Book Blurb:
Set in a small town in Indiana, Piper Blackwell is the newly appointed sheriff in this intense mystery thriller series from Faust lifetime achievement winner, Jean Rabe. Narrator Catherine Wenglowski lends her voice to this series of books that will keep you up at night...
DEAD OF WINTER, DEAD OF NIGHT, and now, DEAD OF SUMMER, have been converted into ear candy (or, audiobooks) for your listening enjoyment.
About the Books:
DEAD OF WINTER
In a deceptively peaceful county, a murderer hides in plain sight.
Fifty-eight minutes into her first day on the job, 23-year-old Sheriff Piper Blackwell is faced with a grisly murder, the victim artfully posed amid decorations on his lawn. Drawing on former military training, Piper must prove herself worthy of the sheriff's badge, and that won't be easy.
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Length: 8 hr 47 min
Language: English
Buy Link: mybook.to/DeadofWinterAudio
DEAD OF NIGHT
As Sheriff Piper Blackwell rushes to a clandestine meeting with an aging, paranoid veteran who believes spies are trailing his every move, she is caught in a fierce thunderstorm. Pounding rain drums against the bluff, washing away the earth and revealing a grisly secret someone tried to bury a long time ago.
Putting a name to the skeleton on the bluff, and searching for the thief who robbed the old veteran of his life’s earnings, sends Piper delving into the sleepy towns that dot her rural county. Now she’s digging into pasts perhaps best left alone.
Accompanied by Chief Deputy Oren Rosenberg, Piper seeks to expose a truth someone wants to remain forever hidden. The investigation may have started with a thunderstorm, but Piper aims to finish it and find justice. Uncovering fragments of Spencer County’s history could prove more dangerous - and deadlier - than she ever expected.
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Length: 8 hr 32 min
Language: English
Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Night-Piper-Blackwell-Mystery/dp/B08Q9SFKNY/
DEAD OF SUMMER
Shouts of delight turn to screams of terror when a carnival ride goes berserk at the Spencer County Fair. Sheriff Piper Blackwell must contain the chaos and investigate the possible sabotage, even as she tries to solve a local businessman’s horrific murder.
But managing two investigations with at least one killer on the loose pushes the young officer and her tiny staff to their limits. Can Piper catch the murderer, or will the summer’s body count continue to rise?
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Length: 8hr 19 min
Length: 8hr 19 min
Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Summer-Piper-Blackwell-Mystery/dp/B094M1NCKF/
EXCERPT
Oren twisted the key and turned on the heater. The other deputies drove either older Crown Vics or a relatively recent model of Taurus. Oren’s was a 2015, newest in the small fleet, and with comfortable leather seats. He’d claimed it a year ago come February when the county caucus appointed him sheriff to fill out Paul Blackwell’s term when Paul quit because of the cancer. Oren won the primary and figured he’d take the election in November. Out of respect, no one else in the department contested him for it.
He hadn’t counted on a challenge from Paul’s daughter, Piper, her coming home from Iraq, putting signs up everywhere, bright neon yellow and screaming red: Vote for Blackwell, Spencer County Sheriff.
And more than that, Oren certainly hadn’t counted on her winning.
It was a pity vote, he figured, pity for poor sick Paul Blackwell, the beloved sheriff who’d been with the department thirty years and had held four terms. Name recognition: Paul Blackwell…Piper Blackwell. P. Blackwell. Blackwell Blackwell Blackwell. Probably half the people who voted for her didn’t know they were electing a shikse…and one the same age as his granddaughter. Twenty-three. The pity vote and ignorance, likely coupled with a hint of anti-Semitism, wanting to elect a Protestant of some stripe.
“Gornisht helfn,” he muttered.
“Hey…you zoning out on me, Oren? Earth to Oren. Come in, Oren. I said, what do you want to talk to me ‘bout? Nice car. What kind of mileage does this get?”
Oren smelled whiskey on Chris’s breath, and when the man belched there was a burst of something sharp, maybe spiced sausage. There was a strong trace of cigarette smoke imbedded in the parka; Chris probably had to do his smoking outside.
“You found Conrad,” Oren stated.
“Well, yeah. Was looking out the picture window, saw him in that damned sleigh.”
“What time did you see him?”
“Well…let me think. It was heading toward midnight. We were waiting for the ball to drop. Not yet midnight, maybe twenty to, a quarter to, around then, you know.”
“Go on…the Delaney place was dark—”
“Except for the spotlight. Yeah, well, I wouldn’t’ve noticed him but for that damned spotlight aimed at that damned sleigh. Actually, Joan saw him first, pointed him out to me, told me I should invite him over, that Conrad shouldn’t sit out there in the cold all by his lonesome.”
“So you walked over to invite him?”
“Well, I opened a window first and hollered. But then I realized he couldn’t hear me over the music. We’d cranked it pretty loud, you know, it being New Year’s Eve and a party and all. So yeah, I went over.”
“Right away when Joan saw him? Twenty to midnight?”
“Yeah, thereabouts. I wanted to make sure I could go over and back and not miss the ball dropping, time for a cigarette in there, too. So I threw on my coat and walked across the road, lit up on the end of his driveway, you know.”
A silence settled, the heater gently purring. Oren glanced out the windshield. Piper had put her camera away and was squatted next to the sleigh, looking at something underneath it. He hoped she had the presence not to pick up anything without properly bagging it.
Oren could have retired after the failed election. He had twenty years with the sheriff’s department and twenty before that with the Rockport police. There was a fine second pension ahead of him. But he had helped two of his kids with their money woes, and helped his granddaughter pay for college. Four years ago he and his wife moved into a new, but modest, beachfront house on Lake Noel in Santa Claus, bought a nice boat that he didn’t get out on often enough, and had a double-wide second garage built to store it in. He figured he needed the chief deputy salary and wouldn’t know what to do with all that retirement time on his hands.
Besides, Piper would have to attend—and pass—the Plainfield Sheriff’s Academy this April. If she failed, and he considered that a distinct possibility, Oren was certain the caucus would put him back in charge.
Author/Narrator Bio:
About the Author:
USA Today best-seller, Jean Rabe's impressive writing career spans decades, starting as a newspaper reporter and bureau chief. From there she went on to become the director of RPGA, a co-editor with Martin H. Greenberg for DAW books, and, most notably, Rabe is an award-winning author of more than forty science fiction/fantasy and murder mystery thrillers. She writes mysteries and fantasies, because life is too short to be limited to one genre--and she does it with dogs tangled at her feet, because life is too short not to be covered in fur.
Find out more about her at www.jeanrabe.com
Catherine Wenglowski is a New York City based audiobook narrator. With a background in theater and as a classically trained singer, combined with her lifelong love of reading, Catherine uses her trained ear and creativity to add breath and life to characters and to connect with her audience. Visit her website at: https://www.wenglowvo.com/
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