Arlen E. Breiholz

Thanksgiving night in Kansas City means the Plaza Lighting Ceremony. When Ellison Jones and her family go to her great-aunt's apartment to see the lights come on, she doesn't anticipate a murder (she never does). But when a shirt-tail relative falls from a seventeenth-floor balcony, she and Anarchy are drawn into the investigation. Can they catch a killer before anyone else dies?

It’s springtime in Benedict, Alaska, and with the warmer weather comes an unseasonably somber local tradition...the annual Death Walk. At the end of each brutal winter, citizens gather downtown and then break into groups to search the community for those who might have somehow gotten stuck at home. Beth Rivers sets off with her friend Orin and dog Gus toward the cabin of an elderly resident, intending to check on him. When they reach the cabin, the old man is alive, but not in the best shape. Beth stays with him while Orin hurries to town for help, but it’s not Orin who returns.

Delaney Nichols, originally of Kansas but settling happily into her new life as a bookseller in Edinburgh, works at The Cracked Spine in the heart of town. She's recently befriended a few medical school students after they came into the shop to sell some antique medical tomes. But when one of the students' friends is found murdered outside in the alley, Delaney takes it upon herself to help bring the murderer to justice.