A note on the windshield of defense lawyer AJ Garrison's car asks who killed Dr. Taylor? It's a cold case, and Garrison takes it on because Taylor was her family's doctor and the community's go-to man. She finds herself walking into the inner world of county politics and government where no one is as Garrison believes them to be. Concurrent with her investigation, she's attempting to settle the estate of a friend killed in a one-car crash, a job that has her snatching gold coins from a fish tank seeded with piranhas and jockeying for big settlements in the world of thoroughbred horse farms.

A family murdered for no apparent reason. The worst of the deaths in that isolated ranch house for James Early are those of the children, two of them twin boys less than a year old. No, not the worst. Before his investigation is over, a friend will be killed while helping Early, and Early will see it as his fault, that he was responsible. Peace, if there is to be any for James Early, must come from a new acquaintance no one believes exists.

Before there was Newtown and Shady Hook Elementary. . . Before there was Columbine. . . There was Morgantown. Morgantown Consolidated High School. 1969. A student takes a gun to school and murders one of his teachers in front of a classroom filled with students. Criminal defense lawyer A.J. Garrison finds herself appointed to defend the boy. It's her first capital murder trial, and she's going to lose. No doubt about it. The only real question for Garrison is can she save her client from the electric chair?

John Hepsebah Lawless, in "The Santa Train," wants to build a free hospital in the Smoky Mountains for people suffering from tuberculosis. It's 1936, the depth of the Depression, and he needs money to do it. The people who can supply the money first want a favor. They want Lawless, a circuit-riding preacher, to take Christmas - everything from hams to quilts - to the needy people of the mountains on the first Santa Train, set to depart on Christmas Eve day on The Little River Railroad. In "Holly and Mistletoe," a recently divorced state trooper with four dollars in his pocket discovers he can...

The killing of a former Iraqi interpreter sets his American sponsor on a search for the assassin, a search that threads its way through a torch job of the Iraqi's house and the murder of the interpreter's wife, culminating in a race across open water on a snowmobile, a chase up an Interstate highway in a snow storm, and a shoot-out at the state capitol. Wisconsin winters are murder. In "Iced," it certainly is.

Pappy Brown, at age 65, finds himself going to college, a freshman no less. His is a story of life changes, wild times on Greek Row, and late romance, with a dash of Christmas adventure thrown in. For a Christmas gift, Pappy-the last good man-must find the father of a boy whom he has befriended, the father, a Vietnam vet running from his demons. If you've been in the military, Pappy's search for Pooch will have you clutching your heart.

All James Early wanted to do on Christmas Eve was to get home to a warm fire, a hot supper, and an evening with his baby daughter. But there it was, a car in the ditch and a young family stranded. He had to help. How "A Night for Miracles," the first story in this Christmas collection, ends at a Nativity scene in a little country church will amaze you. Five stories here, every one will have you feeling that this is indeed a special time of the year.

A pair of 80-year-old murders surface when a new friend of John Wads - Monte Chrisco - wants to launch a modern-day speakeasy in a cave on his land, a speakeasy similar to but far better than the one that existed there at the time of the murders, back during Prohibition. Someone is out to block Chrisco, even if they must kill him to do so, a person who holds the key to one of the murders. John Wads finds himself in the thick of it as he and a sheriff's detective try to unravel the mysteries and keep Chrisco alive.