The Stray Pitch

Wendy Winkworth is a spirited heroine who's as tough as she is resourceful.

It's the summer of 1950, Burton City, Iowa, and twenty-four-year-old Wendy Winkworth has a PI license, but absolutely no clients. That changes the morning she reads about the murder of Betty Jane Wadlow—star pitcher for the Burton City Hornettes and the brightest talent in the Star-Spangled Girls Baseball League.

When the team's owner hires Wendy to investigate from the inside, she finds herself in the most unlikely undercover assignment of her fledgling career: suiting up as a utility player on a professional women's baseball team. Her baseball skills are questionable at best. Her detective instincts, however, are sharper than anyone gives her credit for.

As Wendy navigates the tight-knit world of the Hornettes—with its jealousies, romances, and whispered rivalries—she uncovers a web of motives that stretches well beyond the diamond. A missing gold necklace. A jar of crimson paint. A cryptic word scrawled on a riverside boulder. And a killer who has every reason to make sure Wendy never puts the pieces together.

Sharp, funny, and richly atmospheric, The Stray Pitch is the first novel in the beloved Wendy Winkworth Mystery series—a pitch-perfect blend of historical fiction, classic whodunit, and irresistible wit.

Perfect for fans of Jacqueline Winspear, Susan Elia MacNeal, and classic amateur sleuth mysteries set in mid-century America.

Books in the Wendy Winkworth series:

•Book 1: The Stray Pitch
•Book 2: Bubbles, Roses, and Rump
•Book 3: Switching Sides