanse of mostly wilderness with a sparse and fiercely independent populace, and—naturally—the sheriff's department is stretched thin. Which makes it a terrific place to commit a murder. And hide the evidence. In theory.Except there's a witness. One small for his age but remarkably resilient witness. Who's found shelter in an empty fifth-wheel trailer near a house where a nice couple named Pete and Meredith seem to be ...

When Meredith Morehouse and her fisherman friend, George, narrowly miss death via explosion, Meredith's curiosity instinct kicks in.The explosion could've been accidental…but Meredith is about to take the witness stand in Sockeye County's trial of the decade.And George's earlier hint that he needs to talk to Meredith's new beau, tugboat captain Pete Sills, about something he's seen indicates not all is peaceful on the mighty Columbia River.Can Meredith and Pete sort...

When Meredith Morehouse, curator of the eclectic Imogene Museum, finds an empty ornate frame, the still-life painting hurriedly sheared from its moorings, she and Sheriff Marge Stettler scramble to identify the intruder.Not because his taste in art is questionable, but because the thief's intimate knowledge of the museum and its collections indicates much more is at stake.Is the thief a friend or stranger?It doesn't help that the population of Platts Landing, Washin...

Sockeye County sits smack dab in the middle of the scenic Columbia River Gorge. It's a land full of history and natural resources.And criminals, apparently. Or at least the criminally negligent.When a mining truck loses its brakes and crashes down an embankment into the river along with its entire load, no one is more surprised than the controversial earth-moving contractor to find out there was an extra passenger.An extra passenger who is too dead to answer questio...

Summoned to a conference with a loathsome biker gang president, Nora learned her phantom money-laundering husband is striking fear into the hearts (and guts) of his former clients. Can she capitalize on their trepidation without getting sucked into the criminal network's implosion or facing retaliation herself for the ambition plans Skip still has up his sleeve?And what about gangster Numero Uno, the reclusive big cheese at the top of West Coast's organized crime pyramid? Can Nora ...

When an expansion project results in the discovery of a priceless trove of stolen artwork, Nora Ingram-Sheldon learns just how personal her criminal fugitive husband's quest is. Clues are dropping into place just as even more pop up.But can she trust Skip to feed her the information she needs to keep the boys' camp at Mayfield safe, even as the number of boys under Walt Neftali's care increases? And what is she supposed to do with her newly-arrived, newly twelve-stepping mother-in-...

Sure, Sockeye County is rural—even scenically desolate in places. Which means buried crimes have the potential to go undiscovered for long periods of time.Then they come to light. They always come to light.Sheriff Marge is here to make sure of that.But when an intriguing history mystery is paired with current disappearances of a similar nature, Sheriff Marge taps all her community resources, including the research talents of Meredith Sills, curator of the e...

The middle of nowhere is often on the way from here to there. A thoroughfare, if you will. Nothing wrong with that.Usually the people who live in the unassuming, odd-name towns along a bustling interstate highway are happy for the trade, the small influx of income, and they tolerate the gas-hog semitrucks and their drivers and the corporate entities who make all that commerce possible.Until the most valuable form of commerce turns out to be nothing like the logos plastered ...

Everyone's talking about it. The heist of the century.Klickitat County hasn't seen an absconding of this sort since the days of stagecoaches and payrolls delivered in gold.Technology is the new gold, and believe it or not, it can go missing. Right off a railroad side rail in the middle of the night.And while everybody's talking, nobody's saying anything of substance. Which makes Jericho McElroy mighty glad that he's not the sheriff tasked with solving the theft....