<p>As holiday festivities wind down, Derbyshire investigator Brenna Taylor is roused from a cozy office and called to a frozen pond - and a waiting victim.  Mercedes Salt mysteriously drowned during her morning walk on her rambling family estate.  Tensions mount for the CID team as one of their own, Mark Salt, brother-in-law to the victim, is among the possible suspects.As a clash of jealousy, blackmail and greed emerge, detectives conclude the woman's death was no accident.  She had been planning on asking for a divorce and leaving the lucrative family business, thereby wreaking financial havoc on the Salts.  Brenna, convinced of Mark's innocence, discovers he may have been illicitly involved with the victim.  And when the killer strikes again, it's dangerously clear that murder is the final price of too many family secrets.</p>

On The Twelfth Night of Christmas (A Derbyshire Village Mystery)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

JO A. HIESTAND

Mystery

Worldwide Library Worldwide Mysteries

Siren Song

Worldwide Mystery Harlequin

A popular music teacher at Grange Hall Performing Arts College, Kent Harrison had been more popular as a musician: a minstrel in the vein of 16th century troubadours. He usually appeared during the Minstrels Court, an 8-day reenacted medieval fair at Tutbury Castle.  It was at that event that Kent last appeared and gave his swan song to his fans.  McLaren first questions Kent's ex-wife: was she still bitter over their divorce? Kent's neighbor, a local herbalist, a rival castle curator, Kent's fiancee and a covetous colleage all seem to have motives for wanting Kent out of the way.  As McLaren sorts through old motives and new anger, someone near and dear to him steps into harm's way.  Now McLaren must not only solve Kent's murder bu also find his loved one -- not easy when a web of jealousy, anger and lies permeates both cases.

Swan Song

Golden Harvest Press

The siren song of an unsolved murder case beckons an ex-cop back into detective work -- this time on his own, and with life-threatening consequences... Michael McLaren tries to convince himself that he is perfectly happy repairing dry stonewalls in Derbyshire, a make-do career after resigning his job in an eddy of anger, disgust and an overwhelming sense of injustice.  But when a murder victim’s friend asks him to investigate a cold case, McLaren agrees, the chance to rectify a wrong and return to the work he loves too heady to ignore. Marta Hughes, the murder victim, never returned home from a local casino where she won a purse-choking sum of money.  Her body turned up ten days later and turned up the heat on the police investigation, but the time-lapse, lack of witnesses, and an untraceable bullet quickly turned the case cold.  Now, one year later, McLaren sifts through the web of lies and veiled motives as impenetrable as boulders.  Co-workers, friends, neighbors and even Marta’s husband all seem to have reasons for wanting her death -- reasons as varied as revenge for her damning silence to imagined infidelity. Anger and motives overlap and raise more questions than McLaren can answer.  In the midst of his investigation McLaren becomes entangled in his own mystery: anonymous late-night phone calls, a vanished hitchhiker, and a car crash threaten his life and sanity. Is Dena, his former fiancée, playing tricks on him, still angry over their broken engagement?  Or does the killer fear McLaren’s relentless law-skirting pursuit?  But it isn’t until McLaren unravels his personal puzzles that he discovers Marta’s killer, a killer obsessed with old anger and new revenge.

<p>One cold January evening Luke Barber disappears from his village. Despite search teams and a police investigation, he is never found, and his absence leaves a lot of holes in many lives. That was three years ago. Now Luke's father has employed ex-police detective Michael McLaren to find Luke. Luke had the unenviable dilemma of choosing to devote his life either to tennis or music, a difficult decision, for he excelled in both. Pressure from his tennis coach, as well as his music teacher, would probably be enough stress for any young man. But add to that his father's opinion he should work the family farm and his future mother-in-law's vocal view he should stay home, get a sensible job and support her daughter. It all may have proved too much for Luke to handle. But fear and jealousy may also have spurred Luke into flight or contributed to his death. There's the local gang that tried to strong-arm Luke into turning drug supplier. And his fiancee. Was she jealous of Bethany? Perhaps her husband resented the hours of rehearsal and performances that took her from home. It isn't until McLaren figures out a connection with a medieval stone carving and a local legend that he discovers what became of Luke and leads him to someone he dearly loves.</p>

Love Song (The McLaren Case Mysteries) (Volume 6)

Year after year, the villagers near Stanton Moor celebrate May Day with bonfires and the laying of rowan branches to seek protection for home and cattle.  But the men who gathered this May evening hadn't come for blessings.  They had come for murder.  The dead body is discovered on a lonely moor, decapitated in the fashion of a Muslim killing of sacrificial sheep or chickens and focuses the suspicion on the Muslim community, since the victim and his family are Pakistanis.   Detective-Sergeant Brenna Taylor and Detective-Chief Inspector Geoffrey Graham, from the Derbyshire Constabulary are called in to investigate. Soon the bodies of decapitated animals-sheep and rabbits-appear on the moor.  Are the sheep, the style of death or the location linked with the man's murder?  The detectives believe it does suggest more than a greater anger-it speaks of a terrible enemy.

A Terrible Enemy

HILLIARD & HARRIS

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by JO A. HIESTAND. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by JO A. HIESTAND

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by JO A. HIESTAND. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

On The Twelfth Night of Christmas (A Derbyshire Village Mystery)

Siren Song

Swan Song

Siren Song

Love Song (The McLaren Case Mysteries) (Volume 6)

A Terrible Enemy