Local Foods Mystery

It's harvest time in Westbury, Massachusetts. Unfortunately Cameron Flaherty's first foray into the world of organic farming is yielding a bumper crop of locally sourced murder... Just when Cam's CSA is beginning to flourish, thanks to a colorful group of subscribers led by Lucinda DaSilva, an enthusiastic volunteer who's vowed to eat nothing but locally produced food for one year, murder threatens to spoil her success. Especially since the victim is the man she just fired, handyman Mike Montgomery, stabbed to death by a pitchfork. To clear her name, Cam will have to weed out some suspects and dig up secrets buried deep beneath the soil of Produce Plus Plus Farm. And she'll have to catch a murderer whose motto seems to be "Eat local. Kill local."

The produce is local--and so is the crime--when long-simmering tensions lead to murder following a festive dinner on Cam Flaherty's farm. It'll take a sleuth who knows the lay of the land to catch this killer. But no one ever said Cam wasn't willing to get her hands dirty. . . Autumn has descended on Westbury, Massachusetts, but the mood at the Farm-to-Table Dinner in Cam's newly built barn is unseasonably chilly. Local entrepreneur Irene Burr made a lot of enemies with her plan to buy Westbury's Old Town Hall and replace it with a textile museum--enough enemies to fill out a list of suspects when the wealthy widow turns up dead in a neighboring farm. Even an amateur detective like Cam can figure out that one of the resident locavores went loco--at least temporarily--and settled a score with Irene. But which one? With the Fall harvest upon her, Cam must sift through a bushelful of possible killers that includes Irene's estranged stepson, her disgruntled auto mechanic, and a fellow CSA subscriber who seems suspiciously happy to have the dead woman out of the way. The closer she gets to weeding out the culprit, the more Cam feels like someone is out to cut her harvest short. But to keep her own body out of the compost pile, she'll have to wrap this case up quickly.

Snow is piling up in Westbury, Massachusetts, and Cam Flaherty's organic farm has managed to survive the harsh New England winter. Unfortunately murder seems to be the crop in season… Cam is finding the New Year just as hectic as the old one. Her sometimes rocky relationship with Chef Jake Ericsson is in a deep freeze, she's struggling to provide the promised amount of food to the subscribers in her first winter CSA, and her new greenhouse might just collapse from the weight of the snow. Supplying fresh ingredients for a dinner at the local assisted living facility seems like the least of her worries-until one of the elderly residents dies after eating some of her produce. Cantankerous Bev Montgomery had a lot of enemies, from an unscrupulous real estate developer who coveted her land to an aggrieved care provider fed up with her verbal abuse. But while the motives in this case may be plentiful, the trail of poisoned produce leads straight back to Cam. Not even her budding romance with police detective Pete Pappas will keep him from investigating her. As the suspects gather, a blizzard buries the scene of the crime under a blanket of snow, leaving Cam stranded in the dark with a killer who gives new meaning to the phrase "dead of winter."

Spring may be just around the corner, but a cold-blooded killer has put the big chill on the residents of Westbury, Massachusetts. It looks like organic farmer-turned-sleuth Cam Flaherty will have to set aside her seedlings for the time being as she tills the soil for clues in the mysterious death of a local poultry maven. With the weather getting warmer, Cam should be spending her days pruning blueberry bushes and taking care of the new batch of chicks that just hatched. But murder knows no season. So when her fellow fowl-raiser Wayne Laitinen is found dead at his breakfast table one morning, Cam must put down her trimming shears and put on her crime-solving hat. The kind-hearted chicken farmer didn't have any enemies--or did he? A wealthy financier has been working hard to convince him to sell her his land, while a group of animal rights activists recently vandalized his property. Money troubles were threatening to sink his marriage. And a thirty-year-old scandal was driving a wedge between him and one of his oldest friends. Murder, blackmail, cover-ups. There's a fox in the hen house. But where? With some help from her off-again, on-again flame, police detective Pete Pappas, Cam will have to crack this case before Wayne's killer flies the coop forever.

It's been a hot, dry spring in Westbury, Massachusetts. As organic farmer Cam Flaherty waits for much-needed rain, storm clouds of mystery begin to gather . . . May has been anything but merry for Cam so far. Her parents have arrived unexpectedly and her crops are in danger. But all of that's nothing compared to the grim murder of her neighbor, Nicole Kingsbury, the once proud owner of the town's new hydroponic greenhouse-just after Cam's mother publicly protested Nicole's use of chemicals to feed her crops. Showers may be scarce this spring, but suspects keep sprouting up. Lucky for Cam, her father turns out to have a knack for sleuthing-not to mention dealing with chickens. He and Cam will have to clear Mrs. Flaherty's name quick before the killer strikes again . . .