Greetings from the land of milk, maples, and malice domestic. Or, as Ruth Willmarth, my single mother-dairy farmer sleuth, would deem it: the hardscrabble world of contrary cows, unpaid bills, and errant husbands.

Ruth’s man has left her for an actress who played a bit part in a local film.  For good reason, Ruth names her cows after women like Marie Antoinette, Cleopatra, Zelda—the beheaded, the poisoned, the exploited. But Ruth is tough, she can handle adversity; one reviewer describes her as "earthy, funny, hot-tempered, and sexier than she knows." Moreover, as backup, she has Colm Hanna, her wannabe lover who triples as realtor, mortician, and parttime cop; the bumper sticker on Colm’s old blue Horizon reads: "Moonlight In Vermont ."

How did Ruth come about? Well, one day back in the early 90’s a pair of elderly Vermont farmers who never banked their money—stashed it, rather, in rafter holes and torn pocket seams—were mugged, robbed, and left for dead. The villains were nabbed when they started throwing the wrinkled bills around in bars and Bingo parlors. Alas for them, the money reeked of barn!

Out of that true life story came MAD SEASON , the first in the series from St. Martin’s Press—"an admirably crafted first novel," according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Next came HARVEST OF BONES, in which "Wright melds setting and character with the skill of Stephen Dobyns in his Saratoga mysteries" (Booklist).

Then, POISON APPLES, in which a mysterious somebody plants terror in an apple orchard adjacent to Ruth’s farm. According to Boston Globe , "...Wright doesn't put a foot wrong in this well-wrought mystery".

Next STOLEN HONEY, the fourth in the Ruth Willmarth series. A male Branbury College student is found on a local bee farm in a patch of deadly nightshade—and then a female professor who has been researching a 30's eugenics experiment is discovered, strangled, in her apartment.

And take a look at my novella, "Fire and Ice," out in January, '02 in the Worldwide Library anthology, CRIMES OF PASSION. A severe ice storm strikes northern Vermont, and with it comes a conflagration of love and hate. Ruth Willmarth is drawn into the murder investigation of a young woman stabbed with a massive icicle in a mystery filled with the dark secrets.

Nancy Shares Her Workspace

And now MAD COW NIGHTMARE , out in hardcover in April, '05, the fifth in the Ruth Willmarth series. A pair of suspect calves and an Irish traveller woman who might be infected with fatal CJD, the human form of Mad Cow disease, turn Ruth's summer into a nightmare.

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