Mostrando resultados por autor "Aaron Stander" en Todas las categorías

It's late November along the shores of northern Lake Michigan. Deer season has been open for a few days and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. A local TV anchorwomen is returning home from an early morning yoga class with her young twin daughters. She stops at the end of her drive and climbs out of her car to collect the mail from the box. As she turns back toward her vehicle, the bullet from a high caliber weapon tears through her chest. In this third book in this series, Sheriff Ray Elkins confronts both the dark history of his own department and powerful and wealthy adversaries who ...

It has taken more than two decades, but the members of the Leiston School Winter Adventure Group of 1990 are finally reunited near their old school. The intimate gathering opens with the renewal of old friendships at a private Lake Michigan estate near their old school. But the alcohol-fueled camaraderie soon melts away as old rivalries begin to surface, as do old secrets — one old secret in particular. Twenty-five years ago, this group headed into an Upper Peninsula wilderness for a winter camping adventure. They ended up stranded and cut off for days by a huge winter storm. When they ...

Winter is starting to loosen its grip on Cedar County along the shores of northern Lake Michigan. The first hints of green are becoming visible on the edges of the receding snowpack. On the inland lakes, the layers of ice that started forming in late November and December are slowly subsiding. The search for morel mushrooms is still three or four weeks off. But this year there is other treasure to hunt. Vincent Fox, an octogenarian, has self-published a book, Al Capone’s Michigan: The Secret Lost Treasure. Following the descriptions in the book, some of the locals are beginning to scour ...

7th in the Ray Elkins Thriller Series It’s a warm summer evening in Cedar County. A storm is just beginning to roll onshore from Lake Michigan. In the auditorium of the Mission Point Summer Colony, the audience settles in for a performance of a stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s "Death at the Vicarage." By the first intermission the intense thunderstorm is overhead. The old auditorium reverberates to the violent tumult. Flashes of lightning cast eerie shadows through the rolling, heavily wooded landscape. Then the power fails. The building and surrounding countryside go black. When ...

It is late June in Michigan's gold coast resort area. The summer residents are settling in for the season and the tourists are beginning to flood the highways and beaches. But the idyllic vision of a summer at the shore is suddenly shattered by a gangland-style shooting. This murder is quickly followed by the deaths of three more summer residents, each taking place under suspicious circumstances.

It's a tranquil October morning in northwest lower Michigan, a rural paradise of cherry orchards, blue lakes, and sandy shorelines. The serenity of the day - and the season - is shattered when an elderly woman walking her dogs along the beach stumbles upon the bodies of a brutally murdered couple.

In the depths of winter, Cedar County is on occasion literally frozen in place. Roads are impassable; the area schools are closed for days at a time. And the bad guys and gals, they’re hunkered down like everyone else until the weather breaks. But this winter isn’t the usual. There’s arson and murder. The iniquities of some particularly unsavory ancestors are being visited upon the current generation. With a protagonist as deep and textured as Ray Elkins and a backdrop as varied as this resort community, Stander has created a high-quality mystery series. —Foreword Magazine

COMING IN JULY: Death in a Summer Colony, the latest in the Ray Elkins series. Medieval Murders is a prequel to the Ray Elkins mystery series. If you are a reader of the series, you know that the first four books are set in Cedar County, an amalgam of the many lakes, forests, and towns found in northwest lower Michigan. In these books there are references to Ray’s earlier profession- al life when he taught criminal justice at a large Midwestern state university. The plot in Medieval Murders revolves around the deaths of three members of the English department. It’s a younger Ray Elkins,...

Autumn has come to Cedar County. It's harvest time. The trees and vines in the orchards and vineyards are heavy with ripening fruit. For the tourists flocking to the tasting rooms of the region's vineyards, the landscapes and seascapes provide an elaborate tapestry of rich colors and textures. However, there is one discordant note in this pastoral splendor: The crumpled body of an international wine maven has been discovered in a steeply terraced vineyard of merlot grapes.

The wedding would be perfect. Every contingency had been anticipated...except a body. Everything is in place at the Gull Point Estate for the Memorial Day wedding bash - the lawns are perfectly manicured, the caterer is stocked and ready, the champagne is chilled. And the string quartet is brushing up on their Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, and Mozart. But before they end their rehearsal, they’d be well advised to have a version of stormy weather ready to go just in case the day doesn’t go as planned.

It’s February along the shores of Northern Lake Michigan. A heavy blanket of snow has been building up in the woods since early November and the inland lakes have had a solid covering of ice since December. Shelf ice, stacked ten or fifteen feet in places, has been building on Lake Michigan for weeks. Sheriff Ray Elkins, responding to a late-night home invasion call, discovers the brutal murder of a local artist at her home deep in the woods. Elkins works to understand complex lives and relationships as he pursues a brilliant and brutal adversary.