Detective Jonathan Stride's first wife, Cindy, died of cancer eight years ago, but her ghost hangs over Stride's relationship with current lover, and fellow detective, Serena Dial. When Serena witnesses brutal murder outside a Duluth bar, she stumbles onto a case with roots that go all the way back to the last year of Cindy Stride's life. --Publisher

As Lieutenant Jonathan Stride and his lover, P.I. Serena Dial, investigate a deadly crime linked to his partner, Maggie Bei, and pursue a blackmailer, they become the targets of a predator with a brutal past and a terrifying plan for revenge.

In 1869, Gloriana Womack's family is much smaller since smallpox killed her mother and two of her siblings. She lives in a modest cottage in Duluth, Minnesota, with her father and young brother, and she has dedicated her life to holding her tiny, fractured family together--especially as her father is frequently gone on long fishing trips. Their livelihood may come from the waters of Lake Superior, but storms on the lake can be dangerous, even to those...

On a rainy June morning, tens of thousands of people crowd into Duluth for the city's biggest annual event: the Duluth Marathon. Then, in a terrifying echo of the Boston bombing, there is an explosion along the race course, leaving many people dead and injured. Within minutes, Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial, and Maggie Bei are at work with the FBI to find the terrorists behind the tragedy. As social media feeds a flood of rumors and misinformation,...

After nearly dying of a gunshot wound, Jonathan Stride has been on leave from the Duluth Police for more than a year. When his partner, Maggie Bei, gets called about a suspicious abduction involving a local lawyer, she tells Stride it's time for him to come back. Attorney Gavin Webster says he paid $100,000 in ransom money to the men who kidnapped his wife. Now they've disappeared with the cash, and she's still missing. Gavin claims to be desperate...

When Hagstrom's bait store burns down, arson rumors fly among the residents of Whistling Pines senior living facility. When Peter Rogers, the recreation director speaks with residents he discovers there have been numerous suspicious business fires over the years. Torn between two sets of Halloween preparations and the arson investigation, Peter finds himself drafted as an unwilling judge for Two Harbors Halloween competitions, while the police chief...

She's made big promises. It'll take everything she's got to keep them. Crisscrossing the Great Lakes onboard her father's freighter ship, the Mary Elise, Elise Wright has grown up cooking and caring for the crew. It is a life she loves. Unlike her estranged sister, Elise has turned down numerous opportunities for a "respectable life" with their wealthy relatives. And now, because of promises she made to her dying mother, she's bound to the ship and...

Jonathan Stride's best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve's yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull. Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned...