Showing results by author "Donna Ball" in All Categories

Aggie Malone is a dedicated young cop who has spent her entire life just looking for a place to call home. She never thought she'd find it in a quaint Florida village called Dogleg Island, where almost nothing ever happens. Deputy Ryan Grady is an easygoing playboy who carries a surf board in the trunk of his patrol car and lives in the same rambling beach cottage his grandfather built 70 years ago. He grew up on Dogleg Island and can't imagine ever living anywhere else. It's always been the most peaceful place he has ever known.

It's Christmas Eve, and Cici, Bridget and Lindsay are busy preparing for their annual holiday party. The tree is sparkling, the turkey is roasting, the stockings are hung and the eggnog is chilled. The scene is set for the perfect Christmas...with one or two exceptions. The entire state is in the midst of a heat wave. No one can find any mistletoe. The Christmas tree lights keep exploding, and, perhaps worst of all, something has gone terribly wrong with Ida Mae's fruitcakes.

Still recovering from the traumatic events of the past year, newlyweds Aggie Malone, police chief of Dogleg Island, and Deputy Sheriff Ryan Grady are looking forward to a casual day trip to Wild Horse Island, a nearby nature preserve, with their precocious - and uncannily perceptive - border collie, Flash. But when Flash discovers a body in a shallow grave on the island, and Aggie and Ryan learn of an attack on the park ranger, a tangled knot of conspiracy, murder and deception begins to unfold.

On foot, on horseback, in covered wagons and mule carts they came, traversing treacherous rivers and wild plains in search of the Promised Land, drawn ever westward by the promise of the new American frontier. Katherine Carlyle, a desperate woman with a violent past, leaves behind the graves of her family and the only home she has ever known in search of a new life. An unwanted passenger on a westward bound flatboat, she is forced into the role of hero when catastrophe strikes...

The vineyard has been restored and Ladybug Farm Winery is on the verge of bottling its first vintage. Their friends Paul and Derrick are building a house next door. High school and college graduations are just around the corner for the two young people they have shepherded for the past four years. Life couldn't be more perfect. But Ladybug Farm still holds a few surprises for them all...

Raine's old boyfriend Andy Fontana is back in town...and at the top of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. With a fortune in diamonds hidden somewhere in the wilderness, several recent acts of eco-terrorism and an unsolved murder laid at Andy's door, the feds turn to Raine Stockton, with her unsurpassed knowledge of the mountains and her reputation as a wilderness tracker, to help bring Andy to justice. The only problem is that Raine still believes Andy is innocent...

Paul and Derrick have hit their stride with the Hummingbird House Bed and Breakfast, a destination in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. Guests come from all over the country to enjoy their Christmas weekend extravaganza. Of course there are a few glitches: 20 Christmas trees to be decorated in less than a week, an absentee massage therapist, and - perhaps most distressing of all - the unexpected presence of three school-age children, courtesy of their saucy young housekeeper Purline.

As a native of the small town of Hansonville, North Carolina,and a wilderness rescue worker, Raine Stockton knows the Smoky Mountains as well as anyone could, but she gave up her Search and Rescue work after a tragic loss. Now she reluctantly returns to active duty to help find a young child who has been kidnapped and taken deep into the forest.

Former Hanover County Sheriff Buck Lawson leaves the mountains of North Carolina to take a job as the police chief of the small South Georgia town of Mercy, and soon finds himself in over his head. For one thing, his predecessor has been murdered...Buck has inherited an unsolved homicide, a house that may well be haunted, and a police department that is almost certainly corrupt. It falls to Buck to free an innocent man and bring the former police chief’s killer to justice while wading through the quagmire of incompetence and dishonesty that permeates his office.

Come sit on the porch a spell. Let's talk about times gone by and folks we remember, about slow summer evenings and lightning bugs in a jar. Listen to the music of a creaky swing and hand-cranked ice cream and cicadas chorusing in the sultry night air. Let's talk about how things used to be in the South - and for some of us, they way they still are. Welcome to the world of Sweet Tea and Jesus Shoes, where award winning authors Deborah Smith, Sandra Chastain, Virginia Ellis, Debra Dixon, Donna Ball and Nancy Knight come together for the first time to create this poignant, humorous collection of nostalgic tales.

For dog trainer and search-and-rescue volunteer Raine Stockton, the last few months have been marked by murder, danger, and betrayal. A luxury vacation to the Caribbean resort island of St. Bart's sounds like the perfect antidote for stress, particularly since it includes three of her favorite traveling companions: her boyfriend, Miles; his daughter, Melanie; and Raine's happy-go-lucky golden retriever, Cisco. But even in paradise, trouble finds them.

Though still adjusting to a new job, a new town, and a new family, Buck is acutely aware that the probationary period specified by his contract with the City of Mercy is almost up. His relationship with the mayor has never been ideal, and he knows he could be fired at any time. It therefore seems imprudent to refuse when the mayor asks him to do a favor for an old friend and political ally, Jarrod Whitley.

Dogleg Island Police Chief Aggie Malone has spent years searching for the identity of her birth father. Now, thanks to a home DNA test, she has a lead...but it’s taking her in a direction she never could have imagined, and desperately does not want to go. Because the evidence suggests that Aggie could be the daughter of the infamous Angelo, head of the deadly Ghost Syndicate crime empire. Matters become more complicated when Aggie’s canine partner, Flash, discovers an abandoned child on the beach.

Wilderness expert and dog trainer Raine Stockton agrees to help lead a survival skills training camp for her fiancés executive team. She is unaware that she and her tracking dog, Cisco, are walking into a hotbed of corporate intrigue involving espionage and stolen technology. Everyone at the retreat is a suspect, and no one can be trusted. And none of them is aware that, while their small drama plays out, a much bigger threat is stalking them.

Dog trainer Raine Stockton has lived all her life in the quiet community of Hansonville, North Carolina. She is the daughter of a judge, the niece of a sheriff, and the ex-wife of a deputy. She does not lead the kind of life, generally speaking, in which people get buried in her backyard. But when Cisco, Raine's mischievous golden retriever, digs up human bones beneath the site of what will soon be her new training kennel, mayhem ensues.

This anthology contains Angels in the Snow, The Good Shepherd, and Welcome to Bethlehem.

No one knows the mountains of North Carolina like Raine Stockton and her search and rescue dog, Cisco. When they are called in to search for an elderly man who has wandered away from home, it seems like a routine mission until Raine looks through her binoculars and sees something she wasn't supposed to see. A dead man is very much alive, a felon is walking around free, and Raine is the only person who can testify to the fact. The problem is that no one takes her claims seriously...except the person who wants her dead.

It's Christmas time, and for Raine Stockton and her Search and Rescue dog, Cisco, Hansonville, North Carolina is just like a Norman Rockwell painting - except for the rash of thefts of baby Jesus figurines from nativity scenes, an abandoned box of golden retriever puppies that someone leaves beside her mailbox, and a mysterious gift from one of Cisco's a grateful admirers. Raine already has her hands full with her own misbehaving pooches, unexpected house guests, and a complicated new relationship.

Raine Stockton knows dogs, not kids. Nonetheless, she is supremely confident in her ability to take care her fiancé’s 10-year-old daughter Melanie for a week while he is out of town. After all, how hard could it be? But things get complicated when Raine and her golden retriever Cisco rescue a dog who is locked in a hot car in a remote Smoky Mountain park and subsequently discover the owner of that car drowned in the creek only a few dozen yards away. Was it an accident, or was it murder?

Police Chief Aggie Malone is facing her first Christmas as a married woman, and hoping for a relatively uneventful holiday in the quiet Gulf Coast community of Dogleg Island where she, along with her perspicacious border collie Flash, is in charge of keeping the peace. She is still trying to find her place in the big, boisterous Grady family, but unlike Flash - and her own husband, Deputy Sheriff Ryan Grady - Aggie does not see the appeal of the holiday, and the magic of the season is completely lost on her. The old-fashioned Christmas Grady has planned for his bride begins to unravel when Aggie's investigation into a homicide hit-and-run leads to the arrest of her own brother-in-law and exposes a crime syndicate that's responsible for spreading millions in counterfeit bills throughout the southeast.