This time Sheriff Joanna Brady may expect to see her maternity leave through to completion, but the world has other plans when a serial homicide case surfaces in her beloved Cochise County. Rather than staying home with her newborn and losing herself in the cold cases to be found in her father's long unread diaries, Joanna instead finds herself overseeing a complex investigation involving multiple jurisdictions.

The intense desert heat has brought a nightmare to a small corner of the Southwest. A body lies lifeless in an airless trailer, surrounded by seventeen others. It is a crime unspeakable in conception and execution-a horror strangely connected to a grisly slaughter in a neighboring state, where the corpses of two women are found gruesomely posed on a rancher's land. A day that started out hot has already turned blistering for Joanna Brady, the sheriff...

Sheriff Joanna Brady investigates a series of deaths in Cochise County, Arizona, where the victims were shot and scalped. Suspicion centers on a nearby ranch where European tourists come to play at Indians.

A woman is cruelly cut down in a remote corner of Arizona, killed on her nineteenth wedding anniversary by a drunk motorist. A year later, the driver himself dies badly, and all suspicions point to the slain woman's still-grieving husband as his murderer. But the truth is rarely black and white in the long Southwestern shadows, and one law officer is not rushing to condemn the tragic widower so quickly: Joanna Brady, Sheriff of Cochise County.

Life is good for Joanna Brady. She has Jenny, her nine-year-old daughter, and solid, honest, and loving husband, Andy, a local lawman who's running for Sheriff of Cochise County. But her good life explodes when a bullet destroys Andy Brady's future and leaves him dying beneath the blistering Arizona sun. The police brass claim that Andy was dirty and that the shooting was a suicide attempt. Joanna knows a cover-up when she hears one...and murder when...

Dora Matthews and Jennifer Brady, both thirteen, couldn't be less alike yet the luck of the draw has made them tentmates on a Girl Scout camping trip at Apache Pass. Dora is a wild child, a pregnant, fatherless waif with a missing junkie mother. Jenny is the innocent daughter of Joanna Brady, the sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona. In the cool blackness of the high desert night, they slip away at Dora's prodding. What they find on their unauthorized...

Sheriff Joanna Brady's investigation of a murder is complicated by a brutal reelection campaign.

Joanna Brady is nine months pregnant when the mutilated body of an unidentified man is found in the desert. Then, one of the Animal Control officers on a stakeout, is so severely beaten that her prospects for survival are uncertain. Soon Joanna's life becomes even more complicated when her in-laws arrive uninvited for the birth of their grandchild.

"John Horton Slaughter fought on the blood-soaked battlefields of the Civil War. He drove thundering cattle across a dangerous frontier, and faced the deadliest outlaws as a Texas Ranger. Now, bestselling authors William and J.A. Johnstone tell the story of this towering historical figure-the man who tamed Tombstone, Arizona. A HERO AS BIG AND TOUGH AS TEXAS Enticed by the richest poker tournament the West has ever seen, a horde of cheating and ruthless...