Murder on the Back Roads

Amber Lawrence didn’t come to Bend, Oregon, looking for love, she came to heal. After her aggressive cancer treatment, she's determined to reclaim her strength, one hike at a time. The last thing she wants is a guide, but Grace Howe isn’t what Amber expects.

Grace traded her city life for the dream of running an outdoor adventure company only to end up heartbroken and stuck behind a desk. When Amber hires her for a series of low-key treks, Grace jumps at the chance to make enough to move back home.

Neither is looking for more. But sapphic sparks have a way of catching, and sun-drenched trails and winding rivers, aren’t the only natural beauty they’re noticing. Together, they navigate grief, desire, and the wild terrain of second chances while finding their way back to themselves—and each other.

When Lena Preiss unexpectedly loses her job, her father convinces her to travel to Leavenworth, Washington, and help in her aunt’s new restaurant. The charming Christmas village in the Cascade Mountains is a gorgeous place for Lena to relax while between jobs, if not for the minor difficulty of feeding hundreds of tourists every night. Luckily, chocolatier Devin Meyer is on hand to take care of dessert.

Devin knows chocolate and enjoys nothing more than mixing and stirring the finest, smoothest, richest chocolate entirely by hand. She has returned home to help her father with one last holiday season before he retires and sells their family business. She is determined to spend the season planning for her future, but the beautiful and overwhelmed Lena proves to be more of a distraction than she expected.

Against a snowy backdrop glittering with Christmas lights, Lena and Devin learn how to shed the expectations of others and forge their own path—maybe one that they’ll share together.

Library director Jasmine Harald has no desire to attract police attention, not since a murder made her temporarily shut down her precious library. But now Jazz needs the cops. One of her favorite students is dead, and everyone believes he died by suicide. She’s certain the police can help her prove them wrong.

University police officer Cappy Flannery understands too well the pain suicide can bring to family and friends. She doesn’t believe this death suspicious—simply a young man who couldn’t cope with the loss of his promising future as a star football player. She agrees to investigate more thoroughly because her sergeant ordered her to even though she thinks it’s a waste of time.

As secrets are uncovered, Cappy and Jazz realize that the case—and their growing feelings for each other—are more complex than either of them expected.

Tig Weston’s beloved classics department is evolving, expanding its course offerings to entice a new and more diverse generation of students. Not everyone is willing to accept these changes, though. Tempers flare, and when the body of a prestigious alum turns up outside Denny Hall, Tig doubts she can bring her department through the crisis.

Sergeant Adriana Kent always pictured classical scholars as tweedy bookworms, but suddenly her campus police officers are being called to Denny on a near-daily basis. Arguments in the halls, threatening emails, and even a fistfight, for God’s sake. What should have been the most sedate department on campus seems to be going through a volatile transformation. And the most visible proponent of that transformation? The decidedly unstuffy and very sexy Professor Antigone Weston.

Kent and Tig seem to be on opposing sides in this battle until the stakes become more personal. But before they can even think about a future together, they’ll need to fight to protect the campus from a killer.

Bonnie James has built her life around her passions—cats, coffee, and community. She rejected her family’s narrow visions of success and instead chose the non-lucrative, fur-filled life of a cat café owner. So what if her decision means she works way too much to have time for true love? She has plenty of friends and cats to keep her company.

Wedding planner Taryn Ritter has a knack for making impossible dreams come true. She might not understand the appeal of getting married in a cat café, but if that’s what her clients want, then she’ll make it happen. She’s not about to let the reluctant café owner stand in her way, so she makes Bonnie an offer she can’t refuse—give her the venue for one day and she’ll find a way to get more cats adopted into happy homes.

When Bonnie and Taryn join forces to help a bunch of shelter cats find their forever homes, they just might discover forever for themselves as well.

Officer Clare Sawyer, newly arrived at the University of Washington’s campus police department, hopes her investigation of a murdered professor will give her a chance to show her worth and prove to herself she made the right choice leaving the big city behind. Life on campus brings back uncomfortable memories, but she is determined to do her job and remain on the outskirts of the academic world. Until Professor Hart walks into her interrogation room…

Architectural historian Libby Hart found her true home when she entered college, and she hasn’t left academia since. She loves her friends, her job, and the gorgeous buildings surrounding her. When the harsh reality of murder brings chaos into her world, she tries to help Clare restore order on campus.

Clare and Libby are from different worlds, but the more time they spend together, the harder it becomes to ignore their growing feelings for one another—until the murderer targets Clare and danger threatens to destroy their happiness.