It’s 1929 and 25-year-old librarian Prudence Bates is bored with her conventional life. She escapes by heading west to train as a Courier for the Southwest Indian Detours. On the train, she meets Navajo teacher Jerry Begay, headed for Gallup. In Las Vegas, she befriends Harvey Girls Martha and Anne and desk clerk Clara. Then Martha’s brother, Tom, is murdered. Is it because of his bootlegging? Or his amorous activities with Liz Kearney, daughter of the richest man in town and rumored mob boss? And was that really Jerry whom Prudence saw meeting with Tom the day before?
Scientist Sara Almquist and her FBI colleagues are puzzled when a retired professor dies after methanol is added to his booze. Why did someone want to silence him? Did he know too much about the dark side of a successful chain of senior living centers? Or had he played too many pranks on his friends and neighbors?
The wildlife refuge at Bosque del Apache in New Mexico is a noisy but idyllic spot as cranes settle there for the winter. Then the body of a man wearing new red boots is found on Christmas Day. Investigators quickly learn many had reasons for wishing him dead.
Feel the pressure of looking for a murderer, whom no one wants found. That’s the situation faced by scientist Sara Almquist and her FBI colleagues when they investigate a murder in the ghost town in the Gila Wilderness. The medical examiner thinks the victim was tortured for several days before he was killed. However, the ten residents in this remote town deny knowing the man.
Santa Fe Patrol Officer Louise Sanchez knows the Northern New Mexico roads, yet when she fills in for detective Pascal Ruiz, on leave awaiting trial, she finds herself in unfamiliar territory. The first week on the job she is assigned a murder case. Webster Madison, an attorney contracted by a financial company under investigation for money laundering, is found with a butcher knife in his heart and a “date rape” drug in his system. The only clues are twenty one dollars in play money and a woman’s photo from an online dating site.
When a series of tarot cards accompanied by deeply personal messages arrives at her doorstep, Aisha’s regimented life is thrown into chaos. The violation forces her to turn to the only person who might know how to interpret the cards: Aisha’s estranged sister and popular spiritual Instagram influencer, Lulu. As the two sisters navigate their strained relationship and work to decode the tarot messages, a childhood tragedy resurfaces. But with the truth wrapped in secrets, Aisha doesn’t know who to count on, and something’s not adding up.