This isn't your mother's Little House on the Prairie... Detective Marek Okerlund unknowingly passes by a dying man in a Dakota blizzard-and gets what he changed jobs to avoid: a homicide. Acting Sheriff Karen Mehaffey asks for a part-time detective to teach her the ropes and loses what she changed jobs to keep: peace in her family. Together, estranged detective and sheriff stand uneasily over the frozen body of Dale Hansen, operations manager at the local meat-packing plant. The intriguing words "White Out" are carved into one bare arm, the raw wrist chained to a barbed-wire fence. What does...

Dreams can inspire, crush-and even kill. For Karen Mehaffey, going for the stars-the sheriff's stars-wasn't turning out to be a dream come true. Flood waters are rising along with the thermometer, and the last thing she needs is a homicide. Detective Marek Okerlund, on the other hand, welcomes any distraction from the anniversary of his wife's death and from his mother-in-law's unannounced visit. When Karen calls back her old classmate Adam Van Eck to look after his ailing mother, he reluctantly returns from pounding the boards on Broadway-and is found days later, shotgun in hand, with his...

The ties that bind-can kill. All's quiet in Reunion, South Dakota, until word comes via horse and buggy: a killer is loose in the peaceful German Anabaptist community of Eder. Outsiders call them the Mock Brethren, who only wish to be left alone. Sheriff Karen Mehaffey wants to do just that-they shunned her mother. But when the patriarch, Elder Abraham Mock, is killed, she reluctantly answers the call, more afraid to find kin than a killer. Except, that is, for the daughter she gave up two decades before. DEAD QUIET is a character-driven police procedural of a rural bent. Fourth in series....