Stripped Bare

Kate Fox has built a quiet life in the Nebraska Sandhills: a cattle ranch, a large and meddlesome family, and a husband, Ted Conner, who is coasting toward re-election as Grand County Sheriff. That life ends with a single phone call. Eldon Edwards, the owner of the Bar J and grandfather of Kate's teenage niece Carly, is dead, and Ted has been shot and may never walk again.

With Ted the obvious suspect and Carly missing, Kate finds herself standing in for a sheriff who cannot stand, investigating a killing that reaches into the heart of her own family. Eldon had been weighing an offer to sell the ranch to a wealthy environmentalist, and in a county where land is everything, that offer stirred up more resentment than anyone wants to admit.

Shannon Baker's first Kate Fox mystery is a rural crime novel rooted in place, where cattle prices, grazing rights, and old grudges carry as much weight as any murder weapon. As a string of accidents starts finding Kate, it becomes clear that whoever killed Eldon is still counting on the Sandhills to keep their secret.