Island Fiction

Deacon Taylor stepped up for a friend and got himself thrown in jail, and when he’s given a choice of felony charges or leaving town with his police chief brother Blaine, he chooses the latter, consigning himself to a summer under his annoying older brother’s supervision. Julia Lawry used the last of her resources to come to Gansett for her sister Katie’s wedding and has no idea how she’s going to get back to Texas to clean up the mess she left behind.

On Grassy Key, things aren’t as idyllic as they seem. The quiet, sleepy community has been awakened. A young woman with strong ties to the community is missing. A local craftsman, the last person to see the girl, is questioned and released. The girl’s friends are interviewed. Nobody knows what happened to Cobie, except that she left for work one day and didn’t arrive. The only lead is the girl’s car, parked where she worked. But it provides no clues, and nobody saw anything. Days go by. Then weeks. The case grows cold.

It's the dead of winter in the Thousand Islands, and there's nothing that reminds Suzy and Josie about that fact more than sub-zero temperatures, bone-chilling winds, and finding a dead body under the ice wearing only shorts and a tee shirt. In addition, a rare Dandie Dinmont has been found wandering around the area and Suzy and Josie, while trying to figure out what might have happened to the man under the ice, are also doing everything they can to reunite the dog with its owner.

Christmas is fast approaching, and around the Inn, Suzy and Josie are looking forward to relaxing and enjoying the holiday season with their friends and family. But when a box of puppies is dropped off on their doorstep on a frigid night, the chain of events that unfolds leads them straight to a murder and an illegal puppy mill that's operating in the area.

Suzy and Josie, owners of the Thousand Islands Doggy Inn, are attending an end-of-summer party and are about to receive a sizeable charitable gift from one of their good friends, a local businessman with a love of dogs and a reputation with the ladies. A newly built yacht about to embark on a trip to Florida via the Inland Waterway is one of the party highlights, but when the engineer is killed, and Jackson, the Clay Bay Chief of Police, ends up in critical condition, the yacht becomes the focal point of the ensuing murder investigation.

Gunner’s Island is a post-war novel that will engage dog lovers, military veterans, history enthusiasts, and undoubtedly anyone who is all three. Set in the small town on a tiny Canadian maritime island, the story unfolds with the return of World War II pilot Linus, following a plane crash that left him irrevocably altered. Linus is grappling with PTSD and acclimation back into civilian life, when he is mysteriously befriended by Gunner, a full grown and affable Newfoundland dog.

Providence brings together a mismatched family, giving all three a second chance for love. Only love may never have had such a tough job. Lydia Miller is an anomaly among her Amish people - a single woman in her 30s, running her own store, determined to forge a life on her own. But when Joel Yoder comes into town to sell his property, Lydia suddenly finds all of her hopes and dreams crumbling around her and a new opportunity placed in her lap.

An island-wide power failure has thrust Gansett into darkness. We’ll take this opportunity to catch up with each of the couples we’ve come to know and love, and meet a few new characters who’ll appear in upcoming books. It’s the heart of summer, the power’s out, and things are getting hot on Gansett Island!

A group of school-leavers: free at last, ready to party, expectations high. Leonardo, geeky, asthmatic, shy and prone to anxiety, has landed with them. Super high-achiever Kaiya is trying to forget her frustration with her drug-addicted sister as well as dealing with pressure from the popular girls. Mason is coming to terms with his secret desire for his best mate, Jared. Jared wants a week off from his relationship with Val so he can have sex with as many girls as possible. But the party takes a dangerous turn when Val is drugged and a man is later found dead on the beach.

Smarter and packing an attitude, not to mention her Glock, Madison Westin is back with her never-say-no style. This time trouble rolls into Tarpon Cove in the form of her ex-husband, Jackson Devereaux, whom she hoped to never see again. His arrival brings unparalleled chaos and an uninvited corpse. Teaming up with her hot friend, Fabiana, the two women go from chasing the usual cast of misfits and weirdos to hunting down a murderer. The action turns deadly serious when they stir up a nasty enemy as they try to stay one-step ahead in a game of cat and mouse that threatens their lives.

Things in the Middle Florida Keys aren’t as idyllic as they seem. If one looks closely, there’s a layer of dirt just below the surface. The butt-ugly kind of dirt that’s hard to get off. Things move slowly in the Keys—locals call it island time—but there are some for whom it seems that time is at a standstill; whose clocks revolve only around the tides, fish migrations, and the rising and setting of the sun and moon.

Ex-Navy SEAL Leif Ramsey-known as Phoenix-has fallen hard for spitfire Kelly Taylor, but the first order of business is to protect her from whoever is sending her threatening texts. Her tormenter has upped the ante with a message Leif can't bear to show Kelly, but when he finally does . . .

Sandro Vasiliadis, a nurse at the Whidbey Island General Hospital, has died of an apparent heroin overdose. When his grieving mother bends over to kiss her son's corpse at the viewing, she shrieks, "That's not Sandro!" Convinced that her son must still be alive, Maria Vasiliadis hires Kyra Rachel and Noel Franklin to solve the mystery. With questions of foul play continuing to swirl around the death, the detectives' inquiries lead them deeper into Sandro's life and eventually to a medical clinic that specializes in transgendering.

The second in the Islands Investigations International Mystery series, Always Kiss the Corpse takes Kyra and Noel's investigation from the rush of Seattle to the seeming peace of the San Juan Islands in this thrilling pause-resistor. It's only once the detectives come to understand Sandro in life that they unlock the secret to his death.

Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and the Widow is an unsettling thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband’s secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside when she’s forced to confront the evidence of her husband’s guilt. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.

Tiffany Sturgil steals the spotlight as her new boutique Naughty & Nice opens in downtown Gansett—right in time for the annual spring Race Week festivities. Finally divorced and ready for a new beginning, Tiffany wonders if sexy police chief Blaine Taylor thinks of her as often as she thinks of him since their explosive encounter last fall. Back then, he directed her to call him the second she was officially divorced, but the opening of her store and her unconventional ad campaign have put the island's lingerie queen at odds with the town's top cop.

Crescent Cove, a small hamlet on Vancouver Island, is the last place out-of-work investigative journalist Luke Tremblay ever wanted to see again. He used to spend summers here, until his family learned that he was gay and rejected him. Now, following his aunt's sudden death, he's inherited her entire estate, including her seaside cottage and the antiques shop she ran for forty years in Crescent Cove. Luke plans to sell everything and head back to Toronto as soon as he can . . . but Crescent Cove isn't done with him just yet.

Jesse McDermitt lives alone on an isolated island in the Florida Keys where he runs a charter fishing business. Retired from the Marine Corps for six years, he wants nothing more than to relax, fish, dive and enjoy the laid back lifestyle of the islands. Russ, his former Platoon Sergeant and old friend, dies unexpectedly in a mysterious scuba diving accident and Jesse becomes suspicious.

Every summer since college, twenty-nine-year-old Jenny has traded the familiarity of the Midwest for the allure of Nantucket. Now an established university professor in Kansas City, she finds herself caught between two lifestyles and two very different men. She chooses Nantucket and the glamorous life she associates with it, unaware that the summer will take an unexpected turn, and she will have to let her heart decide what it truly wants.

I said I’d never set foot on Oakley Island again. Not so long as he lived there. After my life implodes, I’m reconsidering everything. Including my reasons for avoiding the first—and only—man I’ve ever loved. I’m a high achiever. Driven. Maybe a little too driven. So when my boyfriend confesses to cheating and steals the promotion I’ve been working toward for years, I do the unthinkable for someone like me. I break. The timing couldn’t be better for me to fall apart. I escape to the idyllic Oakley Island and oversee the renovations on my late grandmother’s estate.

On a kayak outing with friends, Jesse's daughter finds and rescues a manatee suffering from respiratory problems. The red tide has returned, and fish are dying by the thousands, along with dolphins, manatees, and sea birds. The algal bloom is a naturally occurring phenomenon, but this time it's much worse. Theories abound; it's something left over from the previous spring's coronavirus outbreak, it's caused by pollution, someone is intentionally creating a super-algae....But there's something far more sinister at work, and it's up to Jesse to find out what it is and put a stop to it.