A killer wants to make certain she buys the farm. Threats, a missing boss, a very dead co-worker, a high-level investigation and a sinister hog farmer: Lowcountry Ag Department manager Carolina Slade is a bean-counting civil servant in hot water. Carolina Slade is a by-the-book county manager for the Department of Agriculture-a civil servant who coordinates federal loans for farmers in the coastal Lowcountry of South Carolina. When one of her clients, a hog farmer named Jessie Rawlings, offers her a bribe, Slade reports Jessie to her superiors. The next thing she knows, she's besieged by Resident Agent-In-Charge, now a Contract Investigator, Wayne Largo from the Feds' IG Office in Atlanta. He and his partner have come to investigate Slade's accusations, and if possible catch Jessie in the act of handing over money. However, the IG isn't telling Slade everything. The agents are also investigating the disappearance of Slade's boss the year before in connection to possible land fraud. And when the sting on Jessie goes bad, the case is put on hold and Wayne is called back to Atlanta, leaving Slade to fear not only for her life and job, but for her children's safety. Author C. Hope Clark, the granddaughter of a Mississippi cotton farmer, holds a B.S. in Agriculture from Clemson University and has 25 years' experience with the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Now an award-winning writer, she manages FundsforWriters.com, a weekly newsletter service she founded that reaches almost 50,000 writers to include university professors, professional journalists and published mystery authors. Writer's Digest has recognized the site in its annual 101 Best Web Sites for Writers for a dozen years. Hope is married to a 30-year veteran of federal law enforcement, a Senior Special Agent, now a private investigator. They live in South Carolina, on the banks of Lake Murray. Hope is hard at work on the next novel in her Carolina Slade Mystery Series. Visit her at www.chopeclark.com.

A big city detective. A lowcountry murder. Peace, safety, a place to grieve and heal. After her husband is murdered by the Russian mob, Boston detective Callie Jean Morgan comes home to her family's cottage in South Carolina. There, she can keep their teenage son, Jeb, away from further threats. But the day they arrive in Edisto Beach, Callie finds her childhood mentor and elderly neighbor murdered. Taunted by the killer, who repeatedly violates her home and threatens others in the community, Callie finds her new sanctuary has become her old nightmare. Despite warnings from the town's handsome police chief, Callie plunges back into detective work, pursuing a sinister stranger who may have ties to her past. He's turning a quiet paradise into a paranoid patch of sand where nobody's safe. She'll do whatever it takes to stop him.

Are peanuts capable of murder? Carolina Slade will bust this shell game. Big money, big politics, crime, greed, and big farming-Slade, an agriculture department investigator in the steamy state of South Carolina, once again finds herself planted in a dangerous mystery. Her assignment? Find out if there's a sinister connection between the drug-dealing arrest of wealthy peanut farmer Lamar Wheeler and the gruesome death of Lamar's teenage son in a car wreck. Especially since the dead teen is Governor Dick Wheeler's nephew. Of course, the governor's people practically sky-write STAY AWAY FROM THE FIRST FAMILY over the Palmetto state's capitol dome in Columbia, which doesn't make Slade's job easier. Couldn't she simply back off from what appears to be a tragic and ugly-but private-family matter? Not with hot-tempered DEA agent Pamela Largo on the case. Ex-wife to Senior Special Agent Wayne Largo, Slade's romantic interest, Pamela's hell-bent on using Lamar Wheeler's situation to re-open a cold case involving an Atlanta drug lord and Wayne's long lost sister, Kay. Soon Slade's shoveling shooflies uphill against Pamela's obsessions, the drug lord's vendettas, the Governor's secrets, and the bizarre realization that those secrets involve peanuts.

"Terrific. Smart, knowing, clever...and completely original. A taut, high-tension page-turner--in a unique and fascinating setting. An absolute winner!" Hank Phillippi Ryan Agatha, Anthony and Macavity winning author In the deep waters off the coast of Beaufort, South Carolina, corpses are turning up faster than dolphins chasing a shrimp boat . . . When federal agricultural investigator Carolina Slade's best friend is suspected of embezzlement and fraud in a sordid case involving drugs and migrant slavery, Slade must question her own long-held loyalties. She's desperate to believe in Savannah Conroy's innocence despite every scrap of evidence pointing to her friend's guilt. After a tomato farmer dies in a shrimp boat explosion, Slade's colleague, Senior Special Agent Wayne Largo, manages to force Slade off the case, citing conflict of interest. Refusing to quit even if it means violating agency orders, Slade fights to save her friend's career. Soon, Slade's the target of escalating threats meant to frighten her off the case. But threats might be the least of Slade's worries. She's also juggling a co-worker's sudden romantic interest, voodoo, and her teenage daughter's determination to solve mysteries like her mother. Slade struggles to keep her life, and the lives of those around her, safe and sane when, once again, digging up dirt on the ag business threatens to put her six feet under.