LIVE FREE OR DIE

When New Hampshire-based freelance travel writer Katherine “Kit” McCormick reviews her life, she can only give it three stars out of five. Just a few years shy of fifty, she’s settled into a pleasant but all-too-predictable cadence—until a freak car accident catapults her out of her complacency and into the middle of a grisly murder. Then loathsome real estate mogul Richard Smith turns up dead, shot in Kit’s office.


As a vocal opponent of Smith’s plans to build a development on her beloved lake, Kit makes the shortlist of suspects. The local police, rookie Detective Kasey Chakarian and veteran Jack Walters, probe into Kit’s turbulent past. Their suspicions deepen when they learn of Kit’s stormy love relationship with Dana Chase, the dead man’s then-fiancée, and her connections to Richard and Dana’s odd friends and family. Chakarian, newly promoted and eager to solve a big case in a small town, considers Dana Chase Smith the prime suspect, but as a closeted gay woman in a high-profile job in a male-dominated field, she’s leery of being seen by others, especially Walters, as sympathetic toward Kit.


Everything changes when there’s another murder. When Kit becomes the next target, she finds herself drawn deeper into the intrigue, and toward Detective Kasey Chakarian. Together they work to unravel the complicated knot of corruption, illicit liaisons, and shameful secrets, but every clue leads to further entanglements—and traps Kit in the killer’s deadly web.