HILLIARD & HARRIS

BOOKS by ROSEMARY MINER:

 

ONCE UPON A TIME TO DIE FOR-The year is 1873 when on a late October night Grace Wickham is called to an accident at the local tannery. Recently returned from a year of medical school, Miss Wickham is the person people turn to as they once did her late father, the local doctor. The body floating in a steaming tannery vat is the owner, Truman Reed, and the men who rush to answer the emergency bell each have reason to wish him dead. With the constable out of town, the coroner asks Gracie to look into things, for this was no accident. Is the murderer the manager himself whom Reed threatened to fire? Was it his partner, Phineas Pierce, who wanted to sell? Troublemaker Wash Baker, whose pay had been cut? Recently fired night watchman Orrin Rooney? Reed's embittered wife? Or Chester Owens, who believes his son died following Reed's unreasonable orders? And why was a peddler hanging around the tannery that night? As Gracie sees patients in her herbal practice and talks with neighbors, she puzzles over motives and evidence with Adirondack hotel owner and friend, Ambrose Baldoon, (the only man taller than Gracie's six feet). Another suspicious death complicates her investigation until clues converge and Gracie comes up with some surprising answers.

 

LIES AND LOGS TO DIE FOR-The Adirondacks in 1874 is a harsh land of rugged landscape and hard-scrabble living where each spring local men seek jobs bringing logs to market on the wild white-waters of the Hudson River. As the annual drive is ready to start, Miss Grace Wickham, herbal healer and amateur sleuth, is traveling home on the new Adirondack Railway. On the train she meets and befriends young Jenny Crane. Jenny's brother wrote her that logging wasn't for him. Now he's missing and she's on a quest to find him. Grace Wickham, the only doctor in the small town of Wevertown, NY finds herself in the midst of murder again.

 

ADIRONDACK RUBIES TO DIE FOR-The ruby red garnets found in northern New York State are sought not for gemstones but valued as an industrial abrasive. History calls them Adirondack Rubies. But to die for? Joe Baldwin refuses to sell his garnet-laden farm land to the mining company and chases off the land agent. That should have been the end of the matter, but when Grace Wickham stumbles over the farmer's dead body while on a picnic with the new Constable, Ambrose Baldoon the matter of the Baldwin land and its garnets becomes a murder mystery. Did the land agent react violently to Joe Baldwin's refusal? Was Baldwin so hated by his own estranged family members that they killed him for an inheritance—to accept the land deal? Grace is the daughter of a doctor and trained in medicine and herbal remedies. She had been called on by the coroner to investigate murders in the past and Ambrose asks for her help. As she searches for motives and questions suspects, the accounts of hardscrabble Adirondack life throughout the rich history of the area is illuminated. A storied time of the Underground Railroad, magic lantern shows for entertainment and the threat of the lawless Molly Maguires comes to life in Adirondack Rubies to Die For.