Most Popular Books by Mary Logue

" Mary Logue''s third collection of poetry continues the lyrical examinations of human relationships--with family, with place, with lovers and friends--that distinguished her first two collections. Discriminating Evidence, Settling, and now Meticulous Attachment demonstrate what comes from living fully in the moment. Logue shows us how it''s done: with full-voiced maturity and a generous, sympathetic humanity."--Publisher''s website.

The seventh book in the Claire Watkins mystery series. Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins is faced with a difficult case when a friend of the family is suspected of killing his wife. Her investigation puts a great stress on her relationship with her husband. Things are further strained when the suspect attempts suicide, solidifying his guilt in Claire’s mind. But what if she’s wrong?

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 edition. Excerpt: ...promulgated by the King of Spain in the year 1783. To allow a mine to stand idle is assumed to be an injury to those who might otherwise work and extract profit from it. It is enacted, therefore, as follows: "I (the King) order and command that any one who shall for four consecutive months fail to work a mine, with four operatives, regularly employed, and occupied in some interior or exterior work of real utility and advantage, shall thereby forfeit the right which he may have to the mine, and it shall belong to the denouncer who proves its desertion." The method of acquiring title to a new and original mine is to go before the proper officer in the district in which it has been discovered and register a claim. Ninety days is then allowed to any other persons who may advance pretensions to it also, to appear, after which it is confirmed to him whose case is best established. Abandoned and forfeited properties are "denounced" by a similar formality. Veins or mines may be denounced not only on common lands, but those of any private individual, on paying for the surface occupied. In order, however, to obviate malicious or idle destruction, the searcher may be made to give security, before beginning his trial, for any damage he may occasion to the owner of the ground. Sites and waters for reducing works are included in the same permission. The denouncer must take possession and begin the prescribed work within sixty days. The discoverer may have three pertenencias, or claims, continuous or interrupted, on any principal vein which is absolutely new. The pertenencia consists of two hundred metres along the line of the vein and one hundred on each side (or as the miner may desire), as measured on a level. A person, not the discoverer, can...

This first in a series launch introduces Claire Watkins, a deputy sheriff for the Pepin County Police Department. Claire, a former Minneapolis police detective, and her 10-year-old daughter Meg fled the Twin Cities after her husband, Steve, also a cop, was killed. When Landers Anderson--an elderly neighbor who befriended Claire and Meg--dies of a heart attack after being sideswiped with a shovel, Claire determines to find the culprit. This involves delving into Landers''s family history and investigating the machinations of a right-wing group, Homeowners of America, that is buying up property to build an environmentally unsound development. At the same time, Meg fearfully admits to Claire that she saw the man who killed Steve. Claire contacts her former partner, Det. Bruce Jacobs, and prods him into accelerating the investigation into Steve''s death.

Claire Watkins, deputy sheriff of Pepin County, Wisconsin, makes a strong second showing that ought to gain her new fans. In spite of recurrent panic attacks associated with the death of her husband, Claire is starting to find the peace and security she''s been seeking for herself and her 10-year-old daughter, Meg, since leaving her promising career with the St. Paul-Minneapolis police department for the small bluff town of St. Antoine. One summer evening, while her sister Bridget takes care of Meg, Claire and Rich Haggard, a local pheasant farmer she''s been dating for three months, attend a street dance in nearby Little Rock. Just as the fun gets under way, screams for help stop the music and put romance on hold. Someone has stabbed well-liked farmer Jed Spitzler in the chest. Members of the close-knit St. Antoine community join Jed''s children in searching for Jed''s killer. Long-hidden town secrets are revealed as Claire seeks the truth and continues to struggle with her own demons.

Then the quiet was broken. The baby reached up a hand and jerked at the tablecloth. A spoon hit her on the head, and she started to cry. Bertha Schuler stuck her head out the door and called that dinner was ready. The clock in the hallway struck the half hour. And the first shot was fired. The unsolved murders at a remote Wisconsin farmhouse half a century ago have receded into time. But one deranged man will do anything to make sure that all of Pepin County remembers that bloody day. The world was out of balance. It had been so for nearly fifty years. Only he could see it. Only he could change it. When a quantity of dangerous pesticides is stolen from the local co-op, Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins is called in to investigate. The thief has left one bizarre clue: the finger bone of a child long dead. The pesticides soon reappear with devastating effect—in flowerbeds, in animal feed, and in a fatal concoction at a Fourth of July picnic. Each time, a tiny human bone is left at the scene. With the help of Harold Peabody, the quirky, aging editor of the Durand Daily, Claire unravels the secrets of the past, leading her to a pair of young lovers, a man enraged over his mother’s death, an obsessive recluse, and the deputy who first discovered the corpses of the Schuler family Claire desperately races against time to find the madman before he uses the lethal pesticide again. But he won’t be stopped. Not until he gets what he wants. The truth must be told. Or more will die. The flowers and the birds were only the beginning. . . . Written with Mary Logue’s trademark power and compassion, Bone Harvest is a bold, brilliant thriller that carries the reader deep into the heart of the Wisconsin bluffs country, into the hearts of its people—and to a startling conclusion.

"Logue writes beautifully about rural Minnesota life while telling a good mystery. For fans of J.A. Jance and Margaret Maron." --Library Journal Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins has had an easy summer in Fort St. Antoine, Wisconsin; the only problem is that her daughter Meg is leaving for college soon. When Claire walks down to the park to watch the Burning Boat--a large replica of a Norwegian longboat set on the shores of Lake Pepin, burned at the autumnal equinox--she has no idea that more than just a wooden structure is going up in flames. The next day, the bones of a young woman are found in the ashes. When Claire learns that the new deputy she has hired, a vet returning from Afghanistan, was the young woman''s former boyfriend, and that he is now dating her daughter Meg, she is desperate to find out who is responsible for the death. In order to get to the heart of this mystery, Claire must understand what happened in an attack in the mountains of Afghanistan, which left one man wounded, one man killed, and one man disturbed. Could one of those two remaining men be the killer?

Fall comes to Pepin County with a vengeance as Deputy Sheriff Claire Watkins confronts a new evil festering beneath the placid surface of the Wisconsin farm community. A refugee from the Twin Cities, Claire has slowly adapted to small-town life–especially now that she loves and lives with Rich Haggard. But in this rural area, other folks are dangerously restless. One is Daniel Reiner, a wealthy part-time resident who’s been buying up too much land–at least as far as the locals are concerned. Another is gambling addict and aging gold digger Patty Jo Tilde, who recently married a widower twenty years her senior. Patty is itching to inherit her husband’s property, sell it to Reiner, and leave the countryside behind. The only stumbling block–her husband must die. Add to the mix a suspicious goat-herding daughter-in-law and a wounded elk, and things quickly reach a boiling point. As Claire Watkins delves deeper into the mystery, she believes she’s uncovered a deadly history of lies, deceit, arson, and poison. Her problem is to prove it–and then she learns what happened to Patty Jo’s last husband. . . . Evoking the strong community values and the natural beauty of the Mississippi River Valley, this new Claire Watkins novel is Logue’s most exciting yet. Poison Heart is a riveting tale of those who live off the land–and those who end up six feet under it.

Wisconsin winter weather plays as important a role as any individual in this nicely paced tale of domestic abuse and murder. Claire Watkins is still adjusting to life in little Fort St. Antoine when she notices the bruises and stiff gait of a local woman named Stephanie Klaus. Small town or big city, Claire knows the signs of abuse when she sees them. Stephanie, however, won''t talk, even when her new boyfriend, Buck, is tied into his car, driven out on the treacherous ice of Lake Pepin and left there to sink and drown. When Stephanie, accompanied by Buck''s delightful dog, Snooper, tries to leave town, she is once again beaten; this time, she barely survives . . .

A boy, his grandfather, and a baby dragon set off on an international adventure that takes them from the Midwest to Iceland in this children''s fantasy novel perfect for fans of When You Trap a Tiger and How to Train Your Dragon. Johan is off to visit his Grandpa Siggy—a charismatic, impetuous Icelander with a big secret: He took a dragon egg with him when he immigrated to America. As fate would have it, Dreki hatched just a few hours after Johan was born, magically linking the two. But Dreki was kept hidden. Now, many years later, the time has come for Dreki to journey home and for Johan to discover his ancestry through a life-changing trip to Iceland. But the clock is ticking, as both Siggy''s and Dreki’s health are in jeopardy. This cross-cultural coming-of-age story explores aspects of Icelandic folklore while dealing sensitively with the themes of aging, generational memory, and returning home.

While on a class field trip, Roni Delicata and Brian Bain find a local archaeologist unconscious in a cave. Professor Andrew Dart is trying to find evidence of an Indian burial ground to stop the Bloodwater family from developing the site. But it is Dr. Dart who has been stopped first, in this exciting follow-up to "Snatched."

The Missing Statue of Minnehaha is a reinforced, library bound book in The Child''s World series Authors'' Signature Collection.

Women Writing the West WILLA Award Finalist From “the reigning royalty of Minnesota murder mysteries” (The Rake) comes a striking new heroine: a young Irish immigrant caught up in a deadly plot in nineteenth-century Deadwood When I was fifteen and my brother Seamus sixteen, we attended our own wake. Our family was in mourning, forced to send us off to America. The year is 1880, and of all the places Brigid Reardon and her brother might have dreamed of when escaping Ireland’s potato famine by moving to America, Deadwood, South Dakota, was not one of them. But Deadwood, in the grip of gold fever, is where Seamus lands and where Brigid joins him after eluding the unwanted attentions of the son of her rich employer in St. Paul—or so she hopes. But the morning after her arrival, a grisly tragedy occurs; Seamus, suspected of the crime, flees, and Brigid is left to clear his name and to manage his mining claim, which suddenly looks more valuable and complicated than he and his partners supposed. Mary Logue, author of the popular Claire Watkins mysteries, brings her signature brio and nerve to this story of a young Irish woman turned reluctant sleuth as she tries to make her way in a strange and often dangerous new world. From the famine-stricken city of Galway to the bustling New York harbor, to the mansions of Summit Avenue in St. Paul, and finally to the raucous hustle of boomtown Deadwood, Logue’s new thriller conjures the romance and the perils, and the tricky everyday realities, of a young immigrant surviving by her wits and grace in nineteenth-century America.

At bedtime a young girl asks, "Does everything in the world go to sleep?"

Salt Lake City, 1881: Brigid Reardon is again on the case when her new employer—a leader in the Church of Latter-day Saints—is murdered in his home Still reeling from the violence she encountered in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Brigid Reardon presses on alone to Salt Lake City, where she decides to settle down in what she hopes is a safe community. Things look promising when she’s hired to work at the Deseret Bookstore and offered a room in the home of her employer, Mr. Cutter, a high-ranking member of the Church of Latter-day Saints, and his five wives. Despite Brigid’s conflicting feelings about polygamy, she finds the Cutter wives warm and welcoming, and she thinks she may finally be happy here. As she settles in, Brigid learns that Mr. Cutter wants yet another wife, and he is set on Amelia, the daughter of one of his wives from a previous marriage. When Mr. Cutter is found apparently murdered in the women’s sewing room, each of the wives (plus Amelia and Mr. Cutter’s son) is a suspect, and Brigid knows it’s up to her to figure out just who did it. As she continues to work in the bookstore and live with the grieving family, Brigid teams up with the local coroner to investigate—and with her undeniable knack for detection, it’s not long before she discovers a telltale clue. A Wasp in the Beehive continues Brigid’s trek west in the United States after immigrating from Ireland with her brother, following her time in Deadwood, South Dakota, in The Streel and in Cheyenne in The Big Sugar. But with everything that has happened, will she stay in Salt Lake City, or will she move on again? Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.

Introduction to the different kinds of sea stars, better known as starfishes.

A grisly death near her new homestead draws Brigid Reardon into a complicated mystery soon after her arrival in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1881 After the harrowing events that entangled her in Deadwood, Brigid Reardon just wants to move west and get on with her new life in America. But shortly after traveling to Cheyenne to join her brother Seamus, she finds herself caught up in another deadly mystery—beginning with her discovery of a neighbor’s body on the plains near their homes. Was Ella murdered? Are either of the two men in Ella’s life responsible? With Seamus away on a cattle drive, her friend Padraic possibly succumbing to a local’s charms, and the sheriff seemingly satisfied with Ella’s fate, it falls to Brigid to investigate what really happened, which puts her in the crosshairs of one of Cheyenne’s cattle barons, called “big sugars” in these parts. All she really wants is something better than a crumbling, soddy homestead on the desolate plains of Wyoming—and maybe, just maybe, she wants Padraic—but life, it seems, has other plans: this young immigrant from Ireland is going to be a detective on the western frontier of 1880s America, even if it kills her. Loosely based on the true story of Ellen Watson in Cheyenne in 1889, The Big Sugar continues the adventure begun in Mary Logue’s celebrated mystery The Streel, which introduced a “gritty, charming, clever protagonist” (Kirkus Reviews). With a faultless sense of history, a keen eye for suspense, and a poet’s way with prose, Mary Logue all but guarantees that readers, like Brigid, will find the mystery at the heart of The Big Sugar downright irresistible.

Brian and Roni are looking for another case to crack when Roni finds an age-progressed picture of a boy who looks alarmingly like Brian on a missing children website. Brian is sure it is only a coincidence?after all, he?s lived happily with his adoptive parents for as long as he can remember. But then again, his parents have never really told him about his adoption . . . Could there be more to his family history than he knows? As Roni and Brian piece together the clues, other people emerge from the shadows of the past and suddenly Brian isn?t just a detective on the case?he?s the key to a mystery that everyone is after. Can he and Roni uncover the truth before it?s too late? Featuring the strong plotting and offbeat humor that won the Bloodwater Mysteries a prestigious Edgar nomination, Doppelganger is full of twists and turns that will keep readers guessing until the very end.

Car mogul Daniel Walker is celebrating New Year’s Eve alone. Or at least he thinks he is. At midnight, he runs outside naked for a quick roll in the snow. But when he tries to get back in the house, he can’t. He’s been locked out.