A Sam Westin Mystery Series

"White-knuckle suspense." - C.J. Box, New York Times bestselling author "Well written and terrifically paced." - AnnArbor.com Summer "Sam" Westin's assignment to report on cougars in a Utah park goes horribly awry when a child vanishes from a campground and the TV news focuses on the local mountain lions as the likely culprits. Sam has good reason to suspect the shadowy man she spotted at the end of the path. Can she find the truth in time to save both the child and the big cats? Includes Discussion Questions for Readers and Book Clubs

** Winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award ** Sam Westin is working on a twelve-week project for the National Park Service as a wildlife biologist. While on firewatch duty one night, she hears an explosion. Above a nearby lake, fire lights the sky. She calls it in and is the first on the scene to do battle. When the blaze is finally extinguished, a body is discovered in the embers. It's a young woman who was working on the park's trail crew for the summer—and she's barely clinging to life. Sensing something sinister, Sam starts asking questions. Who started the fire? Was the young woman involved? Does this have something to do with an old gold mine? Is the recent sighting of an illegal bear hunter just coincidence? Sam wants the answers—but someone else wants her out of the way before she finds them... Includes Discussion Questions for Readers and Book Clubs

Scuba diving off the Galápagos Islands, wildlife biologist and freelance writer Summer "Sam" Westin is not only out of her element--she's plunged right into a dangerous conflict between fishermen and environmentalists... When Sam is hired to cover a marine survey expedition to the Galápagos, she jumps at the opportunity--though she has to fudge the truth about her diving expertise. But amidst the giant tortoises, marine iguanas, and schooling hammerheads of Darwin's enchanted islands, Sam gets caught up in deadly game of survival of the fittest, and her dream assignment turns into a nightmare. When her diving partner's air supply is contaminated with carbon monoxide on their very first dive, she wonders if someone is trying to sabotage the expedition. Sea cucumbers and shark fins are valuable commodities in the Asian market. How far will the poachers go? With no one watching their backs, Sam starts to suspect they may already be in over their heads--dealing with human predators more deadly than any shark... Includes discussion questions for readers and book clubs.

Wildlife photographer Jade Silva's last text message is a photo of a rare jaguar at the US-Mexico border wall.   When Jade vanishes, her fellow Southwestern Research Station volunteer, Sam Westin, agonizes that something terrible has happened. But finding Jade seems an almost impossible mission in a rugged area overrun by undocumented immigrants, Border Patrol agents, vigilantes, construction crews, human traffickers, drug smugglers, and violent cartel thugs. Meanwhile, the ever-increasing militarization of the Arizona-Mexico border is destroying ecosystems and trampling the rights of US citizens. Trying to rescue her friend, Sam is sucked into a maelstrom of desperation, deceit, and danger.

Sam Westin is rarely afraid in the wilderness, but maybe she should be now. Her friends Kyla and Kim were murdered on a popular hiking trail only a few weeks ago and the murderer is still unidentified. When Sam steps in as a substitute for Kim to shepherd six troubled teens through the backcountry, she can't help watching over her shoulder. Has grief at the violent deaths of her friends made her paranoid, or is she right to suspect her rag-tag band is sharing the mountain wilderness with the killer?

Just as society is celebrating the fade of the COVID quarantine restrictions, Sam Westin suddenly finds her life in shambles. While she and her friends were enjoying a spring snow outing in the North Cascades, an earthquake launches multiple avalanches to wreak destruction on the slopes. Now skiers are dead and Sam's lover, Chase, is fighting for his life.      In her logical mind, Sam knows that she can't blame two wolverine poachers for the cascade of events that killed and injured so many in the mountains. But if she hadn't needed to answer the call to rescue a trapped wolverine, she wouldn't have been buried, and her friends would have been safely off the mountain and back home. And criminal associates of her troubled young protégé Maya wouldn't have trashed her unoccupied house and injured her cat.      Why did two teens want to capture a wolverine, and why has nobody come forward to claim their bodies? Are baby wolverines, still hidden beneath the snow, starving to death because their mother was murdered? Sam has to find the answers to bring some sanity back to her world.