DEATH BY CHANCE

BOOK 16

Halloween is right around the corner when Lady Elsmere throws an elaborate Civil War costume ball. Wearing a nineteenth-century ball gown, Josiah ventures into the party’s corn maze to find her dog, Baby, and take him home, only to find Baby standing over a fallen scarecrow. But is it really a scarecrow

Josiah doesn’t have time to find out because someone dressed as the Grim Reaper bolts out of the shadows, swinging a scythe and heading straight for her.

Our heroine picks up her skirts and flees, yelling, “Murder! Murder in the corn maze!”

DEATH BY POISON

BOOK 17

Josiah Reynolds is hitching Morning Glory, her American Paint Horse, to an antique pony cart when horse whisperer, Velvet Maddox, hurries over to them. Pointing a thin, crooked finger at Josiah, she announces that Josiah can’t participate in the annual Shawnee Trace Horse Parade. “I see death standing next to your horse. Beware, Josiah. Beware.”

Startled, Josiah is worried as Miss Velvet is never wrong about such things, but decides to plunge ahead. Surely this time Velvet is mistaken. No one can see death. The event goes off without a hitch until spectators surge forward onto the parade route and surround the horses, causing them to spook. Morning Glory rears up and the pony cart runs over something. Josiah stops her horse immediately and peers over the side of her cart.

There is a shoeless leg sticking out from underneath the cart. Josiah realizes that Miss Velvet was correct. Death was, indeed, hovering near her horse.

DEATH BY GREED

BOOK 18

Josiah is working in her honeybee yard when she hears a commotion coming from a horse pasture. She rushes toward the uproar and comes upon a huge, enraged Texas Longhorn bull. The massive beast is angrily snorting, pawing the turf, and threatening a prized Thoroughbred stallion, Comanche. Getting the bull to calm down is no small task and in the end, Josiah has a busted fence and a barn door ripped off its hinges. Once the bull is secure, Josiah hurries to confront the bull’s owner only to discover he is dead and lying in a pool of his own blood.

The police naturally assume the bull is responsible for the man’s death, but Josiah has her doubts. She is convinced foul play is involved and works to save the Texas Longhorn from being “put down.” Will she solve the murder and save the Longhorn in time?