Fox Tracks

Though a fierce snowstorm rages on Manhattan's Midtown streets, nothing can dampen the excitement inside the Pierre Hotel ballroom. Hunt clubs from all over North America have gathered for their annual gala, and nobody is in higher spirits than "Sister" Jane, Master of the Jefferson Hunt in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Braving the foul weather, Sister and her young friend "Tootie" Harris go to a nearby tobacco shop and find themselves regaled by the colorful stories of its eccentric proprietor, Adolfo Galdos.

Yet the trip's festive mood goes to ground later with the grisly discovery of Adolfo's corpse. The tobacconist was shot in the head and found with a pack of American cigarettes laid carefully over his heart. When a similar murder occurs in Boston, Sister's "horse sense" tells her something nefarious is afoot -- and it seems to originate in southern tobacco farms. Sister had better smoke out a devious killer -- a killer who is much closer than she thinks.

Rita Mae Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of the Mrs. Murphy mystery series (which she writes with her tiger cat, Sneaky Pie), Murder Unleashed and A Nose for Justice (the first two books in her new canine mystery series), and the Sister Jane novels, as well as Rubyfruit Jungle, In Her Day, Six of One, The Sand Castle, and the memoirs Animal Magnetism and Rita Will. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia, with cats, hounds, horses, and big red foxes.