Chesapeake Tugboat Murders

After eking out a living as an adjunct professor in Washington DC, fisheries ecologist Alex Allaway lands a job running a small marine station back in her hometown. Arriving in River Glen to surprise her grandfather with her the good news, Alex is horrified to discover him dead, a bloody dagger in his heart. His clenched fist grasps a piece of pirate gold and a cryptic map with her name on it. While the police investigate the murder, Alex begins her own search for answers. Aboard the tugboat Vital Spark, she sails the Chesapeake in pursuit of treasure that belonged to a distant relative, the pirate Giles Blood-hand. But, descendants of a rival pirate family are also, looking for the bounty that's been hidden for over three centuries, and they'll think nothing of dispatching Alex once they, discover she's in the way.

When Pamela Dodd arrives in the sleepy Chesapeake village of River Glen to hunt for treasure, she unleashes a summer of chaos and murder. The wake from her speeding motor yacht erodes a cliff, causing an abandoned cottage to topple off the edge-and revealing a mass grave under its foundation. The discovery sends River Glen into a panic. Was Henry Herssen, the reclusive fisherman who owned the cottage, responsible for the killings, or has someone else been burying bodies at the top of the cliff for decades? As Detective Jay Braden and his assistant Will Wilkins investigate the murder site, the clues point to Tolchester College, a small school with secrets of its own. Braden discovers a discarded animal canister with a desiccated spider in a nearby shed. Will stumbles into a hidden pit containing a chair with restraints. It seems one of the professors has been conducting experiments using poisonous Australian funnel spiders. And their version of the scientific method is deadly.