Böcker av Linda Norlander

Liza Johnson, at loose ends on summer break from teaching fifth grade, is drawn into intrigue when her 84-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Wilkens, insists that Ramona, Liza's former GED student, has been murdered. Everyone assumes Ramona, a recovering addict, died of an accidental or intentional overdose, but Mrs. Wilkens is out to prove them wrong. Liza is urged to act when the voice in her head of her twin sister Charlee, who died at age four, tells her, Help Mrs. Wilkens. Spurred by the irrepressible Mrs. Wilkens and Charlee, Liza finds herself embroiled in an investigation involving a failing church, a very ill pastor's wife, and a secret within the walls of the parish house. Adding to the intrigue, she becomes the begrudging caretaker of Goldie, Ramona's cat-the only witness to her death.

Jamie Forest, transplanted New Yorker, is enjoying her first spring in the Northwoods of Minnesota when her octogenarian friend Clarence introduces her to an elderly recluse, Nella Fox. Nella wants help writing her memoirs. She is the owner of an estate that was once a TB sanatorium. The hospital is long abandoned and crumbling. Rumors abound that the neglected building carries the secret of a long-ago murder. When one of the cousins who cares for Nella is found dead in the old hospital, Jamie is drawn into its dark history. Instead of enjoying the spring awakening, Jamie finds herself piecing together the story of the estate and trying to solve two mysteries-one in the past and one in the present.

Jamie Forest, ex-New Yorker is on her way to her cabin to prepare for her first Thanksgiving in the Northwoods of Minnesota when she sees through the swirl of snow a ghostly apparition. It turns out not to be a ghost, but a young woman in labor. Not only is she about to deliver, but she doesn't speak English. Jamie can't ask her what she is doing in a lowland bog in the middle of a snowstorm. With the snow falling, she becomes an accidental midwife delivering a healthy baby girl in the backseat of her car. In the aftermath, it's clear the new mother is afraid someone will take her baby. Three days later a young woman is found drowned in Black Crow Pond. Is she Jamie's new mother? As she seeks answers, Jamie learns that winter in the Northwoods can be both beautiful and deadly.