Author Shout Selection as a Top Pick for 2023!

JESSICA MINTON AND JAMES CRAWFORD ARE BACK IN AN EXCITING NEW MYSTERY OF DECEIT AND MURDER!

One foggy spring evening in 1946, a young college professor slips into a deserted campus building for a surreptitious meeting with her lover ­- only to be shot dead in the darkness.  Who is the victim?  Who is her murderer?  The answers will only gradually be uncovered after newlyweds Jessica Minton and James Crawford come to that same campus on Long Island Sound. With James returning to teaching, the future should be sparkling for the two. Yet darkness looms.  James is haunted by memories of the war and a mission that he isn’t allowed to tell Jessica about, until their discovery of the missing professor’s decomposing corpse washed up on the beach forces his hand and plunges them both into treachery and more murder.  Dusty’s on the alert for adventure and danger!

Take a sneak peek at Always Play the Dark Horse.  Dusty  wants you to!

How about another sneak peek, this one blending romance, humor, and death!

 

Curious about Dark Horse?  Take a look at this blog on casting characters and at this one on the films inspiring Dark Horse, as well as my other two Jessica Minton mysteries.  You might also want to look at the blog on the dark horses who inspired Dark Horse, here. Or perhaps you are more interested in the actual outfits inspiring the fashions of Dark Horse and the other Jessica novels.  Click here. Let me know what you think.

Click here for book club discussion questions.

To order Dark Horse, you can click here for Amazon or click here for Ingram. Click here to purchase from Bookshop.org.  Click here for Barnes and Noble. If you want a signed copy, come see me at one of my upcoming appearances.  Click here for my schedule.

Dark Horse is now available at The Booklovers’ Gourmet, Annie’s Bookstop, TidePool Books,  Root and Press, Toadstools (Keene, NH), Tatnuck Bookseller (Westborough, MA), The Book Forge (Orange, MA).  As I place Dark Horse in additional bookstores, I will post them.

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Updated 9/20/2025